Surrealism has escaped the frame...
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| Eric Ginsburg, 2017 |
Imagine falling asleep before March 2020, and waking up to the world as it is today. You would think you were dreaming. As we all are…Today is a temporary and jarring altered reality within a long term altered reality that seems normal to us. If we want to end the dream we wake up.
Easy in principle, as stimuli start making contact again through our senses, bit by bit we return to the waking world. Sometimes the dream fights back, leaving us with doubt and fear that we are still shaking off even as we brew our morning libation. Eventually we get back to that which we are accustomed to perceiving as real. But what is our perception?
It has never been clearer how wide the range of individual perception is than in 2020. I have heard meditation master davidji describe conflict as being between 2 individuals, each in their own “dream.” Sometimes one person’s idea of reality condemns others, either individuals or, as we see so much these days, as groups. It’s one thing to revile gangs of armed neonazis and corrupt officials, but another to shun, or even wish suffering and death upon people who take off their masks outdoors, leave the house at all even if they MUST work, protest the police, vote one way or the other, are hesitant at this point to take the vaccine, or simply are poor. I’ve seen and heard it all. And most of it comes down to “us against them thinking,” which is at the core of prejudice, injustice and exploitation.
To wake up from “2020” ( and likely a chunk of 2021) we need to accept that much of what has risen to the surface was always there, and that these times have fostered an unprecedented opportunity to release what no longer serves us.
“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” -- Leonard Cohen
A different possible world is trying to show its merits and gifts through the cracks in the one we have been looking at, right now I think we all know, despite conditioning to follow what has been taught for decades, that we can’t afford to cover the cracks, shut out the light, and go back to sleep.
You can call it a war of worlds, but it’s really evolution, the only path to survival, versus resistance, the known (and lethal) pulling us away from the possible.
We do know that the only sort of wars we need to be fighting are against things like pathogens, pollution, and our own inertia regarding social and economic Justice across the globe. Embracing these realities will empower us. The blame game will bring us back to where we are, again and again and again.
The dream from which we have long needed to wake up is the one where we are standing against one another, with no belief in a common good that would not leave us out. The awakening must be to the reality that a better life is ours, and only ours, to breathe into being, one day at a time.
Dedicated to the memory of Rich Timperio, who knew how to bring people together with art, and poured his heart and soul into the community. The title of this story was inspired by his quirky annual extravaganza titles and taglines, my favorite being, “It’s All Good (Apocalypse Now)” Blessed be...
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