Outside are the sounds of an animal pawing at something. My yard is dark and looking into the neighbors yards brings only shadows and the distant idea of lives lived apart from my curiosity. But the sound is still there like a steadying baseline to remind me that the world is not quite right. Not tonight, or yesterday, or even tomorrow.
The world is shifting on its axis and spinning into the suppositions of doomsday prophecies and empty headed racists who want little more than to grow their bottom line or seek solace in the idea that people who they deem to be like themselves can bolster their bottom line and the ones of difference and permissiveness will be left behind.
We really haven’t drifted too much from the puritanical regime the Brits brought with them once they decided to trample the native tribes and take their land. In the end we have blips–glimpses of what an advanced human culture should look like–but we stray back into the game of capitalism and the idea of winning by making sure that nobody around us gets a leg up or gets more than we have.
Especially if they’re different.
Growls rise from the yard and I can see my cat stalking the high wall between my and the neighbors yard. The growls are not hers. There are two dogs across the brick wall and they are battling each other in half play and half dominance seeking splendor. She’s watching too, apparently drawn by the same sounds that drew me.
The dogs continue to play, the cat moves on, and the universe spins further and further out into emptiness.