Annex Canada, invade Greenland, pillage Panama. Deport our neighbors—our pickers, our laborers, our factory workers, a million Americans, lynchpins of our community, of our economy. Hush money, insurrection, stolen secret documents, sexual assault. Billionaires running our country, the far right ruining the world. Skyrocketing temperatures, exploding debt, morphing viruses: tipping points everywhere you look. (Expensive eggs.) Fires, Floods, war, war, war.

The known world.

~ ~ ~

The guy who leads my writers’ group sent out a new year’s writers’ prompt. Write your philosophy of life in book titles. I think he envisioned us creating something like book spine poetry, a clever contest many libraries run. Patrons select books and stack them vertically, so their titles tell a story. Here’s a clever example I saw online:

BEFORE I FALL
JUST LISTEN
THIRTEEN REASONS WHY
I CAN’T TELL YOU
THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF GIRLS

One of the libraries in my county ran this contest. They posted photos of several completed ‘poems’ on their website. As I read them, all I could think about was the poor volunteer who had to reshelf all those books. Book spine poetry is not for me.

Instead, I used just one title as my writers’ prompt. It’s not my philosophy, but rather my disappointment. In The Known World, Edward P. Jones ‘explores the complex and morally ambiguous world of slavery, focusing on the unusual phenomenon of black enslavers.’* The book received unending praise when it came out and even won a Pulitzer Prize. I highly recommend it. But I’m not writing about the book, just the title, The Known World. Our world.

~ ~ ~

An article I read today quoted Grimes. Who the F___ is Grimes? She’s one of Elon Musk’s baby mamas. Oh, right, she’s also a massively successful pop star, but since I don’t know any of her music, to me, she’s just an extension of Musk. In a tweet she posted about the California wildfires, Grimes wrote, “The vibe is rather Biblical… We might be outta time w regards to twiddling our thumbs whilst every level of our culture, environment, government, institutions, mental health, etc have obviously crumbled.” Maybe Grimes can pass this sentiment on to Musk. He seems to have Trump’s ear.

Grimes: Every level of our culture, environment, government, institutions, mental health, etc have obviously crumbled.

Now I know something about Grimes, and I couldn’t agree with her more. We’ve roamed the earth for 300,000 years, we homo sapiens, we modern humans. We should have figured it out by now. There should be nothing more to learn.  

The known world is a failed experiment. Whoever set our planet in motion—God, aliens, random chance—should start over, try again somewhere else.

* The Known World blurb taken from Wikipedia.

Photo from Pixabay (unattributed)