I'm sitting around the Post Office with a blank mind.

This isn't good, because I'm supposed to be writing this column and my mind is, as I said, blank. This wouldn't be a bad thing if I were in a Quaker meeting. Oh, no. Having a still mind would be just what was required at Arch Street Meetinghouse. Of course, an eighteen-year-old Ben Franklin got such a still mind at Arch Street Meetinghouse that he fell asleep. They forgave him: he'd just walked all the way from Boston to Philadelphia.

Worse than having a blank mind, I'm kind of achy and out-of-sorts. I wasn't like that yesterday, even though the weather was just as cold as it is today. Also, I woke up to snow on the ground yesterday. It's too early for snow, I thought. Oh, well, gone now. Yesterday afternoon, I felt fine. But then I went to the doctor's for the semiannual checkup and got not one, but two vaccinations. Now both my arms are sore and I feel like I have the 'flu. I don't have the 'flu. That's what the injections are designed to prevent. But I don't feel great.

I suppose my mind could be blanking, too, in order to give itself a rest from worrying about every single person on the planet right now. Why should we worry? Let us make a list.

• Wars and rumours of wars: According to the Council on Foreign Relations, a US 'think tank' that's more than 100 years old, there are 32 wars going on right now. That's 32 too many.
• Hunger: The World Food Program says 350 million people are starving. That's totally unnecessary. We could feed everybody if we stopped fighting each other long enough.
• Disease: Check out the Centers for Disease Control for an international list of things to worry about.
• Climate: The UN Secretary-General says, 'The climate emergency is a race we are losing, but it is a race we can win.' That's not going to be true if people keep dithering.

And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

Revelation 6:2

I guess you've noticed we have pretty much got the Four Horsemen there. It makes sense that, with all of that going on, the brain sometimes just.shuts.down. From frustration and a sense of helplessness.

Last night, I finished watching The Fall of the House of Usher, the 8-hour miniseries by Mike Flanagan and his excellent repertory company. Nothing like a little Edgar Allen Poe for your Halloween season, right? It's cozy, it's fun, it has nothing to do with reality. . .

Oh, well. It's actually about a brother-and-sister team who take over a pharmaceutical company, market an opioid, and kill millions of people. The supernatural being who explains the consequences to them expresses her admiration for their enterprise in generating death on such a massive scale. It's a magnificent piece of work, this miniseries: timely, thoughtful, and at the same time a tour-de-force appreciation of Poe's work.

Remember what I said a few weeks back about why we watch science fiction? The same can go for horror. You can use it to grab people's attention and talk about pressing issues.

Of course, most of what you say will go right over their heads.

The reviews are full of raves about how wonderfully clever it all is. How many Poe references the reviewer spotted, which made them feel well-educated. About how good those jump scares are. There are passing references to the theme, but hardly anybody is interested other than to imply that yeah, it's about the Sackler Family, yadda yadda.

Rolling Stone said, 'Late in the series, Madeline delivers a monologue that's Flanagan's ambitious attempt to offer a sweeping commentary on late-stage capitalism, modern politics, and the fragile state of our world. On paper, it seems far too ambitious, but McDonnell absolutely kills it.'

So I guess it's okay to draw our attention to what is destroying the world, as long as an actor can 'absolutely kill' the dialogue.

What that dialogue that Ms McDonnell 'killed' actually said was that ordinary people bear some of the blame for the state of the world because they let the money-grubbing power brokers get away with it. Because they crave the poisons they are selling. Because they acquiesce in the destruction of the world. I found that far more chilling than yet another jump scare with CGI monsters.

My only complaint about the series was that Flanagan didn't end with the acknowledgement that Edgar Allen Poe, of all people, would have known what he was talking about. They missed my favourite quote, which could have summed up the whole thing:

While the angels, all pallid and wan,

Uprising, unveiling, affirm

That the play is the tragedy, 'Man,'

And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.

So that's why my mind is blank on a cold and sunny day.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

13.11.23 Front Page

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