Child-like curiosity

SNL’s “What still works” cracks my imagination opened e.g. Congresswoman Green casual ice-breaking: ” would you like to have a gun”, yes, a gun, not gum…( a scene came to mind, that of “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest , toward the end, when our native hero tried to be social ‘ wanna a juicy fruit?'”).

We live in a world and at a time that a Q-anon Shaman, or at least, that who he thought he was, stood where a moment earlier, the US Vice-President had been ceremonially presiding over traditional Electoral Vote Certification.

Yet, it still works. Our sense of irony, that is. Our non-stop curiosity, about how our society is functioning.

We have had the basics taken care of: food, clothing, shelter…and soon, vaccines.

So we aspire to higher causes, like Christian Nationalism, like White Supremacy, like Winning in Space.

On Earth as it is in Heaven…..but let’s start with “our daily bread”…

We are thankful. We have the internet, the computing power and medical infrastructure to mobilize vaccines.

It still works.

Soon, we’ll be able to travel again, to explore new shores and strange customs.

Perhaps the pandemic is dealing us with more than a curve ball. It shakes things up, jolts us out of our comfort zone. To once again see things in new light, see the world with new possibilities, see people with more potentials (there are half a million people to be replaced in the US when it’s all over).

More jobs, more possibilities.

I am curious. Will it still work?

Can we still laugh at the absurdity of how people react, how people read-into things and how delusional our thoughts and fantasies are.

Isolation and confinement can drive people toward insanity e.g. no more holding the door, greeting strangers or shaking hands.

This pandemic has shown the invisible and small (nano) can take over the world, digital life over our real life.

As a child, I’d rather jump, run and even fight than sitting idle.

Yet after a year of self-isolation, I marry myself to laptops and online world. It’s there where I project my thoughts, hopes and fears. I learn to self-reinvent, to leave my digital “foot” prints behind. Once it’s hard to have access to world’s information. Now, it’s the opposite. And I am over-loaded with irrelevant machine-aided ads.

Still it works, my curiosity and complaints. Of not having enough (good information) and of having too much ( bad information).

It used to be the priest, the politician or the professor who mediates knowledge and truth. Now, it’s just the machine which stands between me and the world out there (ethernet). Hello! Is there anyone out there.

I am curious if it works. As in SNL about Tom Brady. About Gamestop and Piss stop. About a pack of gums and a load of guns. About a sha-man and Congress wo-man. About God, gun and government. About truth and lies, righteousness and sin. I am curious if we can still return to normal (whatever it is, it’s now a luxury).

I need to re-activate my child-like curiosity, to jump and run, to explore and make mistakes again. If curiosity works and if experience sticks, I need “skin my head and skin my knees” like a line in “Season in the Sun”…

A return to normalcy might be possible, but our dreams of returning to Eden are forever out of reach. That’s the parting point of myth and reality, past and present, future and possibilities. Just curious, if it still works.