Recently I’ve noticed myself peering past the Apocalypse. The terrible things that might have happened have. A disaster’s details hardly matter. If a vase shatters, who cares the quantity of shards? Gone is gone, dead is dead, yet life persists and survivors, dazed amidst the rubble, must find their way to tomorrow. So must the citizens of Dresden or Hiroshima have felt after the bombing – or Jews after the Holocaust – or a squirrel shivering in its hole after the storm: one can’t go on but one must, for the heart still beats.

How weirdly tranquil, when the ruckus quiets. Mourners moan, they do not rant – why bother? – villains and victims alike have been erased. Life is precious till it exits, then we’re rubbish to be hauled.

To friends who console – “It can’t be that bad” – I reply with Lear:

It was horrible opposing the collapse of the democratic dream, shouting myself hoarse, waking hollowed with dread, but now the prophecy is fulfilled, the damage done, and we must recommence – or die. I wonder, with weary mordancy, if Shakespeare will survive, or reading be allowed by our new overlords, or thinking even. New facts will be known in time – and they will be intolerable – but for now I’m numb. Who of my loved ones was swallowed? I don’t know yet – but I envy them their ease.

Ghoulish, a friend chides, this dystopian absence of hope. Cheer up!

No, I smile wanly, safer not to. If my fears exaggerate, so much the better. It’s like when you’ve lost a game badly yet play on to prove – what? – it could have been worse? Or to see if you can still “hold your head up”? I pray some vestige of our Founders’ dream survives the pillage of the plutocrats, but I’m not counting on it. The plutocrats, too, will find their cushy castles collapsed, for in the end humanity is one, we rise and fall as a species. On his deathbed, Elon Musk may be worth a trillion: will that make him glad? “For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?” (Jesus – on point, as usual.)

Jane still reads the news. She tries to tell me the outrage du jour but I clap my ears. I’ve stipulated extinction – let my mind roam elsewhere. We mustn’t mind what we cannot mend. Change what we can, accept what we cannot.

Catastrophe enlightens where prosperity blinds. How obvious in hindsight what we should have done. All those Senators who bowed to power instead of standing for principle! All those stupid voters who forsook America for a whim! The “price at the pump” will turn out to be not pennies on the gallon, but all the wealth that ever was.

Am I sad? I think beyond. Grief exhausts itself. Rage too. Is surrender shameful? Not after the facts are known. Have we passed the point of no return? Opinions vary. I’d have thought a decade ago it can’t be this bad, yet here we are.

Shakespeare’s genius saw through Lear’s ruin and found – could it be – peace? Dead he is a soul in bliss. So after my cancer: no longer alarmed, but grateful to be alive. However grim the news I am determined to rejoice. It may be mourning in America but do not despair – don’t we have each other?