Sunday, 28 June 2020

On Clearance and Questions.

I began the process of throwing away my history today. One full refuse sack so far. It’s a drop in the ocean, but every journey has to start with a single step. I reasoned, you see, that my present is uncomfortable and what I can see of my future looks bleak, but clinging to dusty old memories was offering no compensation. All it offered was the poignancy of comparison, and what value is there in that? The future starts with every passing moment, so the future is all there is.

Besides, one of my most vivid memories is the business of clearing my mother’s house when she died in ’95. It was a tedious, tiring and depressing process which lasted several weeks of going over there for a few hours nearly every day, picking through the detritus of a person’s life and deciding how to dispose of it all by the various means possible. (I’ve even still got some of it.) I wouldn’t want to impose that sad legacy on whoever has the job of clearing my own detritus when the big day finally arrives.

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Being effectively confined to my house by the weight of circumstances at the moment, I decided to watch Schindler’s List again last night. I wondered whether the seeing of people in situations rather worse than mine might help raise my mood a little. It didn’t. It only augmented my perception of the depth to which the human animal will freely sink when naked self-interest is allowed free rein to ride roughshod over the virtues and finer values to which it could aspire.

*  *  *

And on that note, I have to mention America again. I’m sure I’m not alone in finding the prospect of the next presidential election a fascinating one (assuming Trump doesn’t find a way of having it cancelled.) I occasionally think of Trump, Biden and Pelosi, and am left wondering whether America is mature enough yet to accept that a woman with principles might run a country better than men driven solely by the pursuit of power. I can’t answer that one because my view is almost entirely determined by what I read in the media, and I’m not foolish enough to accept that what I read in the media is complete or even accurate.

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