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The United States of Heironymous Bosch
What we’ve become
I’m increasingly aware of the city — and then the country — around me as a vast, writhing Heironymous Bosch painting. There seem to be numerous instances of how monstrous we’ve become every day. From the most mundane (the light on our stoop got vandalized again so that the “drugstore” can operate without witnesses) to the most horrific (some guy randomly shooting and killing another man on the Q train recently). And what TF is up with all the bare-faced nimrods on the subway and in stores when infections, hospitalizations, and deaths are going up again?
When I’m patting myself down to get ready to go out each day, under the chant of keys, money, Metrocard, glasses, phone, mask there’s a tiny persistent thought: Will this be the day? Will today be the day some threadbare person (man) loses it and opens fire on a train I’m on? Is today going to be my own personal Last Judgement?
How do we look to the rest of our mad world?
While a significant hunk of the population in Europe is losing sleep over the possibility that U.S. and Russia will lose their collective minds and start nuking each other and people in…
