Things to Come: How should one feel about this whole mess...?

I found this Jack Chick Tract on my way to work the other night and the title keeps bouncing around in my brain; "Things to Come?"

Who even knows anymore. 

The levels of uncertainty surrounding our current pandemic situation are so high we may as well be in the End Times. And who knows, maybe this is the first step towards just that. A grand reboot of our world. Nature has already taken notice; there have been reports going around of animals reclaiming and returning to places where they were once chased off by so-called civilization. Maybe we should remain an underground dwelling society of quarantined half-people, only emerging from our dwellings for food and toilet paper. 

A few days ago I had to take a trip into Manhattan to get a few things. What an eerie experience. I had joked around to wanting to do something like this earlier last month, but when I actually had a chance to experience it for myself it was just too heartbreaking. NYC is a ghost town. Giant ads and billboards are still flashing about, but there's no one there to see them. Weird. 

That day when I was in Manhattan I decided to walk from Penn Station to my destination instead of taking the subway. I thought maybe the trains would be running on a weird schedule, and I'm not sure how clean they might be right now when we're all trying to be so sanitized during this germaphobic time. 

My walk downtown was fairly brisk. There was very little traffic, and I counted seeing maybe less than 100 people while I was out. All my favorite locations were closed though; Forbidden Planet, Strands Bookstore, and other shops were closed down with letters on their doors expressing sadness but hope that they'll be up and running in no time. Seeing this really got me thinking about how different things will be after, and if, we survive this pandemic. 

What I mean is, the world is already so much different from when I was a kid. After 9/11, there was an explicit shift in the world. The internet changed, how news was presented to us as a medium changed, and the thin line between governance and authoritarianism definitely became more defined and noticeable. Even our civil liberties and way of life have been poisoned by a world of capitalism without any restraints (but the beginnings of that happened a few years before 9/11 so...). 

I just wonder how new horrors our nihilistic culture will breed. We already depend so much on the wealthy elite for the crumbs of survival, and now so many people are expecting them to bail us out. It's depressing and all too predictable of consumer culture. 

So far, food isn't scarce yet, and we can all still go out and get the essentials needed to survive. I've been using my Y2K Survival Book for simple planning and ideas on what to buy. My kitchen has never been as full of stuff like how it is currently. I'm actually kind of mystified by all the supplies I was able to get by not losing my mind and buying only exactly what I need. The last thing I want to do is inhibit the survival or even the creature comforts of someone else.

This whole thing could have gone so much better, and maybe thousands could have been saved if our so-called leaders weren't godless idiots. But that's what happens when idiots are voted into office; you get idiotic situations like we're in right now. I don't feel that there's a government on earth that took this situation seriously at all, and that is of course predictable. I don't even understand why people bother to pretend that any government official has our best interests at heart; they want us all dead. Well, maybe not all of us, just enough of us that maybe certain resources can be recuperated, and anyone who survives can continue paying taxes.

I remember hearing about this virus when I was in the Philippines back in January I think, so there was plenty of time to plan and prep for it. While I was in the middle of volunteering during all that volcano nonsense I had to go through, I remember there were people talking about how scary it could get, and when I left that country I let out a sigh of relief because I was leaving an active volcano and a killer virus! 

What's funny to me is how some people are joking that this "simulation" is out of whack and they'd like to return to the real world. This current situation IS the real world; a daily battle for survival. What we had before was a protective bubble where we could live a safe life of work, play, and consumption. 

Everyone is trying their best to stay positive during this time by treating it like how things were before, but maybe a lot more people should realize that this is how things are around the world, even when there's no pandemic going on; resources are low, politicians lie, people stab each other in the back, and every day you just wonder if you're going to make it through it all to live another day.  

Life is a lot more cruel than maybe you've ever considered because maybe all you do is live a patterned life and you've just never noticed how rotten it can all be. 

It would be wonderful if we could just quarantine the whole world for a while and just let this virus rot away, but I don't know if that would help. There's no land in sight, so to speak. I feel like this journey is just starting and we may still have a long way to go. It's scary actually, and maybe we should be treating this pandemic experience with more reverence. 

