Domestic Left #64
One empire begat another. They fought, in the manner of headstrong sons and controlling fathers, but soon reconciled. Together, they vanquished the bad guy, and there was dancing and singing and sparkling confetti across the known universe.
The parent couldn’t figure out how to work the remote, and just kept twisting the knobs on the old black and white. Eventually the child convinced the parent to just watch the new color set, and let the child choose the channel.
They say in old age the parent becomes the child and the child becomes the parent, but eventually everyone just gets old, and no one cares who is fighting on whose birthday.
The old men play cards in the pub. The old men drink coffee at McDonald’s. The old men argue who is to blame and fight over the nuclear arsenal.
The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas urged the elderly to rage, but what did he know of senescence? He drank himself to death before he turned 40. Born of and to a nation subjugated by the English over 800 years before his birth, he died in America, where, indeed, we are burning and raving at the close of our day. No, we will not go gentle.