The Good Ship 2020

Art by David Lachapelle

The good ship 2020 has certainly run aground. Again. That's three times in as many months and we are not even a quarter way through. Remember the relief and trilling excitement as the clock struck midnight on new year's eve? Here comes the new decade and things are going to be different! people proclaimed into their festive kazoos.

Then came January, which felt like a hundred years war. In romped February with its smoke and mirrors as those in power scrambled to offset the month prior. Nothing to see here. Oh heyyy March, you pandemic. Anyone would think that our world had some serious changes to make.

Few listened to the astrologers, scientists or revolutionaries heralding what has been written in the stars / on the wall in big brash letters since 2012. Memo to earthlings and your toxic modernity: get thy shit together or die arguing about it on Facebook.

Was this a disguised cry to stockpile toilet paper?
Was it an invitation to continue to prioritise the economy over the earth?
Did you think claiming I'm alright Jack would keep the revolution from your shiny locked door?
Could ignoring the alarm bells and shoving your head where toilet paper usually goes mean they stopped ringing?
Is somebody (else) going to Do Something and make this all go away?

For the love of Endora, no. In fact the opposite has been true for quite some time. This rolling disaster mode is a standing invitation to operate outside the prescription that got us here, individually and collectively.

If nothing else you are realising what your life actually depends on. What you have the power to effect or to change. What is yours to look after as systems fail and certainty crashes. What you haven't done yet that you must. All that really truly matters.

Though they will try to tell you what to do and then shift it to suit their bidding, the curtain yanked back has revealed our world power structure to be deeply self interested and patently unfair. It will continue to chew its own arm off and freak everyone out as its death throes take hold. In isolation you yet have access to the vast body of knowledge human beings have amassed, that teaches you how to care for you and yours and those who cannot.

Use it or lose it.... in aisle three.


Words c. Kerrie Basha 2020