The Weird Times:
First Issue: May 18, 2020
Welcome to The Weird Times: Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Space
We are all in this together. We are all going to have to learn how to remake our world, our dreams, our way of being on the earth. Together.
We are living in a powerfully new Dream Time.
Here in The Weird Times, dreams live. Messages are received from unrecognized places. New stories are told. Lives unfold.
—David
A brief introduction to the The Weird Times —
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here”
—William Shakespeare
These are weird times and weird times call for a full-on batshit response.
So let’s have at it.
Virus arrives as harbinger, messenger, carrying a painful message:
Biology is absolute.
Bios / sphere.
Change is the very nature of the complex universe we project into space and time, belief and desire, and that in turn projects itself upon us.
Everything stops for a moment. Such a brief moment. A moment to see one’s self with some bit of clarity.
We can feel that it’s time to rethink, to admit what we have secretly worried all this time, had hoped would not be true.
No more pimping unfettered economic growth.
It won’t work.
There are better ideas. There are always better ideas.
But despite all the logic and intelligence we can and will apply, because we must, right now, we are inside a pandemic maze. How long can we go without touching, without feeling what it is to be human?
How do we find a path to the outside?
Or is it the other side? The other side of what?
From inside the maze, truly inside, inside ourselves, we can, we must take this opportunity to realize that we have completed screwed up – earth itself is demanding we stop. Not just slow down. The virus has a voice:
Stop. This. Shit. Now.
Isn’t this pandemic actually all about change?
We have not been able to make big, meaningful, positive change in the way we live on the planet. Humans do not generally think enough about the ramifications of our collective actions. We always end up living the consequences.
Biology. Physics. Cosmology.
Virus is a reminder, an early warning, and a painful one, that we must learn what it really means to “do no harm.”
Do we believe that we are capable of CHANGE?
We better be.
All of this is obviously a bigger crisis than any one of us can deal with — which is, after all, part of the problem itself, and our biggest challenge as a species.
What we do next really matters. But with so many unknowns, it is difficult for us to know what to do. We must trust that guides will appear. Magicians, fools, spirits, poets, and dancers will reveal the truth inside the truth of what we see and feel. Truth-telling leaders will emerge. The false faces of hopelessness, blame, anger and resentment will be exposed.
So this “Weird Times” thing might not get us to an actual epiphany - but maybe can help us get through the end of the beginning —
before we get to the beginning of the End.
“Hopes are Shy Birds flying at a great distance seldom reached by the best of Guns”
—James Audubon
Annabel Lee:
Sunday morning sequestered in America
I dreamed I saw the president.
He was walking through the streets
of Pittsfield, Mass.
There was no one out.
Everyone was at home
hungry and worried
about how they were going to
pay their rent.
My twin cousin came running up
to ask me how I’m doing.
I knew she wanted to know
who I wanted
to be our next president.
I was thinking about
the president right in front of us.
We walked through a grove of trees.
No one had been there in a long time.
There were a lot of dead branches
and the ground was littered
with debris.
We came out on to an ugly
Pittsfield plaza:
all concrete and empty
office buildings.
I shouted out, “People are
dying. Everyone I know
knows someone who’s dead.”
Secret service men appeared.
They surrounded the president.
“It’s your fault,” I shouted.
“You knew this was happening.
You knew more than we did.
You didn’t tell us anything.
We weren’t prepared.
You could have protected us.
And you aren’t helping now:
everything you do and say
causes more people to die.”
His big shiny van was
Waiting. They all got in.
He’d heard me.
Night before last
I dreamed I saw Bob Dylan.
He was prancing onto the stage
like Mick Jagger.
The crowd went wild.
It was being televised.
I was in the audience.
Bruce Springsteen was on the
stage already: Bruce stepped away.
Dylan had arrived.
The master would sing the truth.
When I woke up
I made a phone call
to a loyal Dylanologist.
He told me Bob Dylan had released
his first new song in 8 years:
Murder Most Foul.
I listened to it all day long.
I wept because
the master was singing the truth.
A long time ago I dreamed
I saw the president.
Only it wasn’t a dream.
The president was killed.
He’d been shot riding
in a Lincoln Continental convertible
through the streets of Dallas.
I saw it on TV.
First he was alive and then he was dead.
And at 2:38 the next president
was sworn in
standing in an airplane.
It was a magic trick,
just like Dylan said.
The rain is falling.
We knew it would.
In 3 days comes April:
the cruelest month.
The first day is for fools.
We are all fools and we wonder
why is this happening to me?
What did I do to deserve this?
What debts did I have to pay?
29 March 2020
two and a half minutes
Thanks for reading with us!
The Weird Times is a weekly newsletter published by David Wilk.
More “news,” stories, explorations and phantasmagoria will be posted every week until further notice.
The next “issue” will include work by Richard Grossinger, Summer Brenner, Miggs Burroughs, and others.
If you are so moved, you can listen to my podcast interviews with writers and publishing folks at Writerscast.com, Stitcher, iTunes and other podcast sites.
Stay safe. Keep dreaming.
Comments, questions, disagreements, all are welcome.