Ship of Fools

Reading the morning news these days is a strange experience. It's kind of like the way one feels when a loved one has recently died. You wake up in the morning and sit down with your coffee and kind of realize all over again, piece by piece, that new realities prevail in the world. It was not a bad dream. This, in fact, has happened, and will continue happening from here on out. You scan through the stories, looking for a loophole in the narrative. You think that perhaps things are not really what they seem. Surely the world will soon regain its senses.

For a long while, through the impossible march of the months after November 2016, I found the news very upsetting, distracting really. But as time lumbers on, I begin to slump into a general sigh of apathy on the one hand and a raised brow of curiosity on the other. How strange this all seems, how alien! How is it that the actual shape of the world is so different from what I thought it to be? 

Things that once seemed outrageous now become commonplace. Predictable. Life has been speaking a different language all along, and I've only just now realized that I don't understand it. How to make sense of this gibberish? 

Ship of fools on a cruel sea, 
ship of fools sail away from me. 
It was later than I thought
when I first believed you.
Now I cannot share your laughter,
ship of fools. 
[lyrics from The Grateful Dead]