Buzz Kill

I’ve been in a foul mood all day owing to a disruption this morning. The intercom buzzer in our apartment went off at approximately 5:55 a.m. I thought it might be my alarm clock, which is almost as senile as I am. But the buzzer buzzed yet again. And again. I got up to investigate. R was already up. We were both perplexed, and a little afraid of what it might be. Was it a neighbor, someone in our building home from a party, perhaps a little drunk, just then realizing they were missing the key to the building? Or could it be some crazy fuck teeming with demons hoping to gain entry and rob or kill us? The mic on the intercom hasn’t worked in years. Not that it matters. It would be pointless to use it; a person could easily lie, declare an emergency, their car broken down or some other exaggerated tale of misfortune and great urgency, no smartphone, could they use our phone, etc., etc. I went to bed, worried about the intrusion, perplexed, running all sorts of scenarios through my mind, all of them a reminder of what a hellish world we’re now all occupying, a raging pandemic, a collapsing economy, failed institutions, rainforests burning down, the Arctic ice melting, methane bubbling up, a crumbling infrastructure, no ability to trust in anyone or anything any longer, a society that has completely unraveled. It’s a very dark feeling. A very insecure feeling. I squirted a dropper load of CBD/THC in my mouth and went back to bed. Next morning R went out to see if there were any sign or clue of who the person might have been. She discovered six sacks of groceries on our porch, an Amazon delivery. The food was for the people in the house next door. We were amazed at the stupidity of the driver, not just for mistaking two very different numbered addresses, but for buzzing our buzzer three times. Why three times? What was this person expecting? A tip? A funky, half-asleep assurance of acknowledgement and approbation? These guys usually just buzz once and take off. No need to sign for anything. It’s a common sight. Hundreds of deliveries are made every day. But at six in the morning? What the fuck was up with that? Were the people in the house next door having food security issues on a Saturday morning? The city is swarming with delivery trucks, most of them those deep blue Mercedes-Benz vans for Amazon’s Prime customers. I can’t wait for Amazon’s Prime Air delivery drones. What could go wrong? These imperious, unrelenting, technocratic assaults on the dignity of life and a fundamental sense of well-being are another sign as to how fucked up our world has become. Amazon emitted 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide last year, roughly the same as Denmark. UPS put out 7.5 metric tons. Thanks in part to the pandemic, deliveries – a lot of them grocery items – is now the norm. The “new norm,” as people like to say. I hate that phrase. There’s nothing normal about it whatever. You can’t bullshit your way into a world of new norms and expect the collateral damage to remain safely under the rug. Language can’t alter reality. I wish it could. But here’s another so-called “new norm”: functional illiteracy in the United States is now 43 million. One in five Americans can’t name a single branch of government. Words are wonderful. I love words. But I’m getting increasingly tired of hearing them echo in a black hole of ignorance and brutish indifference.