New Year

2020-2021

Begin Again

The tick of a clock

the ring of a bell

the gasp and sigh of a ventilator

the mask on a face

zooming with colleagues

family and friends

listening breathing uncertainty

violence disbelief and fear

366 days to spin and slow dance

our way

around the sun

only to arrive

at where we may begin again

The plunge of vaccinating needles

the need to be whole

new ways to love and work

together in

bearing such loss

taking responsibility

picking up the joyful burden

listening breathing creation

belief in helping healing learning

366 days to spin and slow dance

our way

around the sun

only to arrive

at where we may begin

again

by Judi Bachrach

Winter Solstice

The Solstice is upon us. Here we have the shortest day and longest night, and in the Southern Hemisphere, the opposite. It is another opportunity to remember humility as we are such a small part of the cosmic dance. A time for reflection of changes and anticipation of a new more hopeful year. May we find our place of strength and wholeness.

I include the poems (the second one is a chant) that were used in the Winter Solstice program on Thursday night shown on our in-house TV channel. I was humbled to be a small part of an hour long sharing of Kendal residents who recited poetry, sang songs, played a piano, clarinet, viola trio, a harpsichord piece, clarinet duets, string ensembles, all on the theme of darkness into light conceived and narrated by our talented Master of Ceremonies. The audio visual man became a videographer, elegantly blending all of these prerecorded contributions into an elegant whole using Rebecca Cordozo’s nature slides as they emerged and faded while we listened,

Beauteous Dark

I crave the dark

my gaze slides inward

beneath the fluttering curtains of day

oceans of sound cease

to pour into my seashell ears

my powers of speech

lie nestled within my sheltering jaw

In that beauteous dark

my breath expands

a small sliver of a new moon

curves its way between my lips

I am

constant as the moon

appearing and disappearing

waxing and waning

silently reflecting the light

I draw SO CLOSE

That my gravity alone

changes the tides on Earth

In the Dark Before the Dawn

In the dark

before the dawn

when I’m wandering all alone

may I search for

may I find

a light to guide me home

hold to that light

through the long night

until my eyes

bless the sunrise

In the dark

before the dawn

when we’re wandering 

all alone

may we search for

may we find

a light to guide us home

hold to that light

through the long night

until our eyes

bless the sunrise

Morning After Winter Solstice

The silent dawn

may be draped in snow

sunstruck into crystalline radiance

leaving tracks of those who

walked

before us

If I could paint

I would brush the snow

a gray shade of lavender

beneath the trees

blue behind the buildings

gold in the clearing

If I could sing

I would give voice to arias

of slender winter birds

icing over the ponds

the cushioning crunch of snow

beneath my boots

If I could write as simply as the

four-leggeds

the muskrat journal would read,

“I slide down the bank into cold waters”

or in squirrel script,

“I leapt here onto the tree before you”

or in deer tongue,

“We grazed branch tips before moving

on”

I would paint and sing and write

I am here

I breathe

I smell

I see

I listen

I taste

I touch the dawn

Ah!

Cassandra Speaks

Photo of Snow in the Woods by Rebecca Cardozo

I have been busy writing songs here and there. I include this one even though it was unpleasant to write and even harder to sing among my friends. I was trying to get inside the head of people who are dying of the Corona virus but who disbelieve it even exists. These are my fellow Americans, and many are my neighbors here in Ohio. The melody is a waltz tempo and nothing memorable, but the words of the song insisted their way into writing, so here it is.

Ballad of Karalee by Judi Bachrach 11/12/20

Karalee has died and we’ll never know why.

