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I’m Living Through History
And it’s even less fun than it sounds
THIS SUMMER OF THE YEAR TWENTY TWENTY-FOUR of the Common Era, a summer of ominous extremes of climate and conflict, finds me living through history, at least so the news anchors tell me.
The implication is that I should be awe-struck and grateful for waking up in fear of what I’ll see on MSN, the quiet cappuccino-and-catastrophe moment that sets the tone for my day. Will it be monkey pox? New horrors in Palestine? A sniper on the roof? Canadian terrorists arrested mere hours before their planned atrocity?
Will the day end with cars floating down flooded Toronto highways, murder and mayhem in Britain, the hottest day on record, the slow death rattle of American democracy?
Now that I’ve experienced history, normal life, that smelling daisies — having mediocre sex — no matching socks boondoggle, seems so desperately lo-fi, I can barely drag myself from my encampment to the food bank for a single-serve plain yogurt and an expired muesli bar.
I want history that’s like a half-decade-long panic attack, or chronically-acute adult-onset asthma. I never want to stop gasping. Turning blue from stress is how I know I’m still alive, damn it.
