ŷ������

Our disintegrating modern ethical cliff - hanging in a sheer drop over our grim future world in the Stand - will soon utterly collapse. Then what?

Well, you know, and I know, that Hell is Deep.

Should we heed pale Dante's warning and "give up hope, all you who enter in here?"

No. Because we're not there yet. Repentance's Window of Opportunity is still open!

The Tibetan Buddhists describe the Land of the Dead as a land in which all reference points are lost. We will soon know Nothing For Sure. Our pride, which had always given us our bearings, is now gone in a puff of smoke. No friends, no diversions.

You know, Sartre had it wrong - Hell is not other people - it is only our narrow, naked self under the Bardo's Bright Light. Where is forgiveness now?

Well, remember that puff of smoke?

This is Hell's - or Heaven's, depending on how we lived our life - Anteroom. You pays your money and you takes your chances. Life is tough, and then you die. The Bardo's bottom line.
***

But there's another option. We can now make the best of a bad situation. As King's band of fighters here do. "It is not too late to seek a better world!"
***

I read The Stand in the languid summer of 1980, in a paradisal resort getaway in Canada's Kawarthas. It was a gift to my girlfriend and me (was it intended as Fifth Business, as in the blockbuster novel? You betcha!) from my Mom. She had stayed here many times, and had relished its gastronomical cuisine.

You see, Mom was dying of terminal cancer - she knew it and we knew it. But she knew we were deeply in love, and she only wanted to see our two wedding bands before her exit! And she did - just before, in fact.

What had I packed in my luggage before we left the smog 'n stress of the city for this heaven on earth?

As much of the Stephen King oeuvre as I could carry! So it was to be the Perfect Storm...
***

You guys know by now I am an Aspie who refuses to read signals - but that vacation I read 'em all, in our rich near-neighbours' gestures. I became utterly antsy, and so dug deep into those novels in order to self-medicate. It worked.

And I've been in a state of simmering High Anxiety ever since, though now confidently medicated. But I remembered back then St. Paul's words - "marry or BURN."

That was Mom's Fifth Business. And it did the trick.
***

But now that we all face The Disaster on a daily basis, we know that its grim aftermath, as Stephen King says, is Anarchy. There are always sorrowful survivors who must face That New Disaster.

King says we will never be able, naturally, to go back to utopia.

So what then? Put on a perpetually glum face and sink deep into nothingness? Heaven forbid - for at that time all our preferred anodynes will be permanently out of stock - for all the stores will be boarded up.

No. Remember November 22, 1963?

Kennedy had just been gunned down. Anarchy loomed like a Death's Head.

The great W.H. Auden simply wrote:

Remembering his death
How we choose to live
Will decide its meaning.

So, fast forward again sixty years.

Now we're ALL burning, and soon must pay the piper.

Hell is murky. The Death's Head has appeared again.

Whatever will we do? Well, how we choose to act or not to act will decide the Disaster's meaning.

And when that time comes I know I'll be sure to make my STAND.

Will YOU?