Changes

November 13, 2021

I am trying to make changes. It’s hard for me to accomplish. When Earth changes, it’s a thing that looks to be done well, done easily. A simple tip in one direction or another and all else follows suit: All things change up their gear, putting away the speedos and bikinis for something more practical and warm. The fish head for the bottom of the lake, where the water is less turbulent and the temperature more reliable, their home more liquid. The Canadians head south. The sky darkens. The wind blows. Christmas music appears out of nowhere. Yes. Earth’s changes are more easily made? oh, I don’t know. This spinning ball must require enormous force to move, to tip, to be sent flying out around the sun. It must require a somewhat larger force to stop. Yeah.

The force needed to move earth is similar to the force it takes to move me.  The force that moves the earth and the force that keeps earth still are equal, until one or the other spikes a little. Earth moves or remains still when the ‘force’ becomes inequal. I am moved by a force a bit more than equal to my inertia, whatever that inertia is. (resting or moving) I am only changed by a force a bit more than equal to my inertia.

A body or an earth at rest is a powerful thing.  I am a power.  This ball of rock and slime I am drawn down upon is a powerful thing, it is more powerful than my simple urge to fly up and away.   No matter what, inertia must be overwhelmed if a thing is to change, to move from stillness, to improve or to decline, to come to rest.  If I want to fly, I need an inequal force to gravity.

I choose, for explication of my point, to understand and name this force that overwhelms inertia as God. God is equal to inertia but neither God nor inertia are perfect, greater than the other — always. It is a struggle for balance of the power and  balance is rare, my friends. Inertia can be right or wrong, God, right or wrong.  Inertia is not a bad thing, God is not a good thing. God assists everything, inertia gets in the way of everything.  Sometimes. You can’t stop, if you are moving.  You can’t start if you are stopped.  Sigh. A great force must be applied to change the way things are.  They say that God is the force.  Okay.  That works. Some folks use the ‘greater power’ of God to move away from a substance they are addicted to.  The substance is usually a thing that makes a tragedy out of living.  The substance, when over-used, when depended upon destroys more than it heals. Social media is such a substance.

Social media can be inertial, a habit. I have suffered the inertia of social media.  It will take great power (God?) to pull me away but I am willing to try, to keep trying.  Today, I received a rocket boost of power toward pushing me away from Facebook.  I saw evidence, physical and undeniable proof that Facebook is a dangerous thing.  A dark and deeply negative power accidently shows it’s raw edges from time to time.  I saw a tiny edge of the dark in my newsfeed this morning.

Today, a tiny bit of irritation pushed with the power it needed and I am moved.  One last, little insanity made my oyster soul cough out, not sugar-coat the grit.  Can you believe that (in this world of being aware of dark things) Facebook’s algorithms would ‘suggest’ as ‘friends’ a teen-ager and a much older person?  Two individuals who are basically strangers?  How could that not be an invitation to danger?  um…  Nossir.  That is going way too far.  I am at last moved to close the door, tip my world away from the fire, to cool off a while.  I have only my power to say “Enough,” and I shall.  I hope my power is greater than the algorithm of destruction.  Bye, Facebook.

Now, without Facebook to spread my words and delight my soul with the feedback of friends, I have an idea. I will continue posting my bloggys on the website: robertontheair.com If this pleases you as a reader, then I welcome you to attend the festival, you can climb aboard and receive regular notice of my postings but I won’t belabor this. I won’t inundate your newsfeed, I won’t keep sending emails or messages. Only this one note. If you like reading the mini-essays, the poems, the goofy crap…then it is all a mouse-click away at any time. The advantage is your privacy. Facebook won’t know you are reading or where you have gone. You won’t get any advertisements for weird things, either. Cheers!