FEAR

It seems I live in two worlds right now. One world consists of the mundane and everyday. The classes, the homework, the seminar breaks, the GRE practice tests. A world that appears constant even now. The other world is the world that encompasses everyone, the one we are all part of. And in that world, I feel like I've journeyed down the long river of awakening down to a sunless sea.

I suppose what prompted this gloomy frame of mind was this story I read when I woke up. Now, now, I know Daily Kos definitely is heavy on fearmongering. And the story isn't quite as scary as it might appear - the $550 billion probably wasn't drawn out just by a few actors (like big banks or Saudi Arabia) but rather by lots of people automatically (because of computers) - but the story is still pretty damn scary. What would have happened if the drawdown was not stopped? Did the Treasury's action halt the drawdown or just delay it?

First - now, what that story reminds me of is the story of Stanislav Petrov. I wonder what my parents think of that story. If nuclear war had happened, naturally I would not be alive today.

Second, and related to my first point - my thoughts keep returning to Lewis Thomas's essay Late Night Thoughts on Mahler's Ninth Symphony, which was about growing up young in the age of nuclear war. How do the young handle this threat that their entire life could end tomorrow?, he asked. Perhaps I should be asking the same question. Of course, some catastrophic failure of the world economy might not be imminent, very fast and very stubborn. It might be very slow, drawn-out and painful.

Third, my thoughts keep returning as well to Mahler's Ninth Symphony. The key to the work is that the first movement is important. But its antipole is not the fourth, but the THIRD. And, as we recall, the third movement is astonishingly bleak. When I'm in the mundane world of school, I hear the second movement. It's not cheerful exactly, but it's mostly major and has some nice parts. But looking at the wider world, all I see is the Third. Are we inexorably hurtling to that movement's close?

Now, I would be remiss in not mentioning a key fact: My two worlds have yet to intersect in a particularly meaningful way. As I noticed during winter break, the lines at Texas Roadhouse are still long and I-45 is still crowded. Houston's not doing too terribly yet. And perhaps the world will weather this downturn as well, and I'll reach that fourth movement after all.

But I'm not sure the world will weather this downturn. I read about Obama's stimulus package and fear it's not large enough. I read about bank bailouts and fear that we're privatizing the profits and socializing the losses. I read about how the Republicans are going to obstruct Obama at every turn (so they can blame the economy on Obama in 2010, 2012) and fear that Republicans care less about the country than about power - that they want the economy to keep failing. I fear, I fear, I fear.

(Didn't FDR say something about that?)

But for now, I see a sunless sea and hear the third movement of Mahler's Ninth and its awful momentum hurtling me around faster and faster, louder and louder, until the final blaring evil full stop.