Presence of life

  

The smell of cut grass in September is much sadder than in June, but the colours of autumn are spectacular.  Who doesn’t love the sight of orange coloured trees against crisp blue-sky backgrounds in the mornings?  The air is cooler now, and the sun sets earlier every evening, and how beautiful the great oaks look in this season.

This week in Ireland, one of the three, male rotating Taoiseach announced our road map to 2021, but it felt to many of us like we’d been presented with the plans for a medieval garden maze instead.  In place of the five phases we had been working with since spring, we were introduced to five new levels.  Our objective is to go backwards towards level zero, rather than forwards towards to level five and we were shown pictures of stop signs and traffic lights to help us comprehend the metaphor.  More than a million Dubliners were told that we were definitely not on level two, three, or two and a bit, and as I type, we wait to be told where we are.

At this stage I feel like Eamon Ryan will never have his turn at being Taoiseach as we might all be dead before then, not from the virus you understand, but due to inconsistent messaging and general confusion.  Let’s see now, can I visit one household of six people, or is it six households of one?  Can six people visit me per visit or per week, and if one of them is very annoying; can I replace that person with someone I like better from a different household?  I can’t leave the city of Dublin unless I fly or sail or drive out, and I can’t leave the county, unless I do.

Every moment I fret about the virus is one I don’t fret about Brexit, so I should at least be thankful for that.  This was the week we heard that Boris’ oven ready Brexit Deal wasn’t quite as palatable as he may have suggested back in November pre-election.  In fact, now that he’s had a chance to skim through the bloody thing, it turns out it’s not very edible at all, and he’d really rather not keep to the terms he agreed, if that’s alright with everyone.  Some of us were less surprised than others that a Tory PM either lied in November or is lying now, but here we are with this, and there it is.  Mr Johnson may not be reading this week’s blog, but if he is, I have only two things to say to him:  Es scortum obscenus vilis.  Te futueo et caballum tuum.

I wish that media and friends would warn me when they are about to talk about Covid or Brexit so that I can listen and read if I want to or run away and hide if I don’t. 

“Warning:  short discussion in the group chat about COXIT for a bit, COXIT article up ahead, COXIT video and meme posted!  COXIT!  COXIT!  COXIT!”

I could decide if I wanted to engage further with the discourse or if I’d prefer to watch a short film about space exploration instead. Talking about astrophysics, were you following the news about Venus this week; quite exciting, no?  They found some phosphine gas in the clouds of Venus, which is evidence that there either used to be life on the planet or that there could be in the future.  It’s very earth-centric to imagine life on Venus, but I can’t stop thinking about the experiences of some of our nearest neighbours. 

I wonder if the Venusians were happy and content, or had words for emotions, or had language at all.  I like to think of them hiking up Mount Maxwell Montes, talking about the benefits of veganism, and planning for the October mid-term mini-break. Of course the heat would make holiday plans very difficult, so probably a lot of indoor activities for our friends.  Maybe they looked up in the sky at earth and laughed at the idea that there could be a presence of life here.  Or maybe they weren’t concerned with us at all and were more interested in Mars.  Or maybe their evolution hasn’t happened yet, and the phosphine gas needs to expand or contract, to jump start a big bang, to get them going.

I liked the fact that as soon as the gas was discovered the Russians claimed the planet as their own and the Vatican announced that God was everywhere, including there on Venus.  All the same, I like to think about the Venusians because Earthlings are getting on my nerves.

Obviously not all earthlings, but those who want to maximise their profits and refuse to accept that the conditions that turned this potentially manageable pandemic into a humanitarian disaster are the same conditions that are bad for us in general.  Greater resources in health, education, workers’ rights and housing not only stop the spread of the disease but are better for us all in the long run. 

It’s all so repetitive on this planet. 

Wasn’t Reagan’s actual election campaign slogan “Wealth not Health” and I’m so tired of spinning around and around on the same old axis.  Government after government show us that they don’t mind sacrificing the lives of the sick and the poor if it maximises profit for them, and that’s all that seems to matter here.  Some humans have forgotten that everything that was invented by us can be dismantled the same way, so let’s just start by getting rid of money and move on.  No more money, no more global debt, no more military spending, no more billionaires.

Money.

Poof.

Gone.

Vanished.

Evaporated like the lightest of dew, on the grass in autumn, on Venus. 

Isn’t that a nice thought (this week if it gets too much) of the dew on the grass, on Venus.

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