The Great Reset

It all started with a bat.

Bats fly about at night. I’m sure you’ve seen them in Halloween decorations, flying across the Moon. 

Once upon a time, people knew to be wary of the Moon, with its 28-day cycle (according to NASA, 27-days) and its affinity for the feminine.

Back in the Middle Ages, before Copernicus used his number magic to prove that the Earth revolves around the Sun, people understood that the sublunary sphere—that is, the Earth with its atmosphere—was a place of transience and change.

People were wary of the Moon with its reflected light and its dark splotches. Were they shadows? Were they seas?

People knew to pay attention to the Moon—and not just on Halloween.

Moon magic—or so they knew, back in the Dark Ages—is dangerous. Moon magic drives men mad.

Moon magic makes people put on masks and hide from the sun.

Moon magic turns living souls into ghosts.

*

I went grocery shopping with my brother the other day. We are in Texas, staying with our mother, praying for our stepfather who has been in the hospital now for the past twelve days. (No, not with COVID. There are still other ways to fall sick and die, although you wouldn’t know it from watching the news.)

There was a sign in the store that said masks were required—with certain exceptions. Most people, but not everyone was wearing a mask.

My brother and I walked in maskless.

And nobody said a word. Not the other shoppers. Not the clerk who answered my question about the video recording at the self-checkout. One woman turned away from us as we walked past her down the aisle, drawing her shirt collar over her face, but otherwise only those few shoppers without masks seemed to see us. 

It was a shop full of ghosts. Faceless. Voiceless. No longer human beings.

*

I have spent the past nine months like everyone else, in lockdown, rarely venturing out except to walk my dog. I taught my Spring course online in April and May, and I started making videos for my new series on Unauthorized in July. I made a trip in June to talk about statues with Milo and a trip in August to talk about Logos with E. Michael Jones. But for the most part I have been living at home, watching Mass on my iPhone in the mornings, building with blocks, writing poetry with my Telegram chat, and watching the world go insane.

Did I mention my dog died a month ago? She was my Joy.

*

My heart hurts just typing this. My dog died, drained of blood by the Moon.

The vets did their best. They spoke spells over her, named her illness in Greek (“pancytopenia”), filled her with another dog’s blood, sent me home with potions and pills to shove down her throat.

But the witches had got to her. They sucked out her blood.

She died “in her sleep,” potion-induced, as I sat next to her, singing to her about God.

“Let all things now living a song of thanksgiving to God our Creator triumphantly raise, who fashioned and made us, protected and stayed us, who guideth us on to the end of our days.”

*

I spent the last weeks I had with her keeping candles lit at night and listening to Owen Benjamin, aka my fellow “Bear” at Unauthorized, playing the piano and talking about how we never went to the Moon.

Could it be that NASA deceived us? My brother tells me he has wondered about this “fact” his whole life, ever since we visited the National Air and Space Museum back in 1976, when our mother was studying radiology in Washington, DC, and we were there staying in her aunt’s friend’s apartment at the Watergate.

How, he wondered, looking at the lunar module in the diorama, could something that fragile have ever been packed into a rocket and shot to the Moon?

Lies, damn lies, and stories from NASA about how the astronauts were able to transmit film from the Moon into the television sets that my parents were watching when my brother was newborn and I was four years old.

The Moon magic isn’t working any more.

The Bears are coming out at night, and they see through the lies.

*

Nine months, two super moons, and one blue moon (Halloween) ago, I had a healthy dog, was preparing to teach Tolkien on campus and then in videos for Unauthorized, and no Telegram chat because I was still a member of Milo’s.

Now I have my own chat and no dog, but I have been a guest on Owen’s livestream, and I understand far more than I did in March about how quickly narratives can change.

Back in September 2016, I began writing about Milo and his courage in standing up to the scolds and bullies on college campuses who were calling for safe spaces and trigger warnings for words.

Now, almost every campus is closed with only limited physical contact with students, and every student and professor is wearing a mask.

Thanks to a bat.

And if you believe that, I have news for you even stranger than whether we went to the Moon.

For Owen’s livestreams and my Forge of Tolkien, subscribe on Unauthorized.tv. Once you subscribe to either Big Bear or me (pick me!), you will get an email with an access code to login to the main platform. See the Logos and History channel on Unauthorized for my videos with E. Michael Jones.

Joy

Prairie Fire’s Lily of My Valley 

November 8, 2009-October 27, 2020 

Photo taken October 21, 2020