At this point, just try and make peace with it all. Seriously. Just take a moment to breathe it all in, take what precautions you can, be careful, and don't be afraid to tell your friends and family how much you love and care for them.With idiots at the helm guiding this ship towards an iceberg that I hope we never hit, that's really all we can do. If you can, stay indoors. If you're an essential worker (like I am) don't take any stupid chances. 

Everything might get better, but live everyday like they won't. 

A New Cosmology

So, being from the Lower East Side (LES), I've been in a sad position where I've witnessed almost first hand the destruction of many beautiful works of art, murals, and even buildings, for the sake of so-called progress. It's really just gentrification. The landowners/building owners just want us locals out of the way so they can bring in out-of-towners and charge them triple or more what we pay for rent. It's a sad state to be in really. A great deal of my hometown was built by artists, musicians, and blue collar workers. In a sense, I can see where they paved the way for the current crop of high-end fashion shops, owned by avant garde designers, but at the same time I doubt this is the world any of us really wanted.

I grew up in the 1990's, which means a lot depending on your perspective, but a big part of my personal culture was this idea of selling-out being was one of the worst possible things you could do. These days though, with YouTube culture being what it is, everyone really wants to sell-out. The world has gone through a sad change I suppose, but I don't want to be too hard on anyone. We all need to make money, and ad revenue is easy money I guess. Even I've been putting up ads on my blogs for a few cents. 

So, the world has changed, but there should still be some sort of effort to preserve the good stuff that surrounds us. Art especially I feel. So, for example, there's this building I've walked by my entire life that has had a reproduction of "The Creation of Adam"/"Birth of Man", but in recent years it's been fading away. 

There's construction going on all around the LES and I'm dreading this is going to be one of those works of art that will be lost. Not to mention the "ghost ad" that is still visible on the side of the building. Although I would love both to be preserved as a way to really take in the history of NYC, I know that they'll both be torn down and lost.

Then again it could just be me. In increments, nostalgia can be a beautiful and wistful emotion. Usually though, it's an addictive poison, like tobacco or something. Should I really concern myself with these things going away, or should I just be happy I was fortunate enough to experience them in my lifetime? Probably the latter. 

I really don't need anything I've experienced to be recreated again. That initial sensation of my witnessing them for the first time has already ignited my love for them. Works of art don't really belong to their creators once they're out in the world. They become toys for the fans to play with. Sometimes I worry that it's too, too common for the initial intent of the art to get lost because of poor interpretations of that art. 

I like old things. I like a lot of new things too. But in a way, I feel like there's enough media and art in my mind to keep me going for the rest of my life. I don't really seek out anything new, not like I used to anyway, so I end up living in the past due to my own nature. I will always prefer the older Godzilla films (for example), and even if there are even greater Godzilla films in the future, my heart will always belong to the ones I've already watched. The same goes for anime. 

I will say though that modern cartoons and new film franchises keep me interested. I grew up in an era where cartoons weren't very deep with their stories, so there wasn't a need for a final episode usually (although we all wished for one). And the movie landscape right now is just in a weird place and has been in a weird place ever since the Marvel Cinematic Universe took off. 

In any case, my main point is that we have to let go of old things so new things can be born. Even if those new things are terrible. We have to archive the culture we cherish, so that they will stay pristine. We can't just needlessly wish that artists keep making the same thing over, and over again, hoping to get high off of nostalgia all the time. What kind of life is that? That's a step away from insanity. Do you really want to see new takes on old ideas all the time? Or, would you rather see new ideas? I mean, how many Spider-Man and Batman movies do we need??? I'm tired of them. I don't care about them anymore. I'll watch the older films, but I don't feel any sort of excitement for any future films. And that's fine. 

There has to be a self-imposed balance with nostalgia. Let artists create what they like, and don't get suckered into newer versions of old things. Some of it will be great, but it will usually be terrible, but hopefully have some redeeming qualities. 

Whatever replaces these old buildings in LES, I'm sure, will be ugly as shit. All the newer buildings that have come up in the past decade have been terrible, and they mean the end of old New York. Maybe in a larger cosmic sense, that's okay. Cities are meant to be paved over, and people are meant to be migratory. I don't want to leave NYC, but one day I'm sure this place will no longer feel like home to me. 

Who knows.