Weights

Both a fresh cold and a new migraine arrived when I opened my eyes to this gray, wet, miserable day, and things went down hill from there. Warning: no uplifting thoughts appear here today. 

What is weighing me down? In Nigeria Boko Haram is burning children alive and raping the little ones who escape. In the USA, children in Flint, Michigan (where 59% of the population is people of color) are suffering brain-damage from lead in their drinking water, and the best the governor of that state can do is promise a “discount” on water bills. Some say the thousands of microcephalic babies in Brazil are victims of Zika virus, while others say they are the result of a batch of bad vaccines produced by a pharmaceutical company that is knowingly using Zika as a coverup. As gun violence escalates and the President tries to persuade people in the USA that guns are a bad idea, they go out and buy more.

In US politics, the Bernie Sanders crowd castigates the Hillary Clinton crowd as sell-outs to the banks and corporations, the Clinton people revile the Sanders people for making empty promises, and the Jill Stein (Green Party) people declare anyone who votes for either Sanders or Clinton is complicit in the bombing deaths of people in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Palestine. Republicans pound their Bibles and say there’s no room for gays and atheists in their America while proclaiming a politics of obscene hatred fueled by fantasies of bloody destruction on the scale of video games popular with testosterone-poisoned adolescent boys. I feel as if those giant barbells are resting on my heart. 

I’m going to lie on my bed and listen to the sound track for Carol (which sounds like Philip Glass but was actually written by Carter Burwell imitating Philip Glass) at half-volume while my head throbs and I blow my nose a few thousand more times. Sometimes even a pollyanna like me is overwhelmed by the weight of the world.