The pandemic, that ****, inimical plague enveloping our world. So it all started in China, or so they say, yet in what seems to me in a very short time, it has circled Earth. Really, that fast, and everywhere, even Okinawa? Moreover, does it not seem a tad morally "grostesque" that so many look to "profit" from the scourge? This is not the way I want our world to work. "Gee!' many will say. "The more corpses, the more money!" Life, any life, should never be predicated on monied worth. Life is sacred. It is not meant to be financially profitable. The indigenous peoples of Earth for the most part knew intuitively that human lives were not meant to be spent on the 103rd floor of some skyscrapper. They realized that all forms of life on Earth were inextricably intertwined, inter-connected. They realized profoundly that all are one. The way we have sectionalized politically our Earth into arbitary nations (over 200 now) is both ludicrous, as well as illusory. The wind, the waters--even the pandemic--do not recognize borders. The divisions of mankind have resulted, over millennia, in aggrandizement, which has inexorably lead to wars on top of wars on top of even more war. And what happens during wars? Millions and millions and millions of human beings have been murdered, a military pandemic of untold proportions. And what if we wanted to love instead of ****? You can't hug someone who is 6-to-10 feet away from you. You can't kiss the one you love with a mask over your face. But phamaceutical giants are all furiously trying to become the first to create a viable vaccine and thus make billions and billions. But that is not love--just the opposite. And what of all the poor human beings on Earth, so many of whom already have contracted the virus, or eventually will--how are they going to be able to pay for the vaccine? The coronavirus is not the only plague circling Earth. Uncaring has been doing the same it seems forever.
Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks
A graduate of Andover and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet, a novelist, and a human-rights advocate his entire adult life.
