• Another [Temporary] Escape from Doomsday Dread

    From flickr.com: Teeth {VID-176489}

    (image from Flikr)

    One remedy for despair over the horrors worldwide and domestic is to go to the dentist for your semi-annual cleaning.

    The technology has evolved to a needle-like device that sprays water at and between your teeth as it probes for plaque and God knows what else. It is screechy loud. That is step one. Oh, please don’t hit a nerve!

    How can I be wishing that this hour will pass? I ask myself. How can I wish my life away?

    Next come all the pointy instruments sterilely packaged in cellophane—those things that jab at you as you again dread a nerve being hit, which today I compared to listening to ragged fingernails scratching a blackboard. Why is that sound such a horror? So is a nerve being hit  and that worst of all possibilities, one of those needle-like implements getting caught in a tooth. A cavity. Fillings are such fun also. I once had one done without anesthesia. I must have been crazy.

    But back to the cleaning: Skreeeee! Oh get your fingernail out of my lip! Why don’t you manicure your nails shorter? Ouch.

    Finally, the fun part. Rinse out and then …  time to floss! Two feet of floss for one mouth? Then toothbrushing time! But oh, you’ve got to be kidding—strawberry flavored? I’m probably the only person in the world who dislikes strawberries. But the taste is mild and still the best part of the ordeal until … the end! Rinse out! Ptui!

    No cavities, everything else normal: tongue, neck glands, whatever else the man dentist, who enters dramatically afterward, was looking for. Oh, please don’t find anything!

    Clean bill of oral health. They’re all out of free toothbrushes and miniature containers of floss, but here’s a travel-sized tube of your favor toothpaste brand. Thanks. 

    Free for another six months. 

    I’ve been going to the same dentist off and on since the mid-nineties. I first went to him for a toothache. A total stranger. Then I looked up at the guy bent over my teeth and saw the handsomest man I’d ever seen in my life. Surprise. Not that getting a filling was pleasant but the shock was. His wife at the front desk was extremely pretty. So going to the dentist was at least esthetically pleasing after that.

    I strolled out into an achingly beautiful autumn day, the sky sharply blue, the foliage peaking. Then reality came crashing down. Back into this pathetic, doomed reality of our poor old world we’ve plundered so badly.

    Putin’s accusation that Ukraine will be using dirty bombs on his country reminds me of Bush Jr.’s “WMD” hoax that led to the Iraq war and all the hell after that. This time the Doomsday Clock’s hand is even closer to that twelve.


  • Fight or Flight? What Happened to the Future as a Sunrise?

    Dew of youth

    Dew of youth (Image by cattan2011)   Details   DMCA

    To list everything going on here and everywhere that's keeping us up at night and torturing us by day would inevitably leave things out--we so depend on MSM headlines and bylines that leave out so much. But even MSM lists are long.

    Climate change, wars in Ukraine and elsewhere, climate-related crises, politics here and in the UK as well as China's looming takeover of Taiwan and Biden's threats--these top the limitless list. Add to that worldwide inflation and the tanking economy here.

    So I know some people who have given up on confronting these horrors daily and sworn off reading and hearing MSM. One reports massive relief. I knew a family in Vermont who escaped into the green hills from wherever and ignored MSM many years ago. The grandmother, however, would sneak into the public library and scour newspaper headlines when she could.

    Another weapon I've read about is to escape into a happy event in past life or find other sources of guiltless happiness once a day. That seems to be a good idea. I escape into my work on arcane and erudite peer-reviewed scholarly publications and into films on Netflix and TCM. Also Jeopardy for half an hour a day five days a week. I am daily disappointed when it ends, however many questions I can answer. Forget it when sports or pop culture are subject categories.

    The rest of my waking time is spent worrying and feeling helpless. Even when I'm exercising. I read nonfiction, so no escape there. 

    All of a sudden, the future is a huge question mark where earlier it was more of a given, though world wars were grim future deniers and covid still threatens. Younger generations mostly blame the boomers, not the billionaires and warmongers.

    It will take a miracle to cure the blight of climate change and constant recourse to violence to solve crises. Then we can get to other issues, like world hunger and disease. Meanwhile, we must play the blame game and hammer those at fault until the miracle happens. If only they could realize their destructiveness and care about it. They can go far toward reversing it. 

    Some say it's too late--climate change has already exceeded the tipping point. Xi says US, get out of our way into Taiwan, peaceful until it turns bloody. Russia won't turn back.

    Imagine peace. Imagine a world with a shining future, a sunrise our youth walk into.