The doctors and nurses they lied, and they lied

Said it wasn’t pneumonia or even the flu

They said it was Covid and that can’t be true

Ch: Karalee, oh Karalee

What they did was so wrong

One day we’ll stand together

Right where we belong

When she couldn’t breathe, I knew it was cancer

Just like my old man but they gave the wrong answer

Their machine wasn’t helping, they wouldn’t let me in

This country has failed us by God, it’s a sin

Ch:

I hate the blue liberals they lie every day

Now they cheated the one man who could make them all pay

It’s my right to be free, I’ll never wear a damn mask

I’ll fight for my rights it’s my God given task

Ch:

Karalee don’t you worry, don’t think they have won

This war is not over its barely begun

Me and our sons are still standing by

Won’t live under these cheaters we’d all rather die

Ch:

Well, I’m finished with crying it won’t help a damn

I’m tired of talking to whoever I can

I think I’ll lie down I’m so tired today

I wish all this coughing would just go away

Ch: Karalee, oh Karalee

What they did was so wrong

One day we’ll stand together

Right where we belong

To clear the air of my heartbreak while inviting my honest introspection of firmly held convictions that I hold sacred, I am offering a book that I recently read for your consideration.

Cassandra Speaks is a new book by Elizabeth Lesser. She is a well-known best-selling feminist and spiritual author. In full disclosure, she is also a friend and our paths have intertwined in many ways over the years. First as parents waiting for the school bus with our children, and later she included my story of living with MS and a child with ASD in a chapter of her book, Broken Open. She was there when my husband was in the last few days of his life, bringing a bouquet of tulips and a folder of beautiful classic poems on death. (She had recently lost her own sister to cancer which she documents in her book, Marrow: Love, Loss, and What Matters Most.) She has presented TED talks and is a leader and co-founder of the Omega Institute in upstate NY. She is one of Oprah’s top awakened 100 Soul Saver people in the world.

Her new book, subtitled, “When women are the storytellers the human history changes.”, is just as I know her to be- wise, clear, Inspiring and balanced. I was informed and moved by the way she frames the historical slant on disenfranchising women. She offers practical ways to evoke lasting change and challenged me to discover how I still inadvertently perpetuate stereotypical demands on both on myself and the men in my life. It is a refreshing and deeply needed discourse I recommend to all. I am gifting it to my daughter (not a secret, she knows) and women and men of all ages and stages in life will be moved by her beautiful words. It is an added personal gift to know her family as she references her own journey in understanding her place in the world.

Healing and hope accompany us into the new year. I am soon spending two weeks with my daughter’s family and I have only to think of my one-year-old grandson (even though at times he is as cranky as only a teething toddler can be) to know there is joy to be found in this troubled world. I will gladly return to Kendal for my two-week quarantine and who knows, living as I do in an assisted living facility, I may come home to my first Covid19 vaccination!

Giving Thanks

Diary 11/24/20

I was thinking about gratitude as I often do. This season especially requires a deeper look in the face of what we have lost. I am grateful that my family remains perfectly well despite one positive Covid test result among us that canceled our “safe as possible” gathering for the holidays. I have suggested to past clients that they keep a Gratitude Jar for the year, writing down each incident that stands out, storing them all to reread on January first. Or to write down at least one thing you are grateful for every day for a week or a month. It is a wonderful practice. If you are as good as I am at envisioning the worst, as if a ‘superstition of pessimism’ can control the future, then it is a practical way to reroute your focus to looking instead at all of the things you are fortunate to experience in your life.

I am reminded of my own revelation of the unexpected gratitude that poured into me after the gripping grief at my husband’s death. Living as I do in a continuing care retirement community, death will claim some of us over the course of a year. On Sunday, we had a beautifully prerecorded memorial for all seventeen people who had left us without the usual in-person caring circle of family and friends from both within and outside of Kendal. We would have listened, told stories, and shared time with children and grandchildren to honor each life that had departed. It has been a unique Kendal tradition since its founding.

Yesterday’s skilled collaboration of histories, photos, and music was a tribute to the gifted adaptation of a memorial service in these times. As one community leader said in the presentation, “We wish we had known of their amazing history before they died. But truthfully, we didn’t because we knew them as the amazing people they were as active members of Kendal, and not for who they were before they came.”

