What a year, 2025!
On its first day I railed:
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedBefore 2024 I believed in human salvageability. People, like democracy – one of our great inventions – self-corrected. The events of 2024 woke me to our wreckage. Donald Trump – not Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln – defines humanity. He is who we are deep down – selfish, cruel, truthless, ruthless, vicious, rapacious, vain – I cannot conceive a specimen more vile. A species pleased with such a monster I want no part of. The White House, Congress, and other national symbols used to lift my spirit; now I avert my eyes, lest I spiral into despair. Does it behoove me to participate in this season’s bromidic cheer? I can’t.
Concluding:
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWhat we make of our time is a moral choice. Are we living to benefit our kind or plump our own pillow? Companionship enlivens and enlightens. My aim will be to brighten your day with our occasional stroll. There’s a solipsism in rage, a self-importance, which ignores one’s effect on others in one’s zeal to alert. I’m done with that. Let me be serene – not false – there is no beauty in falsity – but encouraging. Life is a losing battle, but the joys along the way!
I’d had it. Fit to be tied, I couldn’t take it anymore. The year and its vortical central character – that’s vortical with an o – more than justified my dread. I’d feared the worst – yet this was worse, recalling that abysmal moment in King Lear:
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published The worst is notSo long as we can say ‘This is the worst.’
My pen was suicidal – but maybe not my heart. I inveighed – but prayed. Down, yes, I was, but out?
Discovery is the thrill of being, available for free to all, we need only open our hearts. Whatever happens surprises if we’re paying attention. When predictions prove accurate, that too surprises.
The year was bad – in respect to public events, the most loathsome of my span – yet, unexpectedly, at its close, I’m not feeling so blue. Our predicament is still grave as grave can be; only a halfwit, at this juncture, could guarantee survival. Not only our dear old United States, age 250, but humanism itself, age 600 or so, teeter on the verge of extinction. To rescue human dignity, untold battles remain.
Yet I feel – again, for once – almost miraculously – hope.
“Hope,” wrote Saint Emily (Dickinson), “is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul” – tremulous, uncertain, about to take flight – but there it is, shivering, nervous, delicate, chirping us to defy Reason. Reason may insist us there is no Hope, but Hope, it turns out, is more persuasive than Reason. We – the People – may yet rise from our sluggish imbecility to save ourselves. We march, we vote, and our percentages persuade our spineless representatives to do the right thing to save themselves. The good news about the Nameless One is he’s so awful he shocks awake all but the most profoundly clueless.
The other surprise of this forlorn year has been the starch in my soul. A year ago my words threw in the towel – stick a fork in me, I was done. Today, maybe not so fast. Rescind that surrender! Defy that defeatism! Where there’s life there’s hope, you ninny! (I am speaking to myself here.) Yeh, I am tired, old, disgusted, grim, but still able to aim my little words – between their eyes! “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer,” wrote Camus. Or most winningly, FDR: “When you’re at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.”