Eulogy for 2001: Looking into the Void and Laughing to Death
by Derick Varn

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule”.
--Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

"Bury me on my face," said Diogenes; and when he was asked why, he replied, "Because in a little while everything will be turned upside down."
-- Laertius Diogenes (-c. 320 BC)

2001 will be remembered for many things: media blitzing, convoluted politics, random acts of violence, partisan bickering, and the Lord of the Rings movie. 2001 was the year that Afghan refugees lined the boarders of Pakistan to run from falling cans of food, propaganda leaflets, and smart bombs. The year’s headlines read like the most sardonic moments of a Don Delillo novel or an E.M. Cioran aphorism.

A good man once told me that the best way to avoid crying, shell shock, and death is laughter. Even the morbid laughter of a cynic is better than being overwhelmed by the stupor of the image drenched. Tear gas thrown into the Dionysian orgy dance of protests at the G-8 summit has a comic undertone: you can’t help but snicker at the protestors in halters tops gyrating their hips to industrial-techno while police use pain compliance to clear the area. The future, the present, and the past is one cyber-punk, black comedy evolving out of so-called conspiracies, international real politic, and thirty-minute infomercials.

Even the grim specters of the World Trade Center have some comic value. One cannot deny the sheer horror of an Airplane slamming into a building that housed thousands of workers from around a world. There is, however, a subtle humor in the exploding tower being looped over all news reports for two or three days after the event. There is something in that action that Orwell would have noted as the part of what defines humor: absurdity. The television screens don’t have to spy on you or even be connected to a government to enforce the proper thought policing. This should make you chuckle so hard that your Twinkie flies from between your teeth.

There is even humor in the basic social distinctions. Benjamin R. Barber, in Jyhad Vs. McWorld, wrote that tribalism and Globalism have been competing for the national psyche and undermining democracy. While this may not seem funny, think of the farce that lies in the title. The best comparison one can conjure up to attack the World Trade Organization and its ethos is to make a link to a greasy, mass produced hamburger. As if international trade could be summed up in the form of a dead cow.

There is a less malicious humor in 2001: my six-month-old niece chewing on the end of a teddy bear’s ear. I still chuckle when I think about my lover rambling about the Grateful Dead during we made love. I have to smile when I think of President Bush’s various wrestling matches with the basic structure of the English language. There are less bloody reasons to laugh than one would ever get from watching CNN.

So let laughter be the eulogy for a year that will live on in our minds as the one which one of the most violent since World War Two. We will have clearer eyes for seeing if we spend less time crying or blindly hoping and more time laughing. Laugh as if your life depended on it, because your psyche probably does.

Derick Varn is a poet and longstanding contributor to Unlikely Stories. Check out his literary works at this site.