The gratitude that filled me after processing my initial grief as a widow, came when the focus shifted naturally to the abundant riches my husband and I had shared and the evident fruits of our long life together. Missing him and our family holiday events touch me today, but they do not take center stage. My personal list of gratitude notes from last week include:

Thanks for my family and new and old friends.

Thanks for the cyber connections that have blossomed during our separations, including taking classes I could otherwise not have physically attended.

Thanks for the fact that I am not struggling for my daily survival as millions do but have the luxury of seeing my life and spiritual practice as one.

There are so many ways to show my gratitude and I have the rest of my life to do so.

Grief and Gratitude

Grief and Gratitude walked hand in hand

between the sand dunes

down to the beach

The sun just above the horizon

the sea was calm

the tide was slowly rising

They passed a young couple

and caught waves of

Gratitude for their new love

blind as yet to Grief

new rays glowing in their eyes

The wet packed sand

firm beneath their soles

leading them on and on

past so many human

pleasures and pains

the heat of our star

upon their heads

cool waters

washing over and over their feet

A thoughtful mother watched

her younger daughter squeal in outraged Grief

when the highest wave flooded

her sandy creation

the older brother smirking on higher ground

anticipating relentless change

the mother hoping

they would also come to know Gratitude

for this interlude of pleasure

and sleep on the way back

her husband packing up the car

for their inevitable sad return

Grief and Gratitude walked on and on

turned to face the setting sun

skirting rocks and seaweed

gulls watching from above

breezes carrying the day into night

A white-haired man, sitting alone

reaching for the last of his six-pack

the bitter taste of Grief and rage

alone without her for the rest of his life

he could not see Gratitude

the sunset glaring in his eyes

Grief and Gratitude

always linked

in silent embrace

resting on the shores of Home

walking with us

all of our days and nights

11/24/20 Judi Bachrach

Plan

Diary 11/19/20

Plan: Derived from the noun Plan in Old French meaning diagram or drawing as for a garden or building. That was likely derived from the Latin adjective Planus meaning a flat, even plane.

Most of the time we are consciously or unconsciously busy making plans. What am I doing today? What am I wearing? What am I eating? Who am I interacting with? What am I doing on the weekend? We have impulses, desires, and thoughts, and then take step by step actions to bring our plans to fruition. We start with an even plane and build on top of that.

We are not used to considering that even the simplest of our plans now must be seen as a potential life or death issue. What we used to do has become interwoven with a new reality of the silent, invisible, and potentially deadly virus that is wreaking havoc on our lives. Where we got our food, where we used to buy our shoes, who cares for our children, who we used to hang out and work with, and how and where we found our relaxation and pleasures have all been charged with being directly responsible to our own health and that of others. Our planning skills are being tested over and over as the small daily decisions we make may mean having to trust others or having them trust us in order to be safe.

My family made plans to be together for Thanksgiving and for my older daughter’s baby celebrating his first birthday (and our other birthdays past and present). It seemed very safe for us even coming from three different living spaces. The Care Center where I live is constantly monitored (I just got tested for Covid for the second time in a week) and is very well protected. My older daughter and her family have been hyper vigilant since the beginning of the pandemic and were planning to be in quarantine for 2 weeks prior to driving to pick up my younger daughter in New York State, who was also in quarantine for the event. The travelers had safe houses to stay in for the long drive, would bring their own food, and had safe rest stop measures. Massive planning was coordinated to ensure we would all be as safe as possible.

Although my older daughter is not teaching this semester at Oberlin College, she regularly went into their clinic to get tested for the virus anyway. To her shock, the test she took last week came back positive for Covid! She thought of all her precautions and wondered, how was this even possible? Added to the confusion was the fact she felt fine as did my son-in-law and the baby. She realized it likely happened more than a week ago during a socially distanced and masked connection with another mother when they let their babies interact as babies do. Probably that baby passed it to my grandson who then passed it on to my daughter. Neither family shows any symptoms ten days out from the likely exposure. That is the good news. Thank goodness she had the forethought to take the test.

