Artist in Residence Quarantine Diaries, Episode 6

The Times, are they a-changing?

So here we all still are, still largely in we-ain’t-going-anywhere-just-yet mode – aside from the guys who apparently think that wielding an assault rifle on the steps of their state’s Capitol will somehow get them a haircut by a disposable barber whose survival in a pandemic is utterly irrelevant so long as the gun-toters get what THEY think they entitled to. An entirely different can of moldy worms, that, and a discussion for another time.
Most of us are trying hard to stand still, and wait while the disaster passes us by. But in the meantime, we may be standing still , but the world around us is still turning – and with it, history rolls forward… or does it…?
I mean, are we going into the future?
Or have we time-warped back into the 1960s?

Look at the “I need a haircut” crowd,  we have “long-haired hippies” or people who fear that they might be perceived as such so they take steps to ensure that they are very definitely not on the side of love and peace.
We have race riots in plethora of cities, rising over the death of a one-too-many black man at the hands of police ultra-violence, dying on video under the knee of an officer of the law pressing down on his neck.
We even had a Cape Canaveral space launch with humans again, after nine years. That, at least, gives me joy. They started “ten… nine… eight…” and I sobbed, watching from across the nation over here in the PNW. We were finally GOING BACK, if not to the moon than maybe a baby step towards Mars.
There’s bandanas being worn – admittedly as pro forma Covid masks, but still.
What next, a return of tie-dye, miniskirts and bell bottom trousers? Will we be going to San Francisco to wear flowers in our hair?
Are the times a-changing, or are we just circling back for another go round on a track we’ve run before? How many times does that need to be done?
Is the answer blowing in the wind?
I’m watching everything old become new again – they marched in Selma and now they’re marching again for more or less the same reasons all over again. There’s thousands and thousands of dead Americans, Vietnam then, Covid now.
Fires in the streets, there’s rockets going up into the black with human beings aboard…
Are we adrift in history? Or are we really just doomed to repeat it…?
~~~

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