The Day After the Insurrection

The day after the insurrection, all I could think about was ladybugs. Ladybug, ladybug fly away home, your house is on fire and your children will burn. And I kept wondering why I’m thinking about ladybugs. Why would the ladybug leave her children home alone? If the house is on fire, it’s probably not a good idea to go back inside. But if the kids are in there…dammit. If the actual documents that certify the election are in the house, that bug better get off her ass and grab them quick before this whole shit house goes up in flames.

The day after the insurrection, all I could think about was Werner Herzog. Aguirre, the Wrath of God. I don’t remember the plot of the film. I just remember the barbarians — some bear chested in furs, some in chainmail shirts with Nordic helmets of burnished brass. Yesterday’s insurrectionists were dressed as Herzog characters in painted faces and animal skins, though they carried cellphones instead of sabers or swords. They took selfies in the rotunda and put their dirty steel toed boots up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk. (Herzog’s characters sought glory in other ways.) Some of the insurrectionists were dressed like the Village People (my apologies to the YMCA) or Ted Nugent (no apologies, ever).

Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.

The Greek poet C.P. Cavafy wrote in the late 1800s. He knew we could not last without the barbarians against which we define ourselves as better. The king is dead, long live the king.

The day after the insurrection, all I could think about was Valkyries. The Valkyries are the busty Viking goddesses of Norse mythology and Wagnerian opera who choose those who may die in battle and those who may live. These brawny babes who, Gjallarhorns blasting, scoop up wounded warriors from the battlefield and easily toss their heavy limp bodies onto the saddle behind them as they gallop into the sky to Valhalla where the slain warriors live blissfully ever after with their god Odin. Stacey Abrams is one of these goddesses. The wounded warrior she carries behind her saddle is our nearly dead republic. Where she’s taking the republic, we can only guess. But she knows how to manage uncertainty. I trust her with our republic. I imagine she’ll gallop us right up to a place where we’ll have real winters again and maybe even equality.

Photo by Valentin Lacoste on Unsplash