Feels like I have got myself in a bit of a fix and I am not entirely sure of what will happen.
Might be ok, might not be.
Kind of disconcerting.
Here goes nothing.
"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx
Feels like I have got myself in a bit of a fix and I am not entirely sure of what will happen.
Might be ok, might not be.
Kind of disconcerting.
Here goes nothing.
Told the Shmata Queen I want to take her away for a week or two or ten to get some answers to the questions we can answer and to escape some of the crap we can’t.
Thing is circumstances make that especially challenging.
Looked at her face across a Zoom meeting and snorted because circumstances again made me wonder if I ever could have imagined any of this.
Told her I could hear the goddamn bells ringing even when I tried to ignore them and finally said fuck it, no reason to ignore.
So I just went with it.
****
Opened up the electronic paper and watched the destruction and chaos and wondered how the fuck I am supposed to talk to my kids about this.
They are old enough to have real conversation and so we did, but damn if I didn’t feel crazed during it knowing others have a harder struggle than I do.
I am doing my part to push back against the tide of hate and chaos.
Donating time and money, speaking out and trying to move others to understand.
Asked a few what they expect to happen when they tell people they can’t protest by taking a knee but it is ok for men of a different color to assemble with guns.
Showed them pictures of a kid who was suspected of murder sitting with handcuffs and another of George Floyd being murdered because he was suspected of a minor forgery.
They aren’t the only examples of inequality and that is the issue in a nutshell.
What has happened more than once has repeatedly done so time after time so you ask what it takes to affect change.
It is not an event limited to my fifty-some years on earth but one that precedes me, my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.
While there are distinct improvements some areas are the same as they ever were so how do I ask for patience if the non-violent is considered verboten too.
I don’t advocate for violence or think it is appropriate because it is diluting the message and too many innocent people get hurt.
But I understand why people go there and how it happens.
What would I do if I were in a position in which I felt unheard and incapable of getting people to listen.
Would I act any different.
Would I be as patient as some are when they are challenged for doing what I take for granted?
The answer is no.
I showed the kids the video of the truck driver in Oklahoma and my children said it would have taken me less than five minutes to have driven the truck around the car that was blocking it.
I like to believe it would have been longer than that, but ultimately I probably would have done so.
Unless I was reasonably certain of the consequences but that it is the thing, I can do so more safely.
****
It doesn’t take much for me to tan and for some people to ask if I am mixed, but that happens less than it used to when I had fewer responsibilities and spent more time outdoors.
Ultimately I look like another White guy to most people so I hear things. That sometimes includes comments about being Jewish so that I am reminded that to some I am only White when convenient.
I never forget that or that even that truth is something I can sometimes hide.
It is day 918,984 of 2020 and chaos surrounds me in large because we had the misfortune to put Delusional Donald Trump into office.
Let me correct that, I didn’t vote for him and actively pushed people not to vote for him because I was convinced he was an incompetent fool who was running for office solely to stroke his ego.
When he won I was disappointed but I figured we would get beyond him and that Trump would be like a giant pothole the US hit on the highway.
What I didn’t recognize was he was the dirtbag grifter head of a cult that has no interest in dealing with reality and would readily sunder any connection they had with morals, ethics and reality.
It never occurred to me that he could 10,000 times worse than I expected and that he would actively sow chaos and push division.
Didn’t occur to me that he would push hate and move people to hurt other Americans just because they disagreed or that he would like the idea of Civil War.
Crooked Donnie has systematically and repeatedly attacked democratic norms and institutions and the system of checks and balances that is supposed to prevent him from doing what he is doing has been failing.
Some say criticism of him proves a lack of patriotism and or parrot his desire to label anything he doesn’t like as fake.
Sadly his disease of delusion has been contracted by many and they have taken to either letting him do/say whatever he wants without holding him accountable.
If policies don’t work and ideas are subjected to criticism it is always the fault of another. It is never because they’re bad policies or because there are better ideas.
It is dangerous and disappointing behavior and part of why more than 80,000 Americans are dead and millions unemployed.
The Trump administration failed to take Coronavirus seriously and did not plan or prepare for the disaster they saw coming.
Eventually, they recognized it was a mistake and began to do a few things including a general gaslighting campaign to convince the cult that Trump had taken action and that others had stopped him from doing what needed to be done.
But those of us who read and are not willfully blind know otherwise. We know he used magical thinking to say it wouldn’t be serious, was going to just go away and that his half-ass travel ban was ineffective.
We know he dropped the ball multiple times and in multiple areas all the whole trying to blame others for yet another failure on his part.
I don’t know where we are going to end up but I do know we are a very sick and broken country right now.
Some say we are irreparably broken but I am not one of those people but I think we are heading into much steeper downward spiral and Trump is doing all he can to accelerate it.
****
It can be mitigated, adjusted and improved upon but I am not prepared to say fixed, too much has to be done for me to say that.
But I won’t say it is impossible either.
Been meaning to update this place as I have updated every other blog I think but it hasn’t happened.
Got jammed with more than a little nonsense to deal with in the personal and professional areas of life.
Most of it has been ok but some has been the kind of irritating and irksome material. About time to talk to my doc and ask him about a particular situation that has stuck around for a bit.
