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.
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And then people started dying right here in America but, heck, as long as the people are dying “somewhere else” it’s nothing to be concerned about. Anyways, it’s just those immoral, lazy, poor folk who live in big cities that are getting sick and dying, right?” Not the highly moral fine upstanding people like the people who live with us here in our little town of 6,978 souls in North Dakota. Well, I guess we’re not all fine upstanding people. Last Saturday I saw Steve, my neighbor two doors down stumbling around in his back yard around sunset. It sure looked to me like he was falling down drunk. Anyways, most of us here in our little town are fine upstanding people. This Covid stuff started in February and by April it still hasn’t magically gone away like I thought it would. Still, it doesn’t seem right to me that those damn Democrats in Washington DC are making out like this is a “Big Crisis” and are handing out our hard earned tax dollars like Halloween candy… Jesus, what’s wrong with our country? I ask you. But then my Aunt Ruth, who loves growing rutabagas and who lives two towns up the interstate catches that Corona virus and ends up in the ICU on a ventilator… hmmm. And then it’s my next door neighbor and my favorite barber who struggle with Covid-19. And then my grandfather who lives (I guess I should say 'lived') in one of those fancy Senior Living facilities dies just two days after his first Covid-19 symptoms appeared - a cough, in case you wondered. Yes, “The Pandemic” feels real now, but I really don’t want to wear a mask. Wearing a mask feels kinda stupid, or weak, or even unpatriotic, doesn't it? And I’m frustrated that I can’t go out with my friends or family to a restaurant. Or even bowling. Or even, for God’s sake, to a High School football game. What can I say? I guess some of us can't get past the idea that: “Denial is Good. Denial is comforting.” Maybe we’ll ALL handle the NEXT pandemic a little more effectively. I know I will. I’ve got a permanent stash of 200 rolls of toilet paper buried in a fairly waterproof cardboard box out in my back yard precisely 10 feet from our nice Sugar Maple in a direct line from where my next door neighbor parks his John Deere lawn tractor.... usually. Don’t tell me I’m not ready for the next pandemic. Or if you must tell me I'm not ready, that's fine too. Because I'll just deny it. ### END ###
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NOTES Note 1: Yes, it's true, Romans, at least well-to-do Romans very much enjoyed munching on Dormice for dinner, when properly prepared. The edible dormouse or fat dormouse (Glis glis) is a large dormouse and the only living species in the genus Glis, found in most of western Europe.[3] Its name comes from the Romans, who ate them as a delicacy. From Wikipedia Pizza was not invented until 1889 by Raffaele Esposito from Naples. Did you know that Pepperoni & Mushroom is the most often ordered Pizza? There are no known instances of anyone ordering Pizza with Dormice as a topping, but if they did they would probably want pineapple on their pizza too... those rats.
Note 2: Isn't it nice to see a reference to those fabulous Visigoths who sacked Rome back in 410 A.D.? And isn't it interesting and timely that in this picture the Visigoth is shown decapitating a statue? Just like people are doing to statues these days... amazing. Rather striking that clothing, apparently, was 'optional' for the Visigoths...hmmm. A few years after the Visigoths sacked Rome the Vandals did the same which I guess explains why Romans gave up bathing for hundreds of years – Bob Dylan describes the cause of this non-bathing behavior in one of his better songs: “The pump don't work 'cause the Vandals stole the handles.” Nietzsche's called his final theory of history “Eternal Recurrence” The concept of "eternal recurrence"––"the idea that all events in the world repeat themselves in the same sequence through an eternal series of cycles"––is central to the mature writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Old people think like that. Probably 'cause they've seen the same things happen over and over again.
♪ ...Do You Believe In Magic?... ♫ I do. Let's do something really magical and stop acting like a bunch of Darn Fools. Whaddaya Say? ### END NOTES ###
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