Riding the Down Escalator

My last post, Dibs and Dabs, was pure shit, an embarrassment. I apologize to the six people who read it. What a cluster. Not sure what I was thinking.

But that’s the hazard of being an obsessive, self-indulgent blogger. A lot of the time all I do is litter the electronic stage with drivel and crap. I’ve been writing this blog for almost ten years and I think the time has come to demolish the balcony and sell the metal for scrap. I’m running out of things to bitch, moan and whine about; maybe I’m content. How did this happen?

Yes, the government of the United States, a purported Democracy, spies on its citizens; the Hydra-headed security state monitors our telephone calls and studies our e-mail messages and Facebook and Twitter posts.

Yes, our economic arrangements are absurd and inhuman, deliberately rigged in favor of the haves at the expense of the have-nots. I accept that this is a nation separate and unequal, and that the American Dream of upward mobility is dead for all but the wealthy and well connected; the rest of us are riding the down escalator, wondering how low it will take us.

Yes, the United States is the most feared nation on the planet. We have cruise missiles and drones and a massive intelligence apparatus, and numerous ways to project military power into places where we have no business operating. We trample the sovereignty of other nations with impunity; we swagger as only a true hypocrite can, and congratulate ourselves for being the baddest bully on the block.

And, so what?

The sun rises and sets, the neighbors get up in the morning and go to work or school or wherever, and my family does the same. My sixteen-year-old son is morose and brooding, temperamental and surly; my eleven-year-old daughter must be pushed or pulled out the door with her backpack and lunch bag dragging on the ground, her hair tangled and her Converse untied. My kids tie me in knots -- I love them, of course, the trouble is I just don’t understand them. Who are these opinionated and demanding little people? Why are they so dissatisfied with their young lives, their schools, and their friends? I tell myself that I was different at their age, but I was probably even more pig-headed, obstinate, stubborn, rude, and obnoxious. I was a shit, pure and simple. Guilty as charged. I pulled plenty of stupid stunts. One of these days I’ll reach back in my memory and write about some of my dim-witted pranks and pratfalls.

In the meantime, I hold on here on the American Riviera, on the north end of Milpas street. My luck is running pretty good. Life could be much worse.