posted on May, 1 2009 @ 05:39 AM
On April 25, I became the proud father of a baby girl, and she is in good health and is very happy. Words cannot express the joy my wife and I feel at
the moment, it's quite surreal - even after a few difficult nights of little sleep and progressively learning what we need to be doing as parents.
Although it's been tough, it's not a chore by any means, and it's quite possibly the best thing I've ever experienced.
Over the last week, time has flown (as it always does), and I managed to fit over a couple of month's worth of experiences in a few short days. While
at the hospital we had no TV, no internet, etc., except for rental TV in the 'recovery room,' but we were most decidedly preoccupied to watch
anything.
During this time of being disconnected from the world, we were happy to be out of the loop because we were able to focus our attention on more
simple things, more human things. Like not sitting in front of a computer all day at work, not watching the news, not being afraid of things
threatening the world, not eating or sleeping at particular times because it's what we've always done, and so on. Absence of the media and retreat
from the accelerating artificial world was absolutely the best thing we could have done for ourselves during this time. We entered a new 'time' ...
a more primitive time where our attention was focussed on real human experiences like pain, hunger, sleeplessness, love, amazement, and meeting the
requirements of a new life.
So for nearly one week I was somewhere else entirely. You might even say I was on another planet. However, the world I returned to was not the world
that I left. After this brief time away I'm finding it hard to step back on this moving walkway of collective experience, and to be quite honest I
dread going back to work, turning on the TV again, leaving my child to grow up in a world that even I have trouble understanding. The pace is
quickening, and I feel it now more than ever - towards what I don't know, but I'm more focused now than ever on salvaging whatever goodness I
can for our future, at least for the immediate future of my new child. I would quite happily revert back to prolonged primitive life if that was the
only thing that saved our sanity, our experience, and our future.
As for this 'swine flu' thing, I'm really at a loss for words. When I went in to the hospital last Thursday (April 23), there was nothing on the
news. Now it saturates every crack and crevice of it. Even ATS has plastered this pandemic theme all over the front page. Whether it's hype or the
real deal, I don't know - but given that it's on everyone's mind, it will remain so at least until the next shift in the timewave in June. The last
shift (April 17) marked a shift from building political and revolutionary themes to one of a global health worry. As we now see, each major turn in
the timewave has marked a major shift in world attention from one focal point to another, however rather than marking a mere shift it's a 'stacking
on' of things to worry about: economy, political unrest, and now our health and wellbeing.
[edit on 1/5/09 by Evasius]