Jed Wolf

Over the weekend there were QAnon demonstrators at the foot of St. Augustine’s beloved Bridge of Lions waving “Pizza gate was real!” signs at tourists.

Overwhelmed by vicious politics and counterpart kittens on social media, my need to remain informed is rotten and ready to be tossed. I will no longer allow the devil’s den of disease and cures – the train wreck of daily news – the masquerade called shopping – the millions suffering economic and otherwise despair nor the fires and floods of the apocalypse to abduct my attention.

But what if without trips to the gym, IKEA, gay campgrounds, vacations and visits from friends and family, the slack in my life becomes a serpent and squeezes what’s left of me out of my eye sockets? Can I continue selling swimming pools knowing full well how moderately refreshing they are and how little they do to distract one from contemporary life’s terror and chaos?

Hyper aware of faith in humanity unraveling faster and faster like a finite roll of toilet paper whirring in my ears, immediately after RGB’s passing, my annual bout with late summer vertigo returned with a vengeance. When I heard news of Sarin poison reaching the White House, I found myself staggering around my yard without alcohol.

I assumed the dizzying seesaw of bad and what I’d lately considered “good news” ignited my vertigo and I needed rest, but lying down made it worse. Uninclined to garden for fear of head planting and no longer working out because of COVID’s crush on my vanity, I’ve not been particularly hungry lately though regularly famished for things like raw beet’s.

Throughout my life, I’ve been reluctant to face the bottom of my barrel of external distractions, addictions and delusions – beneath the bitterness, blame, shame and rage and their pathetic antidotes – inside this collapsing feeling, the hanging onto and appreciation for distressing sensations and words which fail to describe them.

Yet in this moment of repose, within this vacancy, there’s a comforting internal emanation. I find relief pondering how it’s possible that in all of the English language and it’s attendant universe, there are only roughly 150 prepositions.