The Hopefulness of Grease

"With no scientific basis except his own experience, Dr. Juvenal Urbino knew that most fatal diseases had their own specific odor, but that none was as specific as old age. He detected it in the cadavers slit open from head to toe on the dissecting table, he even recognized it in patients who hid their age with the greatest success, he smelled it in the perspiration on his own clothing and in the unguarded breathing of his sleeping wife. If he had not been what he was—in essence an old-style Christian—perhaps he would have agreed with Jeremiah de Saint-Amour that old age was an indecent state that had to be ended before it was too late. The only consolation, even for someone like him who had been a good man in bed, was sexual peace: the slow, merciful extinction of his venereal appetite. At eighty-one years of age he had enough lucidity to realize that he was attached to this world by a few slender threads that could break painlessly with a simple change of position while he slept, and if he did all he could to keep those threads intact, it was because of his terror of not finding God in the darkness of death."

― Gabriel García Márquez, "Love in the Time of Cholera"

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Dear Kate,

One paragraph speaks more than entire novels: this, my friend, is hope.

And hope is the sort of thing that speaks about the absence of it.

But the absence of hope is the sort of thing we hope for its absence in our speaking hopelessly.  We make speech, compile numbers, draw graphs, pledge and promise, pontificate but not for being insincere--we mean damn well what we mean, eager and earnest and for the good of the faceless, nameless millions that we are out to protect, to restore, to...love?  Our faces are straight.

If only we know the why and what and how less we have become than the way (we think) we used to be: hope-full.

To lift ourselves back up to where we once were, where we belong, where we must stay, we need to walk around, even walk over, the inconvenience and embarrassment of questioning our own story's premise.

You see, all the speech and numbers and graphs about climate change and 4K images of millions upon millions of climate refugees failed to fire up our apocalyptic imagination more imaginatively than we are firing up the Earth.  Our many little apathy and apostasy couldn't possibly add up to make or break anything, we say to ourselves.  So here you are, a little virus replies, my little presence, grounding your planes, mooring your cruises, shattering your Piña Colada dreams, widening your horizon to bring a little darkness in.

How does it feel, ah how does it feel?  No matter how we are feeling now, we ain't feeling nothing yet.  Worse, the worst is yet to come.  We living this side of prosperity and "hope" are just playing a little catch down.  Only a little so far.

We are attached to this world, this body, this neighborhood, this life by a few very slender threads that could break painlessly with a simple change of position while we live, like a corona virus, held together by grease.  It takes but a little baptism to wash us back into the deeps of chaos.

And if we did all we could to keep those threads intact, it's because of our terror of not finding God in the darkness of death.

Yours, Alex