It’s not over yet. Vaccines and Biden-Harris are still a glimmer. We have but a few seconds left to shift life around, and portents from the below piece still apply. It was written at the time of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, volcano eruption in Chile,  floods, and a photo of a ‘lost’ Brazilian tribe.

June 1, 2008

I have a job that some would die for, yet I am dying inside. I trot through International Business busily warming the globe, but I trip on my guilt.

I would however die for my wife.  She was a ballerina with Balanchine. Once she came second in the the Kirov competition. Then injury forced her wings to fold. Sometimes now she lingers at the mirror. Has never believed my assertions about her beauty so refined. Instead seeking the 19 year old, peaked in a leather mini skirt, hot dark hair, her yellow Porsche on point in Manhattan. Now turned remaining passion to her own daughters, sold the remnants of her soul to appease the death within, devastated that her oldest daughter is forlornly imitating the twisted relationship that fathered them. Found me after he skunked away, but my love from the marrow has come too late. Prefers to redefine the mirror’s twin and believe only my moments of anger.

My pathetic angst ruins every day. I once said that perhaps I should stop wringing my hands about saving the world, and act more philosophical – like the French. In those days the instant ogre of the atomic ‘white flash’ was a stronger menace than today’s  brown rumble of CO2 and failing paddy fields. I proclaimed that if the ‘big one’ came we should realise what we have no control and should instead make sure we were around a table with friends, wine and good conversation. And now ‘voila’; this worldly employ landed me in Provence. I have a balcony with a breath-stopping view, an empty table and an empty bottle. 2 months ago the drought was entering it’s fifth year. This last month the rain has broken most local records. The mildewed verdure twists my prophetic tale. Last wine. Last flood.

Sharon Stone said the earthquake was Karma for China’s choke-hold on Tibet, and that the Dalai Lama is a personal friend. She has no idea. She is a part of her own Los Angeles Karma, on fragile ground momentarily dormant but larger than central China. West Coast will crack soon, as will the east, so what bad things did the San Frangeles say about the Dalai to bring this on? The Planet is falling. I have loved the people I met in China. Was worried like a westerner that our Chongqing office was taken.  The communities Chinese, the deluged Burmese, the flattened Sumatrans are but the forerunners. The rumbling gut which belched in Chile may yet spew through Mount Rainier onto Seattle.

Now cleared through another airport. Your Belo Horizonte lies in a beautiful environment, say I to my Brazilan host, avoiding the point that the city looks like cancer on the green. And buildings so fragile that if the lights went out the green would consume all within weeks. The jungle would return, and the remaining tribe, now found by a briefly chattering helicopter, would spread out with the trees. Their raised bows and unflinching arrows said go away; our time is coming. As is yours.

Blessed indeed are the ‘meek’, and now that they have been sighted, we should realise they are mustering for their inheritance.