Communing with the Living Dead

"I commune with the dead," says the priest, showing with his hand the books behind him, lying on the table. "I'm accustomed to their stories. Nothing surprises me. I can even honestly say that I prefer to listen to the dead than to the living." 

--The Books of Jacob, Olga Tokarczuk

So much of what comes to my mind these days, thoughts that in the past would have pressed me to speak, seems just too depressing and too pointless to merit the effort of utterance. I used to think it would mean something. I thought that if we all spoke out at once it would rattle the world to wakefulness. Instead, I am overwhelmed by the deaf and dull march into oblivion of the irretrievable days and months and years. Much of which we feared losing is lost, behind us now. I may as well listen to the dead than to the living. 

In reading Tokarczuk's prescient novel, one can hardly help but see a reflection in our own time of the mid 1600s, a time of chaos, division, violence, hatreds, poverty, greed, depravity, despair. Thus, the desperate hope of a savior. The arrival of a messiah then, a sudden rapture now. 

Even the most bizarre, most frightening thing can start to seem natural, familiar, when it becomes a part of the plan. 

All of the stories have already been told. Nothing surprises me anymore.