But- there went The Plan. Like millions of others, we obviously scotched the gathering. We always had the caveat of “it may not work out if Ohio and New York state shut down because of increased cases” but we were thinking of that coming from the outside, not from within our own carefully vigilant ranks. Letting the plan dissolve was a disappointment to us (well, not to the baby). We likely may try to gather again this spring when my daughter is finished teaching the next semester, and the warmer weather means greater outdoor connectivity.

Teaching all Americans to take on the responsibility of life and death planning is a big step, one which millions have been actively discouraged and bullied from even considering. We must go back to a flat, even plane to construct a safe life from there. In order to grapple successfully with the real promise of vaccines and more accessible and accurate testing, our nation is being asked to grow up as soon as possible. It is already too late for hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens. Somehow, we must come together to make a new plan. May we teach and be taught.

Fluidity

DIARY 11/5/20 Water Blessing

I was finally allowed to use the physical therapy pool today for the first time since March 11. Staff were worried about my being exposed to the area currently used by independent living residents from the larger community who can now move with care on and off the campus for curbside pickups, doctor and car appointments, rides around to see the lake or car to car meet ups with local family or friends. It was decided I could use the pool first thing in the morning when a physical fitness staff person would be there as my lifeguard before guarding or teaching classes with the other residents.

That half hour in the warm pool water was bliss. I literally dream of being in the water. It was sobering to realize how much I had lost in strength and endurance since last spring. But it was also invigorating to walk around inside the pool perimeter without holding on to anything, and to lift up my unresponsive legs with buoyant support while penetrating warmth soaked into my nerve damaged back and arthritic sacroiliac joints. The experience left me sore but also alive and stimulated to harness this feedback of where I need to target my exercises on dry land.

Last weekend my friend and colleague, Elaine Colandrea, led a zoomed gathering for students and teachers of Continuum work from all over the world. This coming together was called a Water Blessing and was part of her work with Watermark Arts*. Each participant dedicated this interactive ritual to healing bodies of water all over the world. Continuum is what I call a bio-spiritual practice based on evoking and moving from within our fluid bodies. The by-product of this work that I studied and taught for eleven years is healing on many levels.

Neuroscientists understand how elastic the brain is. During my work in Continuum I felt like I could almost individually touch the neurons I possess- and we all have as many neurons as there are stars in the Milky Way. Through dynamic breathing patterns, sounds (vocalized breath), and evoking wavelike circular movements, I learned to engage with my original un-patterned liquid body. I felt that I could awaken new pathways of thoughts, behaviors and muscular innovations that I attribute to slowing down the progression of my years of living with active MS. Evolving as a species from the ocean and renewing the recapitulation of development within the ocean of my mother’s womb, I am indebted to my deep meditative encounters with Continuum.

Last Sunday was a wonderful time to commune with so many of us following Elaine’s guidance and inspiration. Elaine asked if I would read a poem of mine for this occasion and this is the poem I wrote. *watermarkarts.org

Fluidity (Water Blessings for Our Times)

Chaos begets

rigidity

for containment

Rigidity begets

chaos

for freedom

Beneath our skin

fluidity dances and ripples

for life in between

Fluidity rises

to the evocative coherence of Love

Track

the gentle ebb and swell

Become

the terrifying

curl of a monstrous wave

Breathe deep

Dive within

the boundaryless ocean of being

9/28/20 Judi Bachrach

What Tomorrow May Bring

Diary 11/3/20

I had just turned seven years old the first time I remember going with my mother to vote. Our new house was a couple of miles down the road from the Wittenberg firehouse in Bearsville, NY, our assigned polling station. I was a shy little girl who had a hard time with my very social mother greeting all of our neighbors. I would bury my head in her skirts, pulling them over my face when she endeavored to introduce me. The wonder was that we were inside the building that housed two huge shiny red firetrucks. This was a place of awesome power because the fire siren went off every day at noon setting off a frenzy of barking, howling dogs up and down the mountain.

