Corita Kent (Sister Mary Corita): fresh bread (1967)

Inscriptions and Marks:
Signed: l.r.: Corita
(not assigned): Printed text reads: Fresh bread, a secret agent / A jug of wine a loaf of bread and WOW / What kind of a revolution would it be if all the people in the whole world would sit around in a circle and eat together? [heart shape] / What you seek in vain for half your life, one day you come full upon, all the family at dinner. Thoreau

—-

"I prefer the quality only ignorance ever dispenses."

I've grown weary of the continuing anticipation, the fantasies pretending to qualify as policies, and the inescapable idiocy masquerading as stable genius. This will never become genius, regardless of how many unqualified commentators try to convince us. We will never be persuaded. If anybody does, we possess the closest thing to common sense anybody ever has. I'm not casting aspersions, but those who don't understand won't. It's just not in them. Whether through willful ignorance or chance, they were never invited to the dance. Yes, they hold grudges. They do not seek justice, but vengeance. They flee from decency, apparently the only toxic substance likely to do them in. I fear that too close an association might render me like them. I worry that even watching them so closely has been rendering me stupid.

Yet I do not want to miss any subtle shift in strategy. After almost a hundred days, I might concede that strategy seems to be beyond their capabilities. They successfully blunder, driven by nothing ever more strategic than whim. Anyone following along seeking predictive patterns might just as well park their van. They do not follow patterns more predictable than random, and the effort to identify cues to any upcoming event can thereby only prove to be a distraction. The paradox of such behavior might be found in this curious nature. To carefully attend might be no better than to completely ignore. It might prove worse, because if this world does run on attention, then this might mean that attending means they hold you in their grasp, compromising even the best of personal intentions. I've been feeling imprisoned within just such a grip.

I do not want to be uninformed, but it might be possible to be overly-informed, to know too much useless, senseless knowledge that smothers much of the joy and lightness out of an existence. It's high spring this morning, everything that can be in bloom is blooming. This was never a season for glooming, even when I lived West of The Mountains, where the Springs tended toward cool and foggy, a lightness suffused the space. April showers actually brought even more flowers in May, and every day held ever-expanding promise. The curse of this incumbent comes when he's closely attended to. Each day becomes gloomier than the previous, and each of us, then all of us, feels cursed rather than blessed by our fortunate existence. Much of whatever he does has always been little more than performance, apparently intended to get a rise out of his audience. I suspect he would shrivel into the evil presence he never wasn't if only he could be successfully starved of an audience.

I feel complicit, but the price of existence has always been some complicity. Feeling at ease is never easy, with guilt and obligation continually lapping nearby. Compared to the dopamine injections each fresh outrage induces, puttering in my garage might seem like a punishing indulgence, somehow the antithesis of freedom. Free choice to wander as I will seems like an indulgence when so much injustice threatens, yet threats were never equivalent to actual injustice. Must it necessarily be an indulgence to be us, rather than an us or a them, rather than an enemy or friend, instead of simply a citizen? While our self-saboteur-in-chief continues his confident self-destruction, might it be forgiven if I experienced a personal resurrection? I feel as though I was crucified on a double cross of dread. If not dead, almost as good as. I paid attention. I peeked at the destruction and felt myself turning into a pillar of salt. Methusela turned out to be anything but fetching to gaze upon before I felt myself turning to basalt. I nibbled at the apple of current event awareness and felt half entombed in some place shockingly similar to Gethsemane. My question is no longer how life might be after him, but might it be okay to have my life with him still present, given that he's unlikely to succeed and that he's well on his way to doing himself in, whether or not I pay close enough attention?

To be or not to be was not the actual question, for beingness was never an act of conscious volition. Beingness must be a given, freely given, and equally freely taken. It can unfortunately also be forsaken, left behind through simple inattention or even by paying too close attention to some alluring distraction. Doomscrolling is self-inflicted disappearance, dopamine-driven suspension of whole sensual experience. It's a tunnel where spring sunlight becomes an annoyance, real life impedes progress, and dread fills my head with dangerously attractive nothingness. I need a FreshStart, a reframe for my experience. I understand that I have zero influence over the contents of the headlines. I understand that people and forces far beyond my influence will determine the narrative arc of the details of our incumbent's inevitable self-destruction. He will surely successfully self-destruct, and there will be no shortage of tickets to his comeuppance. I will not be remiss if I miss much of the indictable performance. It might prove less poisonous to experience as history instead of as present. I prefer the quality only ignorance ever dispenses. Can I afford not to know long enough to experience this sweet April without the needless distractions? I'd better cope better than I have been coping, or I could lose whatever hope I still possess.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #CHope , #PureSchmaltz