It is of a personal nature and I had expected it to resolve itself but it doesn’t seem to want to do that and I am unclear as to whether I haven’t given enough time or if it needs treatment.
In general it doesn’t prevent me from doing as I wish but when it shows up it is noticeable and I wonder if there is reason to be more concerned.
Might not be, but I really don’t know enough so I’ll ask and get a sense of it.
Been waiting too because of Covid19 thinking things might settle down a bit.
No need to go racing off to get help for something that generally doesn’t bother me, especially when it feels like we haven’t peaked yet.
Is it 56 days of quarantine or 18 years, I am not really sure.
But I am certain this is real, not a hoax and that Trump bungled the response.
The man looked at the mirror and asked his reflection to answer a question.
“What happens if it is love and not strong affection?
What are you going to do if you figure out that what thought had faded hadn’t burned out?
Are you going to keep it a secret and try to choke out the flame, dampen the embers so that you don’t face the hard questions.
Or are you going to tell her and see what she says? Are you going to give her a chance to participate?
What if she says no.
What if she says yes.”
The reflection didn’t provide any insight proving if nothing else this wasn’t a magic mirror or that if it was the genie behind the screen was bored, occupied or asleep.
“Damn you reflection and damn you woman. In the age of a worldwide pandemic I am forced to look at things differently and ask the questions you never really expect to ask.
No one really wonders or worries about what might happen if someone gets sick and dies because it doesn’t usually happen in anything but books, television and movies.”
He walked away from the mirror, shook his head, tied his shoes and walked outside.
Endless blue skies made it seem like the thunderstorms of the morning were part of a dream.
The weather felt perfect and the exercise helped clear his head and confirm he wasn’t imagining things or making shit up.
He thought about Whitman and thanked him for providing a reasonable but somewhat useless answer because what he wanted was a simple solution.
Except he wasn’t going to get that and though he knew it there was no denying interest in it.
Now he had to decide what the best path forward was and then follow it. Thing was he was pretty sure he knew what he would do and the more he thought about it the more he recognized it was what he always was going to do.
He sighed deeply, smiled and kept moving forward. Life was pretty fucking interesting, even if it and she were sometimes a pain-in-his-ass.
Harry Nilsson doesn’t care that I started this post while listening to what Apple Music calls his essentials and then moved to Gordon Lightfoot and not because he is dead.
Rather it is because I can’t imagine he ever would have stumbled across this place so he would never know about it.
But if he did find it I think he’d be more focused on my having included him in the headline and the post, that is better than not being included, even if you are featured on a smaller joint.
I’d argue it is far better to get lost in her loving than to never know what that is like.
Even if said love is removed and you feel like the sky has gone dark or the moon has chosen to hide you know something.
That is the sort of experience you never forget because if you get wrapped up in that warmth you have been through something life-changing.
I know a guy who told me he would give it all up because having loved and lost was too damn painful, but I told him he is a fool.
He told me I was the real fool and that you never get it back and I shook my head.
I know better.
Sometimes you get her back and you get another shot, sometimes you don’t.
The focal point ought to be how you learned you can fly and don’t have to settle for being earthbound.
It can present some painful moments when your wings have been clipped but the knowledge of what is possible or trying to discover what is possible is part of the scientific spirit.
There are no advances without a willingness to explore and to dig a little bit.
The same guy asked me what made me so certain.
I told him I had kissed a certain girl a thousand times and never tired of it.
“It always felt like we had the most intimate conversations without words, but we spoke.”
“How did you know?”
“I didn’t know in the ‘traditional’ sense, I knew in my gut. And even when we were apart I always felt like we could pick up and resume where we left or even take it to a deeper level because of life experience. If she agreed to let me pepper her pike, well I would absolutely think about it.”
“You’d think about it? Why not just do it?”
“Sometimes it is good for her to hear no. Let her remember it is a true partnership, if we let it be. There is a level of trust that makes the physical work in a different way. It is all based upon the communication because when we let do the depth is unmatched.”
“You make it sound like someone is holding back now.”
“Maybe one of us, maybe both of us or maybe none of us.”
“You are not going to tell me, are you?”
“Nope, that is our business and you aren’t part of ‘our’ are you.”
I laughed and he smiled.
“Well, you ought to tell her what you think about your business. She might be waiting for you to speak.”
“Yeah, she might or she might already know. Maybe she’d prefer not to hear about any of it or maybe she really is waiting.”
“Did anyone tell you that you are a pain-in-the-ass and that you refuse to answer questions.”
“No. Not one single person. :D”
Part of me very much wants to hide out in my castle and wait for the chaos and confusion to pass. Part of me wonders if we have really touched upon it or it is trapped inside Pandora’s box waiting to be set free.
Had a situation develop on the job side that has wreaked a bit of havoc. Had a call that can only be described as a brutal beating that left me incensed because it wasn’t my fault.
I think that is understood by the important people but it doesn’t make me feel good.
Nor does getting some assignments that I don’t understand well. If I am going to work on something I want to do a good job and this feels a little loosey-goosey to me.
So I am going to have to draw on a little reserve of courage and push on. That is all I can do.