Survivals. . .

—EF—

This is from our play, Descent of the Goddess Inanna.

Isn’t there a gate to abundance? Drink all there is, and the cup is full. Isn’t that what they say, somewhere? Somebody said that, I thought. Isn’t there a river of gifts and blossoms and kisses and fullness and flow that will never stop, that doesn’t demand the stoppage, that doesn’t dictate scarcity as the First Commandment? Isn’t there a way to fill what’s empty, and hug what’s lonely, and say bless you my brother, bless you my sister, be blest?

I’m challenged this week, while Conrad is gone to the Centrum Writers’ Workshop in Port Townsend WA, to write what I will say at the end of our new play-in-the-works, Survival. Until that point, I am either Lou, a West County woman of uncertain age with baggy pants, army jacket, and pickup truck, or else when Lou gets too stressed, her inner clown Bozo. Bozo thinks she has all the answers, because she’s seen a lot of books with all the answers. Lou puts up with this for short spurts, but keeps giving Bozo the heave. Finally, she disposes of Bozo (red nose, funny wig) and Lou (glasses, slouchy hat) and finishes up as Elizabeth. So whatever I say, I damn well need to mean it.

The play is aptly named Survival. Lou, like many among us, is stressed by not knowing where to look to avoid the fatal blow. Climate? GMO’s? Fukushima? Police state? Road rage? The options are limitless, so how can a person prepare?

I had my spirits lifted this week by a report from Florida, seemingly one of the more politically toxic locales, wherein a whole lot of people rescued a family swept out by a riptide: they formed a huge human chain to get them ashore. I don’t think they held a caucus, debated, took bribes, and then voted, they just damn well did it, instantly.

In sudden emergencies like blackouts and floods and wildfires, most of the time humans seem to revert to their basically decent caring cores. And Facebook is suddenly awash with YouTube flicks featuring animals nurturing each other in improbably cross-species ways. It looks as if a whole lotta folks like looking at this and going awwwww!—maybe more than the ones who tune into revenge porn.

I don’t know what I’m gonna say, but I do know that what will drive it is the gut feeling that we are not doomed, from here to eternity, to say Screw you, Jack, I’m all right. There’s a whole horde who maintain that if you don’t have what you need to survive, it’s your own fault, you’re deficient and God doesn’t like you. That kind of tribalism is dependent on defining the “other” and being superior to them.

I prefer what Inanna says.

—From CB—

This morning I woke with a fantastic idea: a bipartisan solution to the health care controversy. The plan is this:

1. Adopt a Single-payer system through passage of the National Security Defense Anti-terrorism American Greatness Act.
2. Give all diseases, lesions and maladies Arabic names. Adopt more pro-active procedural designations, e.g. surgical teams redubbed “Surgical Strike Force” or colonoscopies as “Special Operations Probes.”
3. Place health care under the aegis of the Pentagon, the agency with longest experience in issues of life and death. If health care costs continue to balloon, it will never be noticed at the Pentagon.

My only concern is if there’s some way to copyright my idea, so I’d make a little money on the side.

###