Armageddon Closet: The Final Frontier | Catherine Viel

By Catherine Viel, August 20, 2022

(Golden Age of Gaia)

August 19, 2022

He rises out, the aged one
Imprisoned in the dying child,
And spreads his wings to the new sun:
Climbing, he withers into light.
~Howard Nemerov, The Dragonfly



Tuning out fear is like tuning out other annoyances. The neighbor’s dog has been barking for over an hour. At some point, while I was focused on other things, I stopped hearing it—or, more accurately, noticing it, since I didn’t suddenly become deaf.

And at some point over the last several months, the creeping fear of running out—of household necessities, of food, of anything—has also faded into the background. It’s there if I move my attention to it and allow myself to be influenced by the insistence of “people who know“ that shortages are coming and you’d better be prepared. Or else.

I entered a state of balance awhile ago with keeping nonperishable food, like oatmeal, at a certain level in my Armageddon closet. The thing is, we don’t eat much oatmeal. The inevitable outcome is that we have a lot of packages about to expire. We can’t possibly eat all of it before the use-by date.

I’m aware that I let fear-of-running-out dictate some of my behavior over the last couple of years. Comforting the human self (who does indeed have a lot of potential things to fear in the physical world) doesn’t seem bad, per se.

Perhaps because I have not chastised myself unduly for allowing fear to influence me, its power has waned. I’m looking at the oatmeal and thinking it’s time to give most of it to a friend who will use it up.

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Some people have sudden realizations, pure awareness or self-knowledge landing like a bolt from the blue. With me, I tend to behave differently or change things in my outer world, and only later notice the underlying prompting generating those changes.

I started using up the “emergency” cans and bottles and packages, and not putting those items on the shopping list. I’m digging through the freezer, pulling out buried treasures before they succumb to freezer burn. I’m settling into a comfort level of having enough without a whole lot of extra. In other words, my way of being, pre-pandemic, pre-fear influence.

Perhaps this is because I haven’t noticed shortages or runs on the grocery stores. But really, I think it’s because I’m no longer willing to let my attention be pulled in that direction.

I’m tuning out that bandwidth of fearfulness. It hasn’t disappeared. It hasn’t really changed. But my belief in its influence on me, my willingness to pay attention, has wavered and faded until it’s no more than an old stain on my psyche.

Like many old stains, I’m sure it will fade and disappear with time. Meanwhile, there’s a whole other world to look at, like the slender blue-winged dragonfly that came into the garage and hovered before my face, bestowing something magical with its glittering presence.