The mysterious voting booth, hidden behind the curtain operated by a huge lever, made me think of being backstage inside a puppet theater. Because my mom was a folksinger, I had been behind the scene of many local theaters and was familiar with complicated lighting boards and the big reveal of opening and then closing stage curtains. I was a little disappointed when she swiveled all of those tiny levers above my head and nothing dramatic happened at all. As we left, I helped her pull back the big lever and endured saying goodbye to yet more people lining up for their turn to vote.

Thirty years later, my husband and I built our house up the road from the same firehouse, our new polling station. Twenty plus years after that, in the 2016 election, my husband was installed in Albany Medical Center due to have an operation to biopsy and remove the largest tumor on his frontal lobe due to his just diagnosed small B cell central nervous system lymphoma. The hospital atmosphere exuded the tense nature of the election and was carried in the chatter of patients and their families from both parties. The staff was professionally silent on the subject but there was no doubt as to who we wanted to win.

As Richard was wheeled away, he moaned in cognitive confusion, “I just want to wake up in a country I can live in!” Ironically, my older daughter, suddenly called away from teaching as a professor in North Carolina to meet us in the hospital, did not have time to request an absentee ballot. Richard and I clearly were not going to make it to our local voting place that day, and our younger daughter became the only one in our family to vote- in the firehouse.

When I first moved to Kendal at Oberlin, I was happy to think of rolling down from the Care Center to the main Heiser lounge to vote using the apparatus placed there for the next presidential election. I had my newly minted Ohio ID ready to go. Of course, that is not happening in any retirement facility today. Mail-in ballots were provided to all of us in the Care Center, and they were legally filled out and safely delivered to the appropriate place en masse with plenty of time to be counted in a contentious state like Ohio. Today I feel like echoing Richard’s plaintive cry, “I just want to wake up in a country I can live in.”

Of course, I will wake up tomorrow morning living in this country no matter the outcome of this even more contentious election. I am an American citizen and will stay present on the long road to healing the painful divides and glaring inequities of the land we must learn how to actively and lovingly restore.

Blue Moon Halloween: Stop Right There

10/31/20  

The world issues are scary enough, so I offer this piece instead. I was in my thirties when I first began to lose words as I summoned them. I was leading a movement meditation workshop in Vermont and that perfect metaphor, that evocative description of our work, began to slip away from my grasp as I taught. When the workshop was completed, I don’t think anyone but me realized that my MS had begun to develop cognitive malfunction. I tried to adapt language that did not need a master’s degree to comprehend. I pictured my brain as having tiny Swiss cheese holes growing inside. On the long drive home, I decided that I would go back solely to conducting one on one counseling sessions. I could no longer hold the stress of twenty egos in my awareness when I was struggling to keep my own intact.

Now that I have begun my seventieth year, I have joined everybody else around me in those slippages of short term and working memory loss. Euphemistically called “senior moments”, they are a normal feature of our daily interactions. As I am describing the movie that I saw just last night, the name of that actor is….?? I go into my kitchenette for….??? I am learning to stop right there and observe what happens next.

Invariably I run through a number of reactions. Frustration, anger, fear (strong one), and eventually, humor, all take their turns. I live in an assisted living area and my neighbors are in various stages of cognitive capability. My 100-year-old near neighbor is sharper than I am on many fronts. Other neighbors, in a carefully monitored area, are unable to function on their own at all and are supervised so that they don’t accidentally wander off beyond the secured doors. Dementia is very stigmatized label, and I have a healthy respect that their current condition could easily become mine or yours. At Kendal we are given so much compassionate care with appropriate stimulation tailored to every individual. Of course, millions of people are not so fortunate as those who are privileged to live here. I watched my mother die with AIDs related dementia, and my husband had brain tumors that distorted his participation in the world before he died.

What if I looked at my own forgetful blank spaces as a gift? I am stopped in my tracks to pay attention to my normal juggernaut of words and actions. Why not hold them as a teaching and not a sign of something that is being taken away from me?

