The Power of the Cyrstal

Dispatch squawks, "unit 101 respond priority one to Chiquaqua st for a signal 13." A signal 13 is a diabetic emergency. Usually these calls amount to showing up, checking their sugar, and if it's low we administer some oral glucose, or if its really low, we start an IV and give a big amp of 50% dextrose 25 grams of sugar IV push. The scenario has become routine; however, in this case her problem wasn't hypoglycemia, but instead simple vertigo. We in EMS get thrown curb balls all the time with being told one thing to then arrive and find another going on. Nothing serious in this case, just some simple chronic vertigo and she panicked. People do this from time to time. Blood sugar was fine, blood pressure too, and neuro check was excellent. I find myself in a upper middle class home in a nice neighborhood by a lake. The socioeconomic bracket was your typical suburban nuclear Caucasian family with two kids and a picket fence. A new mid sized SUV in the garage to take the kids to soccor practice and wait, mind you with the engine running, in the long line that is guaranteed to form out of today's neighborhood schools. For those that don't fit into this group there's the school buses too. I can remember my days riding the school bus, the spitballs, the name calling, the bully punches out of the blue, the driver cursing us, the mayhem on the last day of the school year where every kid ripped up their notes and the paper that encased the textbooks - sometimes the textbook too - then tossed it all as wadded balls at each other, or as paper airplanes which were then ceremoniously sent out the buses many sliding windows. Kids missed that if they ride with mommy, or do the kids still do that? I wonder with all the digital and electronic distractions the big corporations have successfully sold to the addicted masses.

 I'm thinking this as I listen to their mother whine about her minor symptoms. She was a bit of a hypochondriac. Her two kids were playing the X-box, and they sat transfixed to the images playing across the screen. Not once did they take their eyes off the screen to see what was wrong with mom, that there were two ambulance medics in the room, or whether she would be going to the hospital. It sorta just hit me that there was something wrong with this scene. I mean they were the age of reason, ten years old or so, two boys, and they were so engaged with the game (a meaningless mental adventure), that they were oblivious to what was going on around them. Worse, the parents didn't see anything wrong with this behavior. Both of them real estate agents. So what comes to mind as I observed this with sudden interest is the movie "the Dark Crystal." A movie that came out in the early 80's that tells the story of Jen, an elflike 'Gelfling' on a quest to restore balance to his alien world by returning a lost shard to a powerful but broken gem. One thousand years ago on "another world", a magical crystal cracked. At this time, two new races appeared: the Skeksis, vulture-like tyrants using the power of the "Dark Crystal" to continually replenish themselves, and hunchbacked natural wizards called Mystics.There's a scene in this movie where the evil Skeksis are using the crystal to mind rape an gelfling and it looked just like these two kids. I don't think they were even blinking. Here we were, two EMT's standing in the living room holding all kinds of emergency equipment, a cool ambulance parked outside with the lights on, their mother feeling sick, and both of them were completely numb to it. There was no interest outside that dark crystal. Briefly, I thought about being the hero gelfling and going over and turning their heads away, but then I thought better of it. Oh, the hysteria that would surely unfold from these snippidy shallow parents. Thinking more about this I thought about how right the movie was in portraying the Skeksis as rich elitist masterminds whose only interest was their greed and consumption. 

There's a great scene at the beginning of the movie where they're all eating at the dinner table jabbing forks at each other while gorging on a feast of flesh. They controlled the crystal, the crystal that was mind raping the gelfling and sucking their life force away to strengthen the Skeksis. Isn't that what we have today exactly? A group of rich industrial capitalist, bankers, and cartels that suck the life out of the rest of us to enshrine their iniquities and insatiable greed? We are like the drones that ran the Skeksis castle after being hallowed out by the rays of the dark crystal who dutifully serving the whims of these twisted things. That's exactly what's going on today. Our souls have been stolen from us after being subjected to the rays of the dark crystal - the TV/Xbox/radio/etc. Was Jim Hensen, the creator of the movie trying to tell us something? He even portrays the good guys, the mystics, as very similar to the native Americans who we know lived together with nature instead of turning it all into a profit generating commodity. Spot on sir, spot on. I saw the dark crystal, and thought about my own pale skin and hallowed out soul. I'm serving the Skeksis like most of us. My color might be returning but I'm still running around the castle fetching more wine for the Emperor. Where is the shard that will save us?