Notes from the Beginnings of the Apocalypse
Thursday 9 January 2020
There’s much to say and write down as existential dread grips the beginnings of this new year. Therefore, silence. Silence was my first language. Silence was The First Language.
Wednesday 15 January 2020
*Samar blues – Actor Mozhan Marno who plays the character Samar Navabi in The Blacklist has left the show, and I feel so sad. Her departure was actually a year ago, but it’s new to me as I’m streaming those episode now on Netflix once they were released. Many characters come and go in so many different shows, movies, stories, and books…sometimes seems my life is lived vicariously thru these fictional characters. Truth is these characters have enriched my life with their creator’s words, insights, and actions, both thru the authors and the actors.
*As a child I was a prodigious reader. My mother, her sisters, and my maternal grandmother as well as my paternal grandfather were my biggest family influences on my love and insatiable hunger to read books of all kinds.
*Fear of being a narcissist or a toxic friend and truth is I’m too empathic. Remember what my college professor warned all of us on the first day of Psychology 101, “Be careful when you read about all these disorders and psychoses. You’re going to think you have everyone one of them at some point. Maybe, and most likely you don’t and you won’t.”
*Sadness my global brain disorder & cluster of invisible disabilities affected my capacity to follow my dreams, whether it is memorizing lines & order of sequence as an actor, memorizing who wrote what as an English major, & hearing impairment on fones, & TBI/GBD on logic structures such as math, dance, music, language structures, etc., when I create music in my imagination but can’t get it out. Memory of these is so short as I can’t recall them.
Write and see: My Invisible Disabilities: A Journey of Discovery
Ahhh, sometimes one must leave journal entries unfinished. So much to say. Dreams to record. Vivid ones, too. So much to share with the world. Who will listen, tho? Who bothers to read any of this? Who cares? Isn’t our world about to end in any given moment? I’ll stop now and move forward in time. Isn’t the present moment an illusion, after all? Even the now takes time, and, ah, what is time? Gravity pulling apart the illusions of space? Heck, what does anyone know beyond one’s own consciousness and our ingrained belief systems?
Monday 3 February 2020
Well, world, Happy Fabulous February! Belatedly, sure. January was sooo unusually gloomy doomy swoomy here in the City of Silver & Grey. Rained 30 days straight until today. Had a few scattered snow flurries down low while heavy snow fell in the mountains. Warming cycles brought heavy rain down atop our alpine snow so avalanches churned down thru the backcountry and our rivers and lakes flooded.
Today sunshine burst forth. I walked about 3 blocks to where I last parked my minivan. Cocked my head. What was that? Birds! Songbirds! Heard my first songbirds of 2020! I stopped on the sidewalk by the trees to listen. Oh, goodness, warmed my heart. Felt like one thousand pounds of sand slid off my soul. Yaya Yay!
Tuesday 4 February
Snow fell early this morning, then swirled away.
Wednesday 5 February
Awful day for the Republic. I can feel us Americans twitter ourselves closer to civil war as we continue to close ranks around the rigid ideological cancer cells of the far right and the far left. Trump is so bad he makes the dreaded CIA and the FBI and the NSA look good. Trump is so horrible he makes Rep. Nancy Pelosi from California look awesome and powerful as she hardens herself further for battle. Prayer and talk of prayer have been turned into weapons. I used to have a dislike for Pelosi, but the pettiness and corruption of Hillary Clinton makes Pelosi appear saintly by comparison. Trump’s infantile imbecility makes the Speaker of the House rise up as a leader. She has emerged as a true leader, and while I am in the progressive activist camp led by AOC and the rest of the Squad, I’m now pumping my fist while hollering, “GO, NANCY, GO!!!”
