Closing up
What else can be said?
On Oct. 28, The New York Times ran one of the shortest opinion pieces I think I’ve ever read.
It was 163 words.
Its headline read “Stephen King on Mass Shootings: We’re Out of Things to Say.”
In the piece, novelist Stephen King said, simply, that he saw no hope of anything changing: “Americans love guns, and appear willing to pay the price in blood.”
I admire him for doing this, and am grateful to The New York Times for publishing it.
Some may see it as a gimmick, and it is that; but it is also what we have now come to: honesty.
How many words, I wonder, have been written about mass shootings, gun violence, legislation to outlaw … well, outlaw anything having to do with firearms? And at a certain point, one says, like King seems to be saying, “what’s the point?”
Several years ago when I was doing some writing I came up with a term: “inagency.” I might’ve written about it here on Novorerum; not sure. But it seems to be the state we are actually in; almost all of us: Nothing we try to do to change anything in our national life seems to have much effect anymore. And deep down I suspect we all know it.
If you have the ability and the time, go out and be in the presence of a tree or a pond or a squirrel or a bird or a leaf.
