Confusion

I’ve talked to my nephew and niece, I’ve talked to my oldest girlfriends, I’ve talked to the old git and I’ve just come in from sitting in the sun, on a bench in the garden talking to my next door neighbour about confusion.
Are we not all confused?
Are we not victims of governmental decisions that seem crazy, convoluted, chaotic and muddled.
Wear a mask, dont wear a mask. Go to school, don’t go to school. Drink in pubs in groups of six, go to university in groups of 60. Is Covid being used as a weapon of mass control, from a group of elite power-brokers who make decisions based on the megalomaniacal ramblings of a shirt wearing adviser, or is Covid worse than the Bubonic Plague?
Am I frightened, cos I’m 71 years old and the old git is 77? No. Am I prepared to whisk my mask off in the supermarket as a protest against all the bullshit, or do I toe the line because it’s easier and safer, even though there are those who say a mask is scant protection against this mutating virus. Am I cowed by the continual barrage of bad news? Or do I choose my sources and rest easy in the knowledge that fear is as crippling as the virus itself.
Am I aware that this confusion is reigning down on us like acid rain? Am I conscious that we are going through a monumental shift in consciousness and habituation. Am I sad that my dawter and her generation have their lives on hold and that those at the bottom of the pile will have shit kicked into their faces by those at the top of the pile, what do you think? Conspiracy theories abound; one percent of the population owns all the wealth and they couldn’t give a box of farts for the untermenches. Some say it’s science fiction others say that the oil barons in the Middle East have bought up all the high ground in the Seychelles because they know what’s coming.
Which is what precisely? Global warming, extinction, aliens? My next door neighbour says what’s the point of having a few quid if there’s nothing to spend it on and nowhere to go.
Living in the moment is so easy when you have a house in the Maldives and some kind of future. But what if you’re living on the social with hungry kids and a crumbing reality. Isn’t that all we have? Living in the moment is the only thing we can do in thIS moment, yesterday is gone, the future is precarious so enjoy the rosebuds while you may for rheumatism may set in any day.
The dawter and her friends see sunight in muddy puddles. The ‘oosbind carries on gardening and mending. I carry on with my yoga and meditation and plunge into my own insane philosophy believing that the unified field will win and that Mother Nature is greater than you, me or Chernobyl.
Do I detest Trump and his narcisstic meltdowns, do I detest this government’s bullyboy tactics, do I think that the new normal is not normal because nobody knows what normal is anymore, do I cry with frustration, what do you think?
I interviewed the delicious Ruby Wax on Saturday for the ‘Mind Body Spirit’ festival. She of the wicked wit and an OBE for her work with mental health. And people zoomed in and thanked her for her ‘frazzled cafe.org’ a community of people who listen and help each other. And she spoke of her new book ‘And Now For The Good News…: To the Future with Love.’ She made me cry with her optimism and dedication to a future with community. A future that cares for each other and isn’t nailed to the floor by greed and ambition.
She is loved for her vulnerability and honesty, she asked me what did being 71 feel like, and I told her no different from being 31, 51, 61, only now my overhang hangs lower and my hips are thicker. My hair is grey and my memory not as slick. Age cannot whither me nor her, she gave her audience a sense of hope and a sense of wonder. For isn’t that all we have? If we allow ourselves to be crippled by the bunglers we will give up.
There’s food to be grown, books to be read, walks to be ambled and bodies to be hugged. Turn the other way if your frightened of lickspittles.
If 90-year-old Sir David Attenborough can carry on fighting for weasles and turtles, if Sir David is still able to enthuse about the planet without dripping dread all over the place then why cant we?
My nephew and I have been having a mighty debate, he in Oxford me in the garden, we tore apart theories and when we remembered we listened to each other. He says be the change you want to see and by fuck if that’s not what he’s doing. He has opened his house, mind, heart and home to people who want and need a hug and can’t get it. He doesn’t wear a mask because he believes that though the pandemic is real it’s being used as a tool of terror. He may be right, he may be wrong but he is living in the now. He is young, and he is my future.
Long live curiosity and enquiry and down with bumbling Bureaucrats who have about as much life in them as a pair of airtex knickers that have been thrown onto the scrap heap of yellowing underwear in the mangled Laundromat of time.