What happens if I allow myself to not know” for that instant? I am offered an opportunity to pause, to breathe, to be quiet, to be still, to watch what happens next. Often, I sigh in relief when I stop pushing forward where my thoughts did not want to take me. If I am in conversation with a friend, I can simply say,” I can’t remember the actor’s name, but we liked his work in that other movie we saw together last week”. Or in the kitchenette by myself, I can simply sit on my rollator, breathe, and look around. Then I might spot the cup of tea I made an hour ago still waiting for me. If I can do this without embarrassment or hint of shame, I waste no emotional energy to reheat the tea and take it back to my desk to continue writing.

Awareness is a much more efficient space from which to direct our energies. The lack of memory retrieval can be a gift to unwrap. We can learn to treat ourselves with care, respect, compassion, and self-love, which is perhaps the hardest gift of all to accept. Humor also gives us the distance to accept our aging body/minds. My cousin’s mother use to say, “Oh, I’ll remember alright, but it’s not always the same day delivery.”

Stop Right There

That unarticulated thought

the unshed tear

the catch in your throat

that sigh

was it relief or sorrow for what is lost?

A forgotten name

an unmet appointment

pushing the wrong button

 a failed attempt

There is a way

to hold yourself

in loving acceptance

to be aware

without judgement

for always being exactly who

and what

and where you are

and still to do your best

this is my return address

Hope Arising

Diary 10/11/20

I wrote the lyrics to this potential rap song back in June. (the chorus has a melody that can be used to give the spoken word underlying rhythmic chords). I thought it might not be relevant for very long and left it alone. Today, I think it sad that it is all too relevant. The tragedy played out on the world stage, starring our own national drama, continues to capture our horrified attention. The anxiety rattles the air we breathe, and we are doing what we can to survive and keep hope alive. Survival takes full time attention. Those of us who are able to keep our homes, our jobs, and health, have the luxury of pondering what this cycle of deconstruction means. We find our hope in small flashes of worldwide courage and youthful leadership. We find joy in families, art, Nature, and a means of embracing the mundane and raising it into a refuge of hope.

Hope Arising

by Judi Bachrach

Gaia, She hangs in some cosmic infinity

Mother of us all She acquires some divinity

Her salt tears are rising, She storms and She burns

With immutable laws that Her children must learn

I’ve got to-

uplift, my heavy heart

Whenever I feel my world is falling apart

I’ve got to uplift my troubled mind

Give voice to all the love and all the light I can find

Many thousands are dying, many millions are crying

Others are lying, blaming and denying

Problems are revealed, fundamentally systemic

Everybody everywhere is hurt by this pandemic

And I’ve got to-

uplift, my heavy heart

Whenever I feel my world is falling apart

I’ve got to uplift my troubled mind

Give voice to all the love and all the light I can find

The whole world is in chaos it has happened before

Poverty, tyranny, deadly plagues, and war

Everything is shifting before our own eyes

We’ve got to keep uplifting so that Hope can arise

And I’ve got to-

uplift, my heavy heart

Whenever I feel my world is falling apart

I’ve got to uplift my troubled mind

Give voice to all the love and all the light I can find

Gaia, She hangs in some cosmic infinity

Mother of us all she acquires some divinity

Her salt tears are rising, She storms and She burns

With immutable laws that her children must learn

And I’ve got to-

uplift, my heavy heart

Whenever I feel my world is falling apart

I’ve got to uplift my troubled mind

Give voice to all the love and all the light I can find

An Alien Perspective

9/30/20

The Beneficent Beaming Multi Stalk-Eyed Watcher’s latest Bulletin is here!

This Watcher is reviewing the new holograph released by Universal Homosapien Holos called, “Apocalypse: The Revelation”. This is a redundant title since my linguelator said that the word ‘apocalypse’ originally meant ‘revelation’ in early Earth/Englishe to begin with. Right away we realize the story is set on a post-apocalyptic Earth, (a small planet in the Sol star system of the strangely named Milky Way galaxy). Some of the main human characters who live there always wear facemasks covering their one nose and one mouth. They keep well distanced from other humans because of a viral pandemic that has infected millions as the story opens. Others still will not wear face masks, even though it has already been an Earth Sol year of profound loss of life and lifestyles due to this contagion that spreads through their unique respiratory systems. The Us vs. Them mentality is played out in increasingly unbelievable (to this multi eye-stalk viewer) ways as the interpersonal stories unfold. This mentality is how most all humanoid endeavors seem destined to evolve.

