Dear diary,
I can’t believe the different attitudes that people are able to hold about this pandemic. Some are panicked and thoroughly self-quarantined; while others are going about their daily business, unconcerned. Some think it’s a false threat and we’re all stupid to be isolating ourselves; others take to heart the warnings of the warners.
I belong to the camp that fearfully obeys the official scientists’ advice. Maybe I should be more adventurous, engage in some healthy skepticism, and live dangerously, cuz that’d be funner (definitely more fun to write about); but I don’t like sickness — I’d rather avoid it; so I’ll err on the side of caution. Even if this virus weren’t rumored to be able to kill us, I’d be mindful to avoid it. Even if it were only the risk of catching a mild cold, I’d seal myself in a space suit just to fetch my mail.
I don’t like coughing; I don’t like sneezing; I don’t like body aches; I don’t like heart attacks or strokes; I don’t like injuries where the bone protrudes thru the skin; I don’t like fevers; I don’t like the feeling of being parched; I don’t like trying to abstain as much as possible from swallowing when I have a sore throat.
I also hate earaches.
But I don’t mind death, because death is the end of suffering, so it’s not that I’m afraid to die. The only thing I dislike about death is that it opens up the possibility of rebirth.
But I hasten to add that I’m not against ALL rebirth; I’m only against the type of rebirth that places one in great suffering all over again, like when you die of the plague and then get reborn to an abusive parent. In that case, I’d rather just fly away from existence and go cavort in one of those amusement parks in the heavens.
Yet nobody knows if the soul or the spirit has any substantial share in the worlds that aren’t real: it could be that the notion of an immortal, winged aspect of one’s physical flesh is an idea that holds no sway among the board-members of the Pantheon.
And I can’t believe that Wittgenstein began writing his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus when he was a soldier in the First World War. Wouldn’t you think that the peril of imminent death would have rendered bookmaking (or even tract-making) infeasible, especially about such a tedious topic?
Also I recently heard thru the grapevine that Wittgenstein’s personal proclivities might’ve leaned toward fascism — I find that bemusing. But it also kinda makes sense, cuz if you’re in love with the lunacy of logic, you’ll probably also have an attraction for other freaky notions. Plus, fascism works. It gets the job done, I mean. (Exactly which job? Aye, there’s the rub.)
Ya know, up above I make the joke about wearing an astronaut costume to walk outside to my mailbox. But I don’t understand why we don’t implement something like that very idea, in total sincerity. Is it only the Rules of Fashion that stop us from wearing full body-suits (like the kind that people wear when they handle hazardous material) everywhere that we go, at least until this thing blows over? I kinda like the idea of walking around in public wholly concealed. It’s the next best thing to being completely invisible.
My main problem during these pandemics, other than my disrelish for their odious offering, is that my body produces way too much adrenaline, which makes me feel anxious. And if you wanna ask me a stupid question, like: “How anxious do you feel, on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the best?” I say it’s unbearable: for it’s always way too much fear for what the situation requires.
I’m guessing that my body has its own memories of being chased by gazelles thru the forest; so, when it feels fright, it pumps itself with energy so that it can flee faster. This is the bad aspect of evolutionary learning; & that’s why I voted against its utilization, in the Pantheon Food-Fight.
Only the atoms and cells of one’s physicality are listening to the lessons of evolution; the mind is always somewhere superior, reclining: waiting for its beloved frame to catch up. The body doesn’t understand what the mind understands, cuz the body’s just logical. The body has only read Wittgenstein as a philosopher, not as a poet. It has merely sounded out the words as it’s scanned his text with its eyeballs — in other words, the body hasn’t read with understanding.
But the mind DOES understand the poetry of the situation, and also logic’s limitations (which is why it’s able to articulate not only its own ascendancy while admitting its disadvantage: because it’s both the best of times as well as the worst of times, all in one meat-fire) (I call the human brain a ‘meat-fire’ because it’s literally a hunk of beef, medium rare, coupled with lightning stolen from Paradise), so the mind knows that what is needed to combat the source of this present fear is calmness, wisdom, and patience: not spasticity. Nevertheless I find myself inundated with spasticity. I sit here trembling for no good reason; and, just when it’s most important to nourish myself so that I can keep my immune system strong, I have zero appetite.