At work, however, some of us murmur of civil war. We feel the rage, the desire to go into battle. Many of us in our 40s, 50s, and 60s, even 70s all agree we’re too damn old to go into battle or engage in street fighting and guerrilla warfare. We are aware the reality of civil war in America would be too horrific to even realistically consider. The damage to infrastructure alone would be enormous. When the power grids shut down, then every single nuclear power plant would melt down and geyser radiation across the planet. Damaged chemical plants, biolabs, refineries, and hazardous wastes will spill toxins of all kinds into our environment. Local warlords will carve out fiefdoms. The nation will fracture not between regions as back in the 1850s and 1860s nor fragment as the USA did back in the 1960s and 70s but polarize between right and left all across the nation. Refugees from both sides will spill over the borders into Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean, perhaps pursued by their respective hostile militias, and bring war and chaos with them. Major powers and drug cartels alike may eventually intervene as all sides succumb to the unprofessional lure of grand slaughter and massacre. After all sides commit atrocities and fighting drags on beyond economic collapse, financial ruin, environmental devastation, and epidemics, tyrants emerge to impose order in the wake of ceasefires.
“While riots and localized insurrections may happen, God knows I hope we really don’t fall into a true civil war. It would be a catastrophe for the whole planet.” I said.
“Yeah,” one of my coworkers said to me in a soft, intense voice, “but wouldn’t it be fun to kill some of those damn assholes? It’ll be justice! To take out Trump and all of those selfish, dumb fuckers who ruined this country?” This was from a man who comes across as kind, respectful, insightful, and highly educated.
I felt a weird mix of shock, fear, and glee. I was appalled, and yet I was so disgusted and angry at the Far Right I struggled to contain myself and not get caught up in the blame game.
“I wanna bring back the guillotine!” I blurted out. “Bring back the Terror of the French Revolution and march those loathsome, corrupt bigots right up to the blade! Who came up with all this shit that human life is so much more sacred than anything else when humans have done so much damage? Yeah, let’s bring back the guillotine.”
My colleague chuckled and nodded in agreement as he returned to his tasks.
I felt ashamed.
Thursday 6 February
“Is this yours?” I asked my coworker as I lifted an abandoned coffee cup for her to see.
“No,” Mel replied. “Not mine.”
“Well, it’s cold and full,” I declared as I sat the mystery cup back down with a smack.
“Oh, William,” she said. “That feels perfect.”
“Cold and full” became our little inside joke as it alluded to a certain unspoken naughtiness.
We giggled like naughty teenagers and wise elders, and spoke of the beauty, power, and necessity of the Endarkenment. All light, life, and art springs from the dark. We are friends only, btw, thrown together to work in dead-end jobs at the end of the world. We’re even from different orientations. Doesn’t matter. We all live hot and empty and die cold and full.
Full of what, tho?
Tuesday 18 February
From a letter to my friend Paul:
Feels strange for me to recall such details from 19856-1986 when I write. My memory is clearly failing me when I speak, however, especially in the wake of the horrid concussions back when I had the OIS syncope event in the train station in May 2018 followed by being clobbered by a chunk of ice that fell about 30 feet from a tree last October 1st. Was on a dayhike in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in the mountains outside Seattle. Three to four feet of snow had fallen in the mtns a week prior, very unusual weather per climate change, but was rapidly melting, refreezing, melting again, refreezing as odd waves of subfreezing & abnormal heat would alternate. Anyway, got clobbered enough it disturbed the strangers hiking behind me and my friend with me. Crunched my spine, tilted my pelvis, caused my thigh muscles to spasm and pull my patellas off, and I could barely hike the last mile & a half down the mountain to the car. Thought I would crawl. I was embarrassed, bewildered, & close to tears. My friend got frustrated. None of us realized just what had occurred at the time, tho we do now. She, a native Virginian of Filipino immigrants, btw, was so perturbed by what happened she now plans to hike with a helmet where tall trees are bombarded with weird weather amidst global climate disruption. I’m determined to go out via assisted suicide/euthanasia before my memory goes too far. But already I can’t recall names & nouns & words when I speak. No probs when I write. Just when I speak, dammit. Also use odd word choices for nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs when I speak. Aphasia, ugh. And I thought I would be a healthy old fucker blessed with a long, rambunctious, and active life. Still a chance, of course, insh’Allah.
Love & Hugs, dear Friend.
WmDB
Life is a bloody damn mess, isn’t it? HA!
*No, HA ^^^ is not an acronym for “headache” here in this case. It’s what one is supposed to write instead of, “LOL,” LOL!
Friday 06 March 2020
Started this yet again, this journal, this diary. Can’t write anymore. So aware of what’s happening in the world I’m a bit in denial for myself. Ah, write anyway.
