Mark McNease On Topic: Crossfire Hurricane

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For all the times I said I would cheer when the day came, the indictment of Donald Trump did not feel celebratory. It felt like a sad day in a tawdry story that has no ending. Will they shoot to kill? Will they shoot at all? Will they ramp up their anti-trans hysteria, blaming the weakest, most vulnerable people they can still pummel while polite society remains glued to TikTok? Right-wing gadfly Ben Shapiro declares that trans people should be barred from owning guns. Not such a 2nd Amendment absolutist after all, is he?

I’m really an optimist. I think we live once, and only once, in our present incarnations. What happens when the lights go out, I don’t care and I don’t think about. I may stare awestruck at the silent void when I’m inches from it, but the whole “where do we go when we die” question has as much meaning for me as “is there a god?” It’s reported that when asked if god exists, Buddha replied with silence. I think that’s the perfect response: it exists if it matters to you that it exists.

A little bit heavy today? Meh. I’m on a mission to finish the books I’m writing, then write some more. Love the people I’m loving, then love some more. Find the pleasure in the irritating (like my beloved cat Wilma’s incessant yapping). See the good in good people, and recognize the evil in evil people. I’m not someone who thinks human beings are inherently good. I tend more to think of the species as parasitic, but playful. And at the best of times, we seem to be cave dwellers with smartphones and wifi, praying to rain gods and AR-15 gods and believing that somehow we can change our fate … inevitable extinction. Until then, live it up! Love it up. Laugh it up. And while we take many things seriously, never take ourselves too much that way. Life is a tragi-comedy, and awe-inspiring. We are as strange to the universe as the universe is to us.

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