Not All The News Is Bad
I need to hold off on my usual topics again, because there is an awful lot happening in my personal life and in the world. How many more major social/cultural/political events can we squeeze into one year, I wonder? Let’s just keep heaping on more, I say.
Will Elon Musk’s neuralink develop sentience and weaponize the entire internet against us?
Will UFOs finally break kayfabe and make open contact with humanity?
Will dolphins and whales form a coalition to declare war on Japan?
Will the monkeys escaping from laboratories begin the rise of the dawn of the start of the planet of the apes?
Will Tecumseh’s curse annihilate the current and/or future POTUS (pleeeaasssee!)?
At this point I’m pretty much ready for anything. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
As you may have seen on the social medias, I am engaged to a wonderful, magical Chilena named Dani Silva. It was a well-earned engagement, as we have lived together for almost a year, and been through a helluva lot in the time since we met.
Most of the first year that we were together we spent separated by 6000 miles. Then, shortly after being reunited in Chile, the Social Crisis began--the massive protest movement that just about shut down the whole country a couple of times. And then, while all of that was happening, the pandemic hit, and we’ve now spent 5.5 months social distancing in isolated towns.
That’s without mentioning the apartment hopping we’ve had to do, or all of the absurd complications that came with living in the crowded, rundown apartment in central Santiago, before the pandemic.
The sensation of time warping is getting so intense that it’s starting to give me vertigo. We spent two and a half months in that central Santiago location, but life there was so raucous and eventful that it felt more like six months.
Meanwhile, our three and half months at Cabana Kala was so simple and quiet that the whole thing slipped by in what felt like three weeks.
Similarly, the last two months here in Pichilemu have been so repetitive that I almost can’t remember any of it. It felt like one very pleasant, if somewhat boring, week of a working-vacation.
But what really makes the time warp so weird is how much has been happening externally. Yes my days are all the same, but holy fuck what the shit is going on in this world? My newsfeed’s infinite scroll has never before threatened to consume my whole brain the way it is now. No matter how deep I go, the news just keeps on going, proliferating at an unprecedented fever-pitch of horror and desperate hope.
Furthermore, much of the horror has been localized to my hometown, the place I was born and raised, the same city that was ranked among the very best to live in and raise a family in the US for many years.
But not all the news is bad, thank Buddha. Because this quiet little wooden box apartment, with its sprawling ocean sunset view, was the perfect place for Dani and I to reconnect with ourselves and each other. The vast blue expanse out the front door demands contemplation, meditation, and emotional openness. The stamping-beast sounds of surf are a constant reminder of the roll and crush and roll of all existence.
Plus there is the wind, the perpetual arctic screamer reminding us that we’re here on the edge of the world, the real, natural world where the spastic anxiety of human problems don’t matter any more than the problems of gulls, frogs, or stray dogs. The subtle signals of the ocean’s fell force telling us that life is most lively in sight of what threatens it, life is most lovely with a view of its cosmic insignificance.
Dani and I can contemplate these things as we watch the sun sink into the deep blue horizon, impatiently awaiting the legendary green flash. Dani has seen it twice now, I missed it both times, and only by a second or two. But we’ll keep watching, and there’s really nothing we’d rather do.
And it was this kind of mood that compelled me to finally propose to Daniela, out on the beach, surrounded by cloud castles changing colors, pink and purple and orange and blue. I had no ring, as my choice of day was somewhat impromptu, and because I hadn’t been within a hundred miles of a jewelry store in months. Thankfully, she agreed anyway.
We’ve been buzzing since then, anxious to plan the wedding but confounded at how to do so with the pandemic raging and our guests spread out over multiple continents. But that’s all part of the fun… right?
Alright I know that was a ramble, hope you didn’t mind! How are you handling the onslaught of current events? Are you staying sane? Are you warping through time? Is it still 2020? Let me know in the comments!
Peace and love,
Sir Gibsalot