The Maskers vs. Non-Maskers are further subjected to world chaos. The main characters dwell in a country, (a geographical demographic unit) called a Meriky, which was apparently was once regarded as a planetary leader through its abundant natural resources and the ingenuity of its beings. Now the entire planet they inhabit is in the throes of violent climatic disruptions. Human ingenuity turns to misusing native materials which leads to rampant greed, power domination, and weapons of mass destruction. This trend serves to destroy the very basis for their wealth. Besides suffering from plagues, colossal storms wreak havoc through floods, droughts, raging wildfires and drowning landmasses by rising oceans. The life sustaining systems of water and air quality are disrupted further affecting food and health services for all citizens. Given the embedded global hostilities of Us vs. Them, nothing is being done to curb the continuing damage.

The final intense plot twist involves the upcoming choice to challenge the current ruling leadership in this country a Meriky. The so-called “President” is a caricature of a maniacal dictator who employs fear-inducing propaganda to whip up his minority of frenzied followers. The Founding Fathers of this young nation wrote beautifully worded ideals into documents that were intended to form the basis of a just and noble working “democratic” form of governance. The current “President” has the backing of his political cronies to subvert these high-minded intentions into false stories reinterpreted to support their elite narrow power base. His opponents seem somehow largely well-meaning but ineffectual. Though extreme emotional distress was well portrayed by the human actors, there is nothing especially new presented here in the violent world of homo sapiens.

A sub theme involves both Maskers and Non-Maskers being caught in the ridiculous illusion that the skin color of human beings is some defining marker to designate inclusion or disenfranchisement in their world! All of the many cracks in the foundation of this one immature government of a Meriky are proving to be fatal and the holograph includes Earth history to show how this came to be. Historical references scattered throughout the dialogue mentioned the “fall of Rome” (apparently some earlier colonizing empire), and the “Third Reich” (another recently failed government of an Earth country) that copied hypocritical racially biased laws of a Meriky to justify the genocide they intended during their own attempt at world domination. The insertion of such obscure facts made it more difficult to wade through the usual romantic emotion-driven humanoid love stories that occur between characters on both sides of the hostilities. These romantic connections always seem to lead to confusingly fraught mating rituals.

That said, I honestly have not finished watching the display all the way to the end. The main theme depicting the repetitive hopelessness of the human condition was all too clear. Given what we know of the cyclical nature of the universe, this is neither a new theme nor a true revelation.

However, I am pleased to note that actual seeds of hope were planted inside the human heroes and heroines as we track their shining determination to find others with the integrity, compassion, and strength to take appropriate actions to bring positive change for themselves and their crumbling world. As admittedly alien as I am to processing the irrational emotions of this scenario, I still find myself cheering for fallible humanity just the same. How will it all end? Or how will it all begin again? Cycling universal patterns remains one more intriguing mystery for all sentient beings to contemplate. I will update this bulletin when I revisit the holograph’s conclusion and by then perhaps there will be a wonderful surprise sequel of true revelation.

For now, I began watching a new hit display called, The Potential Existence of Wormhole Fire Eruptions in Zxgyx*{Gx, another recent release by Universal Homosapien Holos. Interestingly, it stars a variety of famous intergalactic performers playing bi-pedal two-eyed human beings. I know that we all look forward to sharing that unique experience.

To conclude, I welcome your own reviews of Apocalypse: The Revelation, especially those from other star systems who have followed this particular sweep of Earth’s history to the end. I may not agree with your perspectives on this obscure planet, but I’d love to beneficently beam ideas with you.

Until next time, dispatched by yours truly,

The Beneficent Beaming Multi Stalk-Eyed Watcher