Do You Believe In Magic?

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Do you Believe in Magic? By rscholz@comcast.net OK, it’s 410 AD, you live in Rome and it’s summertime: August 24th to be exact. Alaric and the Visigoths – a tough bunch for sure - are just outside the city threatening to attack. But no one has successfully attacked Rome for 800 years so you feel pretty safe while you munch on a Dormouse for dinner which, unfortunately is not cooked quite to your liking. You're thinking that it sure would be nice if someone would invent pizza. But that won't happen for more than 1400 years. Turns out, you should have been nicer to your slaves because tonight while you are sleeping they are going to open that Big Gate to Rome allowing Alaric and the Visigoths to waltz right in and sack Rome, bigly. You may think you live in Rome, but you’re really living in denial and the shit’s about to hit the fan. Remember when Genghis Khan and his Mongol horde appeared on the horizon? My guess is that you and your buddies in your little central Asian village had no idea that your biggest problem this year was probably not going to be the lack of rain resulting in a poor wheat crop. Once upon a time, the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria were barely visible specks where the sea meets the sky. Do you think the Natives had any idea that a guy in a funny hat was about to totally destroy their culture and just for grins and giggles he'd throw in a side order of smallpox? And nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, right? Horror on the horizon is not something most of us handle well. We all have bad thoughts about bad things that might happen. It's easy to imagine that the plane you are boarding could crash in a corn field during takeoff. It's easy to imagine that the little white bump on your lip is the beginning of a cancerous growth. It's easy to imagine that some drunk or distracted driver will run a red light and broadside your butt to oblivion. But, even though these catastrophes are easy to imagine, most of them don't happen to most of us, thank God. Not taking your imagination too seriously is a sign of mental health. Denial is Good. Denial is comforting. Except when it is the worst mistake you could possibly make like it was for those central Asian villagers, the Romans in 410 AD, the Natives who first saw those three little ships on the horizon and the rest of us who believe Covid-19 is somebody else's problem. [article in Damifino.history.com] Simon Stryker of Littletown North Dakota stopped scrolling through the web article he was reading and thought about the line, 'Horror on the horizon is not something most of us handle well'. Hmmm...that sounds pretty true. At first, Covid-19 was just a dark cloud on our horizon and not really of much concern. Hey, those Chinese sure eat strange things, don't they? Who eats bats?...for God's sake! Do they put hot sauce on them like we put hot sauce on Buffalo wings? Eating bats, that's really weird. No wonder they catch god-awful diseases.

11/20/20

DoYouBelieveInMagic_6

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rscholz@comcast.net


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