Tuesday 24 March
Feel strange today. I feel fine, no aches or pains, but I sense an eerie calm before an oncoming storm, a relentless juggernaut of a storm. What I feel reminds me somewhat of those auras I would feel prior to a migraine attack. My bodymind picks up on a faint, psychic hum of sorts, like brain fog without any fog. I’m confident in my health on one hand, but worry more than I perhaps should. I am over 60. I’ll be 61 towards the end of April. I do have a cluster of underlying chronic health issues, and none of them are anything truly “serious” or “severe.”
My housemate Ed, 67 yrs old & a healthy as a rhino, seems to be coming down with the novel coronavirus. He creeps around looking uneasy. He’s not right. He feels malaise. Lays around in the bed most of the time. Quiet. Claims he’s a sporadic dry cough, his nose tickles, & his ears bug him. His ears bothered him yesterday, but more likely they were surprisingly impacted with an abundance of ear wax.
Yesterday, WA State Gov Jay Inslee finally issued his stay-the-heck-home orders. The National Guard is activated. I declined my ex-wife Kristina’s invitation for a walk, as much as I desired to spend some time with her.
I worry about my 3 children. Morgan/Dylan/Li’l Twinkle Star. Kathryn/Kate/Li’l Kitty Kat. Talia/TaTa/Li’l Butterfly. I fret about all the women I love. Even if they don’t love me.
Tired. Gonna go rest.
Tuesday, 3 November
Biden and Trump the Usurper are running neck and neck in this pivotal and highly polarized election campaign. I did not expect this. I did not expect neck and neck. Had expected Biden to roll over Trump in a landslide with Trump contesting the Electoral College and egging forward his militant base into combat with imagined Antifa brigades. I expected the majority of Trump supporters would be from his White racist, ignorant, violent base, a small and dramatic minority of voters who delight every time he debases anyone and everyone, even them.
Well, at least the asteroid missed us, and thank goodness Governor Inslee won reelection to a third term here in the State of Washington. Our nation and the world is gripped with an apocalyptic fever. Global climate disruption, wars and terrorism, religious hatred, a vast ignorance among so many people who cannot tell one ism from another or science from magic, pandemics, recessions, depressions, civil strife, A.I. and roboweapons, this and that and the other.
While long-dead oppressors, many of them sacred cows, are being called out and pulled down, many ethnic monoliths are being shattered. Aye, we are already in the Apocalypse. Haven’t had nuclear armageddon yet, thank goodness. Still, we abide within yet another historic Apocalypse. We even have Zombies! They’re just not dead yet.
Best news of 2020 for me is after several years I now have a lover. She’s an extraordinary woman. First time I’ve been in a relationship with someone with whom I share the same primary love languages, the same attachment theory quadrant, and even a similar body odor. We do have differences, tho. She prefers tropical islands while I love mountain forests and alpine wilderness. We live about 2800 miles apart, too, darn it all. We are too rooted in our careers to simply quit, pull up, and move far away. Yet we have more core values in common than not, and we love each other beyond the temporary ebb and flow of emotions, thoughts, and feelings. Call it deep love. Aye, deep love is what we share, even when we are too tired to always like this or that.
Oh, those damn Zombies! Those singleminded, unquestioning, destroy everything fanatics who follow their Pied Pipers of all religious and political stripes shouting and boasting and taunting right off the cliffs to the Hell of Stupidity. They simply aren’t dead yet, these zombies. But it looks as if they’re gonna carry Trump thrashing thru the Electoral College, darn it. Even with 232,620 Americans confirmed to have died of COVID-19 so far this year.
Received my 2nd and last Shingrix Recombinant vaccine tonight to help prevent shingles disease. At the Pharmacy at my neighborhood Bartell Drugs. I’m sad this local, family-owned business is being bought out by Rite-Aid.
We’ve had turbulent, stormy weather and beautiful Autumn skies ever since the smokestorms cleared.
William Dudley Bass
Tuesday 3 November 2020
Thursday 5 November 2020
Seattle, Washington
USA
Cascadia
Earth
Sol
Copyright © 2020 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.