To be truly Radical is to make Hope Possible, rather than Despair Convincing.
Raymond Williams
I’ve overcome the blow, I’ve learned to take it well
I only wish my words could just convince myself
That it just wasn’t real but that’s not the way it feels
Jim Croce
Despair and Depression are not mutually exclusive, yet they are distinguishable. It’s normal to be depressed by a hopeless situation, where no good deeds go unpunished. Losing hope, despairing that the system that produces these results will change for the better may be realistic, but is it healthy?
It can rescue us from an untenable relationship, cauterize an amputated pattern, or simply surrender to the inevitable. Hope can trap us into voting for Change, tithing faithfully, obeying authority, working diligently until the irresistible promises fracture against an immovable object. Even the End of Timers had to tumble down from the scorched hills when Jesus didn’t show.
Depression is a psychological response to extreme stressors, and can be healed physically and mentally. Daily movement, a natural foods diet suited to individuals, supplements of D and niacinamide, social connections, talk and somatic therapies, microdosing of psychedelics, blissful ignorance and delusional beliefs. There’s a thousand ways to lift our mood, if we can drag it out of the Black Dog kennel for a daily walk.
Despair is existential. It can literally end life, certainly shorten longevity. Any informed person whatever their eschatological ideology, loses hope in the possibility of effective and sufficient actions to stave off disaster and destruction. Even Sisyphus couldn’t stop the downhill boulder. Obviously the system benefits the powerful and wealthy who have achieved their goals. Certainly the ancient bloodlines, upstart oligarchs, overseers and technocrats must be feeling cocky. Their plandemic rollout has gone splendidly by the books, even the resistance was scripted in, corralled and controlled.
A super majority submitted to the ever changing edicts and diktats of public health tyrants run amok. Covid deaths subsumed flu, pneumonia, heart attack, stroke and cancer deaths. If you stopped breathing in 2020, chances were good you’d be added to their total once they hooked you to the “shortage of ventilators.” Talking heads in white coats waved magic wands of whiplash science. The masses adored them and obeyed arduous and unrewarding rituals and commandments.
They flocked to the jabs, bum rushing the stage for communion injections, crushed and trampled underfoot. The dead and injured before two weeks after their last inoculation were blamed on the “pandemic of the unvaxxed”, or discounted entirely if falling outside that slit window.
Thought the booster shot requirement would end the acquiescence of flocks lining up for their one and done, or the double tap. Peak Davos prognosticators point to hatchlings of resistance to these plandemic lockdowns and imminent booster mandates. One can only hope, but I’m reminded of the long line of crushed and dying tiny sea turtles mistaking A1A street lights for the moon shining over the sea.
Beasts are most vicious when cornered. Time to think outside the box. Used reading to soften the square since I was a young child in a dramatic family. Not thespians, simply loud and unpredictable without television. An addiction for reading dampened the chaos. Encyclopedia Simac they called me. Cannabis cured total recall from texts, but allowed seeing around words into their inner resonance. Not Cabalistically, no numbers involved.
Psychedelics melted letters into phonemes without attachment to graphic symbols. Impossible to read while tripping. Rather read about psychedelics these days. Too much chaos to abandon that shield. Games, shows, chores, work, walking, talking with friends and family act as diversions from moods of depression and doctrines of despair, but reading is restful.
“In these times people don’t need to reason or ask questions. That is not the best way to understand the cosmic mind and Mother Father Earth, which has become tired from bearing the heavy, dense weight of human thinking.” a South American chakaruna, “a human bridge for people” with the San Pedro cactus communion, explained to Michael Pollard over WhatsApp.
Don Victor told him, “This pause we call the coronavirus is urgent. It is not a time to analyze or rationalize or to understand. It is a time to replenish and regenerate the absolute energy of the mind.” Pollard reported their electronic conversation in the mescaline section of his book, This is Your Mind on Plants.
He questions whether mescaline, a unique psychedelic in many ways, could help us navigate through the “serial catastrophes of this terrible year.” He quotes a psychologist describing trauma as “a sense of helplessness, when we’re assailed by unpredictable forces beyond our control. ‘It’s like we’re in an endless car ride with a drunk at the wheel.’ " I won’t spoil the curandero conclusion, it’s quite hopeful. Still not trippin’ for twelve hours.
That triggered a traumatic memory. Hitchhiking across Alligator Alley on a broiling summer day. I’d been dropped off at a bad spot in Everglades National Park for catching a ride. Drivers were flying by, bugs were circling, gators swirling? This was in the early 80’s when the Alley was a two lane, no divider death trap, with deeply dredged canals on either side. Killed more panthers than Seminole warrior rites.
A cowboy in an open bed Ranchero finally pulled over. Offered me a swig of Jack Daniels as he picked up speed. I was in no position to refuse, if only to keep his eyes on the road doing 85. The lap belt might save my ass, but one swerve would be the end of days. Cowboy said he was tired and asked me to take the wheel. Stuck to 65, until he said we’d never get there at that pace and demanded a lead foot to make up for lost time.
That Ranchero hugged the road at 105. Hundred and ten was sketchy, but that’s when he fell asleep, head on the door. I eased off the gas pedal and drove that baby at the posted speed limit, straight to the family house in Lauderdale. Parked in the shade of our ficus tree when he woke up, petrified. “God damn, you could have killed me.”
There, you feel better?