TO JAB OR NOT TO JAB

BLOG # 14. October 2021.

Everyone has a lockdown story.

This is mine.

To jab or not to jab, is that the question? It seems to me that it is not a question

our governments entertain. Glad hand that one to Hamlet. Oops forgot, the

lockdown has left Hamlet standing upstage sniffing the air for any sign of the virus, playing to an audience of none.

No jab, no rights is where we are heading as a country - an Australia presently presided over by the King of Spin, the Prince of Platitudes, The Boss of Belligerence, the one and only walking talking disaster of a pretend Prime Minister, Scomo, hold the hose, I'm channeling my inner Jen, Morrison.

Under the Morrison mantle no-jabbers are classified as irresponsible malcontents,

At best, naive fools all too easily influenced by those mad Mullumbimby anti-vaxxers marching en masse with other extremist ratbags and agitators, punching out police horses in the name of freedom, spruiking hippie hoodoo conspiracy theories to the vain and the vulnerable. At worst, incubators and transmitters of death who through every fault of their own will surely end up at taxpayers expense clamped to an ICU bed, begging for oxygen as the last vestiges of life leak out the folly of their foolish existence.

TAKING ARMS AGAINST A SEA OF TROUBLES

In the face of repeated lockdowns, at the sight of the police and the army patrolling our streets, banned from crossing state borders, forbidden to travel overseas, loved and unloved ones alike stopped from re-entering their home country, millions of fellow citizens clutching toilet paper and smart phones to their palpitating chests as an endless stream of Covid news unhinges the nation's collective realisation: nothing and

no-one is ever going to be the same again.

SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF DENMARK

Trust us they declare, there is a way out. You are not being bio-hacked in the name of transhumanism, your pineal gland will not freeze up, you will not die in three years as the vaccine's toxicity tampers with your DNA and destroys what's left of your immune system. Much wiser to take orders from The Princess of Pork Barrelling, The Countess of Coal, The Mother Teresa of Covid, Gladys, "Oh that Daryl?" Berejiklian.

Yes Gladys, how is Dazza these days? I know you agree with The Prime Minister of NSW when he intones with that prescient Pentecostal petulance "It's just a tiny prick" and for a moment beloved I am not sure if Scotty from marketing is referring to himself or Dazza until he says I should be doing it for my family, my fellow citizens, my country (strings swell) or his re-election chances ( cymbal crash ). One sore arm, maybe a day or two of discomfort. A one in a million chance of your blood clotting, ovaries mashing, heart failing ( drum roll) . We are all in this together (pregnant pause) umm ah ( silence thickens)...

And with great loathing and reluctance our glorious leader bleats, " I'm sorry. Due to circumstances beyond the government's control the vaccination roll out has been a right royal stuff up. Now I promise you fellow citizens I will continue to do my level best to hide the truth and blame someone or something else. Can I assure you, it's nothing that a khaki election, a jabber's passport, a little French kiss off with a Liverpool twist and a whole lot of ham with an American hand fair and square up the arse to show the Chinese and all silenced, I mean all quiet Australians, whose really in charge around here."

SLINGS AND ARROWS

It's just another day in lockdown. There's a bitter wind blowing through the streets of Katoomba. I am taking my walk, my chance to breathe in the mountain air, to feel the

sun upon my back, to hear the screech of cockatoos break upon a new kind of silence,

freed of cars, trucks, buses, the human chatter of existence, the comings and goings

peeled back to nothing but the sound of my shoes on the payment as I walk toward the Three Sisters watching over this country as they have always watched, our eyes meeting in the space between time and eternity, in the meld of mountain mist now deepening the heart of this silence.

I am already living with what is benignly referred to as a "compromised immune system" courtesy of Parkinson's Disease. Covid19 is no friend of mine. I am no stranger to " the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune". My body is host to the biology of eternity. Wrapped in this shroud of silence I feel the tectonic plates of history have shifted.

AND EVERY NIGHT HAMLET TAKES THAT STAGE

To jab or not to jab that was never the real question. We are virus and antidote. We are the choices we make. Until there is no choice. History is a virus. Empires "returning into sand." In the big before the bang we were here. In the big after the bang we are here. Only love can implode us to the stars and back again. When we look into the mirror what do we see? The long line of our ancestors singing us home. The souls of future children singing us home. A Hamlet no longer in need of soliloquy. Yet every night Hamlet takes that stage to play the Prince. To be the mirror of his age.

© TO JAB OR NOT TO JAB, Terry McArthur, Blue Pearl Music 2021.