Here's the next page from my book of 290 Drawing Prompts. (The previous page appeared just after May Day.) The prompt for this present drawing was "Artichoke".
Dear diary,
One thing I’m learning from this plague situation is that some people just don’t care about other people. Am I naive to admit that this is news to me?
I’m one of those people who cannot be content until everyone else is content, even the squirrels in my yard. So, for instance, even if we stopped this plague from ravaging our cities, I would not be able to rejoice for more than an instant, because the very moment after the pandemic is circumvented, I will remind myself about the poverty in the global South, and I’ll feel the urge to mount up on my horse and hasten to…
I’d like to save the world, and I’m mad that I can’t. I’m intensely frustrated with my limitations.
But, as I was saying, some people have the power to help multitudes — to save them from suffering & dying — yet these powerful people do nothing, because they…
I almost said “because they don’t care”; but then I stopped myself, as I realized that I don’t know the reason for their neglect — all I know is that these powerful people don’t help. They can help but don’t. That’s unlike I, who yearn to help but can’t.
Maybe that’s why I’m so infuriated with these power-mongers: the nonchalance of their inaction makes me suspect that I’m no better than them (for I assume that to frump so selfishly would evince more shame, if it’s not part of our shared condition). Or rather, perhaps if I were in their slippers, I’d realize that to bring about what I’m calling help is not so simple as I currently think: Right now I assume that a guy with multiple hundreds of billions of dollars could end hunger & homelessness in the world, with relative ease; and he could donate the much-needed medical supplies & protective gear to all the nurses and doctors and patients at ground zero of this plague… & the politicians who are supposed to represent the people, who have the power to distribute all sorts of aid to anyone who needs it — they seem to be acting only on behalf of the healthy & wealthy. Yet here’s what I wonder:
If I myself were a multi-billionaire or a politician, might I see that there are insurmountable obstacles to helping the multitudes? & thus, might I too, instead of rising to the occasion, only recline & watch the world suffer?
No: I don’t believe that I would be that way — for I’m an aficionado of upset: I love the idea of turning the tables even on my own self: so I don’t think that I’d act like the guys who are presently ultra-rich & super-powerful. If my own feet were wearing their spatterdashes, I’d give all my wealth away, just for flux’ sake. And I would not act like either of these large plastic bags full of statesmen & stateswomen. I think I really am a better dolt than them.
Cuz I don’t think that people are expendable. I see every human as a question mark of potential. If you hold people down, or allow them to die when you could have saved them, you’re snuffing out the prospect of paradise. And, as an atheist, I equate the unknown capacity of each new person with that being’s genius, which is the only God that exists:
I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –
as Emily Dickinson always sez.
So we know the potential of the current batch of powerful figures and the politicians they own, for the state of the world is the result of their choices in management. And since I dislike the present state of the world, I side with the multitudes who are dying, and with those who have died, against those who are allowing (or even ordering) the killings; because whatever the non-survivors would have brought to the world, yet were disallowed from bringing into the world, would have changed the world in some way; and any change is welcome when things are this bad; for we’re at one of those depths from which there’s nowhere to go but up.
Yet things can always get worse, right? — Yes, I’m afraid that’s so. So maybe the jerks who I’m blaming for weighing us down are actually mercifully keeping us afloat at this low level; and if it weren’t for them, we’d sink lower and maybe even drown.
Nope: I refuse to believe that the current power-class is anything but rotten. Call that my faith, or my stubborn conviction, & I will own it.
But my wish is NOT to overthrow or to punish those who’ve abused us: I only wanna use what’s required to meet everyone’s needs; after which I wanna invite those same power-mongers to join our utopia.
For my hunch is that the power-mongers are simply devoid of fancy; they’re short on imagination — so they need to see, feel, experience a thing before they believe in it: and once they behold what the multitudes have built from the part of their fortune that got returned to its rightful owners (which is to say, to all that lives), they’ll be happier than anyone:
It’ll be like when your house-pet escapes, and you’re in acute distress for some hours; but then, later that same day, a random shopper espies the runaway doing trapeze stunts on an electric wire, near the strip-mall — and since your pet’s tag has your address engraved upon it, that person who found her was able to lure her back to your house in safety — and you notice that she, your lost one, is freshly shampoo’d. This, I am saying, is a parable about how glad a rich man will be to have nine tenths of his fortune re-appropriated.
I guess I’m assuming that the pet in question is a dog, because that’s the type of animal that would benefit from being bathed. I don’t think that cats or birds take as well to sudsy soap. Or maybe cats do, I guess — actually I’m not sure how cats might vote, on this issue; for I always think of cats as keeping themselves clean via a routine of self-licking, therefore why would they need to bathe in wet liquid? Moreover, I assume that cats hate water. (Is there anything that cats don’t hate? I mean, besides fish & song-bats?) And if the pet is a reptile, like an iguana or a python snake, then definitely do not attempt to scrub it clean before returning it to its owner. Reptiles keep clean by rolling in the sand. And many people have pets that are amphibians, which are naturally slimy; so if you find one of these at the mall, and you wish to doll it up before coaxing it home, I can’t advise you what to do: you’re on your own with this one.
*
Ah jeez. Do you ever do that? Do you ever write a whole entry and then realize that you pretty much haven’t even begun, & that all the foregoing is filler? Cuz I wasted like 70 paragraphs equivocating on justice, which is the stupidest topic in the universe, and only now do I realize what the voice of the LORD was trying to get me to talk about: house-pets and hygiene. For that last part about the runaway lizards really pleases me. I wish I’d thot of that at the start.
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