Monday, July 31, 2017

The Realm of Monsters

Every time I turn on my computer
I dive down to Lalotai
the realm of monsters
every time I have to look up something
such as, was it the realm? the world? the domain of monsters?
every time I open thesaurus.com to find another word for realm,
I am confronted with a monster in a hairpiece attacking our planet
and a brilliant little beetle called the Natural Resources Defense Council
asking for pennies to fight him
every time I make it to another tab to type in Moana
I learn that Moana is not the name of a Disney movie Moana is our grandmother
the Pacific Ocean
and looking up THAT takes me to a blog on the cultural appropriateness
of a movie depicting Pacific Islanders
by one Amulya Chintaluri
who lives in Hyderabad
which is the fourth-largest monster in India
(India is not a Pacific Island)
Hyderabad, India, the fourth-largest monster on the Indian subcontinent
at only 6.7 million humans and counting
(you have to get to Guwahati, #47, to drop below a million
[just 10,000 years ago the human population of our entire planet
was 10 million])
every time I push the little round button with the open circle
and a line at the top
and listen to the ominously musical machine whirring to life
I know that death awaits at every turn
at every turn is distraction leading down a tunnel to blackness
to tentacles grabbing and spiky fish swimming past
cartoon heroines and vapidly overstuffed heroes
vying for my attention and not caring
not caring
whether I land on Motunui, paradise,
or am struck down by Te Ka, the lava monster
not caring
if my cursor alights on Lalotai or the crime against
Standing Rock
or the effrontery that is an indoor ski resort in 110-degree Dubai
not caring whether I drown in the beautiful waters of Cenote Il Kil
or choke on the 34-times-the-size-of-Manhattan amount of plastic
that we dump into the Ocean every single year
caring only
that the seconds
and the minutes
and the hours
tick away
on my computer screen.
That is how the monsters win.

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