Good Riddance

In my early formative years, family, friends and educators all despaired over my ambition to work professionally in the arts.

“You’ll be poor,” my friends said. And my teachers, guiding me through an enriched academic program, considered a career in the arts “a waste.”

What are families and teachers thinking now that the pandemic has eviscerated the entire cultural sector of its earned income I wonder. As Covid variants threaten all recovery planning, the future of the industries that ennoble us seems dire. 

I’ve been reading online articles from English speaking nations all over the world for insight. Recently, I came upon one that really stood out. It’s entitled Our Revels Now Are Ended: What the Pandemic Portends for the Performing Arts in America, by Joseph Horowitz, published in The American Scholar. Interested? Here’s a link.

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Yesterday afternoon the sky turned bright. There were high clouds and only moments of sunlight, but it brightened my spirits and so I took Sheba for a nice long forest walk.

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My move to this island startled my friends. They did not know what I was dealing with, living as I was with extreme anxiety, and I never betrayed any desire to leave the city I’d lived in my entire life. Some wondered how I’d cope without restaurants, theatres and concert halls—and the close proximity of my friends. But I surprised them and once they saw Pinecone Park, they understood. Many came to see the wisdom of my decision for anyone.

Now they, my urban friends, are doing without all they thought I’d miss by moving here. They can’t go to restaurants, movies or theatres, and they can’t visit their friends—at least not as they once did. And they live where exposure to the virus is far more likely than here where we’ve not yet had a case of Covid. It’s an irony I could never have imagined when I moved here.

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Guess what: It’s raining and cool. Worse: I saw headlines this morning about how fourteen states in the U.S. are proposing anti-LGBTQ legislation, that all but five GOP senators oppose Trump’s impeachment, that Golden Sachs has reduced the annual salary of its CEO by ten million to seventeen and a half million and that Trump is forming an organization to further his agenda. What a totally fucked up world!

I wonder: Do all elders wind up welcoming death out of exasperation with the intransigence of corruption and immorality in our societies? When I die, my final words may be “Good riddance!” 

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Meanwhile on Gabriola today, I’ll be “in” Korea and Japan (reading Pachinko, that is) and having lots of the thick, rich curry soup I made yesterday and following that up with chocolate chasers. And, of course, I’ll be walking Her Highness dressed head-to-foot in rubber/plastic.