I had some old pictures of a trip to the Kennedy Space Center and a fantastic piece of water color paper, some pigment, some pens, some ink. With these things I faced my fear of the future. One picture was a looking up at a generator of some kind— tangled bits and pieces of shiny chrome and metal. It had the shape of a neck. It seemed appropriate to me a head should be attatched. And upon the head is an expressionless face that is more finished than the rest of the body and yet not finished enough because there is neither love nor compassion within.

It’s not “rocket science” to say something wicked is upon us in these times of plague and treachery. Fear is everywhere. There is a certain groupthink that preaches giving others due process somehow violates or diminishes their own. That somehow A giving to B is a perceived threat to C. Some are trapped inside a reality of their own choosing, forgetting to take walks at night to take in the air. Some are waiting for the worst to happen. Maybe some are stretched to the breaking point wondering where their next job, next paycheck, next meal might be. Then there are those waiting in the wings with weapons, ready to give up their humanity for a pointless cause. But real power is not in the hand —it is in the mind. Fear is an ether that makes one weak and easier to control. Fear leads to hatred, which leads to persecution and violence. It is the viper that eats its tail and turns in on itself until it is gone into black, the manifest of the end of life itself.

Are we really no better than androids marching into a decaying stratosphere? When would it be a good time to stop fighting each other and levy justice on the actual oppressors? To stop clinging to old ways that continually hurt us and our chances of surviving on this earth? Control is Chaos. Civilization is not civil at all. Our methods of coping are flawed and decaying, getting worse with every decade. The clock is tick tick ticking.