II
Additionally I’ve noticed that people either do not know the rules of the road, or they choose to ignore them. And what I mean by “rules of the road” are those guidelines set in stone by our local law-tablets which declare that while motorized vehicles must drive on the right lane of the thoroughfare, pedestrians should always walk on the left. (I live in the Midwestern U.S.A. — if you live elsewhere, your laws are probably exactly the same: don’t bother to research, just follow my example and you’ll be fine.) The reason for this is that if you’re walking while facing the same direction as the flow of the motorized traffic, then you won’t be aware how close to you a distracted driver is swerving when he approaches, thus, when he passes by, you’ll be at the mercy of his steel frame, which will crush you; whereas, if you are walking towards all the oncoming vehicles, then you will be able to see each one of them from the moment they first appear (over the horizon, like the rosy fingers of dawn); and you will have ample time to dash out of the way, when they try to chase you.
But my point in mentioning people’s disregard for these pedestrian safety guidelines is that they’re beginning to get on my nerves during this new pandemic. For the pandemic consists of a very catchy virus; and in order to avoid contracting it, we’re supposed to remain many meters away from our fellows while we’re taking our daily exercise; and the streets in the suburban town where I live are quite wide, because they were built to accommodate the gas-hog cars of the 50s, which all had child-bearing hips; therefore, if we pedestrians follow the “left lane only” rule of walking, then anyone who is approaching you will always be on the far side of the same street, and we can wave to each other jovially and in silence as we go our separate ways, without breathing disease-ridden droplets at each other.
But if you’re walking on the wrong side of the road, then I can see you coming directly at me, and the meters between us grow slimmer and slimmer, until we meet and practically kiss, which act would infect me with the killer virus for sure, therefore you leave me no choice but to leap away from you, and my garment remains in the grip of your hand, as I dash out into the street and get hit by a truck. As it is written: Why did the chicken cross the road?
And I stress that the properly distanced passing-by of two or more walkers who remain on the correct (opposite) sides of the road should be SILENT and that they should limit their greeting only to a mute wave of the hand, for the following reason:
To speak words aloud while you encounter me in public, even the kindest compliment, such as, “Blessings upon you, Bryan, you are a powerful blogger,” will splash forth all sorts of lethal germs from your lips, because the words “Blessing”, “Bryan”, “Powerful”, and “Blogger” are what experts in linguistics label plosives (“p” is a voiceless plosive, while “b” is voiced): thus they cause deadly vapors to be expectorated in the direction of their hearer. (Consider that the word plosive is contained in the word explosive.) And that is bad.
III
Lastly, I find it interesting that certain people will survive this latest pandemic, just as at least some fraction of humankind survived all the previous pandemics.
What will that feel like, for the survivors: to be able to walk outside without feeling terror? — I can’t imagine it.
And what type of government will you survivors decide on? Maybe you’ll just toss the idea of government into the dustbin: maybe only the anarchists will survive; or whoever survives will simply convert to anarchism because it’s the only thing that makes sense. What I mean is that even those who, like Wittgenstein, naturally lean toward implementing a strong form of government, like fascism, will melt when they see how enjoyable it is to simply cooperate as friends in mutual freedom, and so they will change their minds from their former bent to this newfangled stance: the same way that, if Jesus wouldn’t have missed his 2nd Coming, even those who had thereto described themselves as atheists would presumably bend the knee to their new Dictator.
Out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword. (Revelation 1:16)
So it’s a good thing that Jesus was a no-show. I don’t mean to be flippant about this, but I hate the Jesus that John of Patmos creates for his book of Revelation. And I hate the author’s attitude; he’s always threatening people…
For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book: If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. (Revelation 22:18)
I hope that people read and enjoy my own scripture; and I also wish that, if changes are made to what I’ve prophesied, the editors or redacters responsible for the changes will provide clear notation for whatever they have manipulated.
Like if, when I die of some pretend plague because I blasphemed John’s protagonist, and some scholar somewhere decides to publish a collection of excerpts from this present journal entry, I hope they title the piece Sections from a Powerful Public-Private Blog Post by Bryan Ray; edited by Lucretius De Rerum Natura Book the Sixth. And then add an epigraph from the encyclopedia:
This essay’s abrupt ending, like the ending of his own epic poem, suggests that Lucretius might have died before he was able to fully edit Bryan Ray’s manuscript.
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