As the World Turns...and turns

I take up my pen and go back to the time, only a year or so ago...when the world felt almost peaceful - except for the regions and corners of life where people insisted on wars. But somehow, they then seemed like another whole world away from me.

Now, however - that world of war looms and hovers on my doorstep - it glares at me through my computer screen and the news as a whole is filled with doom and gloom.

I feel like I have totally lost the ability to be myself...that I have awakened inside a kind of twilight zone. Am I the only one who feels like a drone made of malleable flesh - skin, bone and sinew which we once labeled humans - Like a robot with no actual purpose... I still manage to walk and stumble around pretending that everything is right with the skewered world in which we exist.

What has happened to our society in which we once had a modicum of happiness still existing! Why do we still behave like everything is normal - still copacetic and working in excellent order.

Do you need an example of what I mean?

Let's begin at the end of a normal work day. I plod home from the daily grind...do regular after work things - then I head to bed, wishing everyone a good night. I toss and turn, worrying about this that and the other, before finally, thankfully falling into a troubled sleep.

It is now morning and I wake up jaded, bleary-eyed and ready to tackle my normal routine...I take a wee or the other numbered thing, brush teeth, bathe, dress - I wish everyone a good morning....kiss, kiss ~ grab a slice of toast and a sip of tea or coffee while hurrying to the car, sometimes the bus or train.

My mind is unsettled, my nerves are grating - the routine is slowly killing me softly with its song of sameness. The news of the world is blaring from every rich-house, poor-house, coffeehouse and social media device in the land. The infernal noise can probably be transmitted into outer space, both on loud and silent frequencies.

The news if not good. One cannot escape the Cacophony of the harsh, jarring and unpleasant mixture of sounds and information of doom, often causing a deliberately awful tension and discomfort.

I am becoming frantic...I try to suppress the feeling of pressure building in my head - but it is growing like the limbs of a tree desperately reaching for the light of the sun. I am struggling to contain my sanity.

How must it feel to be God...or whomever one believes in or not believe in - To watch everyone behaving as if life is continuing at a normal pace...and not heading towards a precipice where it will all end really badly for the silly creatures of Earth.

I close my eyes, pretending to be God. I imagine what a moment in his shoes must look like, from the continuous observance of humanity. After eons and eons of watching his creations, being amused and amazed - but mostly bewildered and concerned... what must he be thinking.

God...musing to himself...

"I no longer believe my children to be capable of making sane decisions. I mean, one moment I think that they have turned the corner for the good of all mankind ~ but give them a minute and it all goes to Hell".

Or maybe its not like that at all. Maybe Shakespeare's King Lear's saying/phrase/quote is true after all...

"As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;/They kill us for their sport".

In King Lear, this line is spoken by Gloucester in Act 4, Scene 1, after he has been blinded by Cornwall and Regan. Gloucester, wandering the heath in despair, expresses a profound sense of helplessness and nihilism. He now rejects all religious and moral principles, believing that life is meaningless.

Gloucester's reflection highlights the vulnerability and powerlessness of humans in a world governed by indifferent or cruel higher powers, emphasizing the randomness of suffering and the fragility of justice.

Gloucester's observation that humans are like flies to wanton boys, killed by the gods for their sport, serves as a powerful metaphor for the frailty and vulnerability of mankind in the face of forces beyond human control or comprehension. This simile encapsulates the existential despair and sense of cosmic injustice that pervades the play and is so very akin to life today. It suggests that human suffering is arbitrary, meaningless, and inflicted by higher powers who are indifferent or even cruel.

(Unfortunately for us - boys and girls now kill each other for sport, not necessarily flies anymore.)

The quote reflects a world where justice is absent or illusory, and where both the good and the wicked suffer alike, undermining any belief in a moral or providential order.

Gloucester's words resonate with the broader themes of fate, the randomness of suffering, and the absence of absolute morality or transcendent values.

The play contrasts this bleak worldview with characters like Edgar, who maintain faith in divine justice, but ultimately leaves the audience with a sense of uncertainty and the unsettling possibility that humans are merely playthings of fate, powerless against the whims of the universe. This moment marks Gloucester's realization, shared by Lear, that all humans, regardless of their status or power, are fundamentally weak and exposed to the unpredictable cruelty of existence.

Were they wrong? For the quote still reflects modern human vulnerability and the seeming cruelty of fate (if indeed, fate it is) when left unchecked.

Humanity moves along blindly unaware of what awaits us. We are all behaving normally…and yet… the air feels as if it’s holding its breath, the ground groans with a patience we refuse to name, and every ordinary gesture seems to echo a little too long.

It is as though the world is waiting for us to notice the thing we keep stepping around, the thing that keeps adjusting its weight just outside the corner of our vision. The thing everyone pretends not to hear when it drags a slow fingertip, grating across the inside of the day.

People comment on the weather, compliment each other’s shoes, laugh at jokes that don’t quite land.

No one mentions the way conversations keep slipping half a beat out of sync, or how reflections in windows linger a moment too long before catching up.

But the birds...the birds have begun to circle in perfect, silent spirals, rehearsing for something they won’t be the ones to perform.

No one notices a dropped glass in a café. It shatters, but the sound arrives late, as though it had to travel through something thick and unseen.

Everyone nods politely, as if this delay were the most ordinary thing in the world.

And we move along, smiling, waving, hurrying children along...carrying groceries - careful not to look directly at the place where the air folds in on itself.

Careful not to acknowledge the shape that has begun to form in the fold of the universe.