Still Life With Beer Bottle

“Tenure is short in the fast lane. Julius Caesar was dead after five years at the top, and the hideous pervert Caligula was gone just short of four, like a one-term U.S. president.” Hunter S. Thompson, from Generation of Swine

In early September my daughter will turn 15 and my son 20. My Virgo children, markers of my years. How did we get here? Plenty of twists and turns in this road, more than a few potholes to knock our alignment out of whack, an off-ramp or two that led to an unfinished bridge over a dry riverbed. I can’t help but look back and wonder what I’ve done, what I’m doing, and what it all means.

If you have to ask yourself if you are happy, are you?

I think of all the books I will never read and the places I will never see; both are numerous. I want to travel to Italy and Spain and France, the Czech Republic and Istanbul, but travel requires money and time and I’m a working stiff, dependent on the monthly paycheck, like so many in this nickel and dime USA, where peasants are on the hook for outrageous costs for our kids’ education and the pills we need to remain healthy. I’ve stood witness to the death of the American Dream and the deliberate strangling of the Middle Class, lived through Nixon and Carter and Reagan and Bush I and his demented offspring and the frenzied corporate giveaway of the Clinton years.

And Obama, friend of the oligarchs, the world’s biggest arms merchant. President Drone. Evidence? I don’t need no damn evidence, reasonable suspicion is all I need. Bang, you’re dead. Sorry about your wife and son and nephew and mother-in-law. The science of murder is unfortunately inexact.

A long downward slide toward the abyss where a smiling Hillary Clinton waits with a hand-lettered sign that says, “Join Me.” No way sister, I’d rather cannonball down than stand on the rim with you. Go swindle someone else with your BS tales.

I sit on my rented deck with a cold bottle of Guinness, green treetops on three sides, a slight breeze; the bottle sweats. Finches and wrens titter and flit among the branches. Overhead there is blue sky streaked with wispy clouds. My daughter is at rehearsal for the Fall show at the high school, my son is working at a restaurant in the trendy Funk Zone, and my wife is on her way home from the SB Independent. I should read but am tired after a long day and it feels good to sit back and close my eyes, let my mind wander back over time and place. I have a sense of peace, but no sooner do I realize this when I wonder when it will end. Because it will, because it must, because this is the way of life.

Why is it that the longer I live the less I feel I know? I am humbled by my ignorance.

Lines blur, colors fade, certainty is dangerous; this seems significant, to me anyway, but the finches and the wrens could care less.

August - Santa Barbara County

North of Santa Barbara a wildfire burns and a plume of smoke is visible from the city. Winds are pushing the fire east, into the dry backcountry. The fire hasn’t discouraged the tourist trade, as evidenced by the crowds sipping wine in the so-called “Funk Zone” and a jam-packed 101 southbound.  

My daughter begins 10th grade tomorrow, and she is apprehensive, not about her classes but about her wardrobe. After two days of shopping with her mother, and the expenditure of a minor fortune, the girl announces that she is ready. Tomorrow morning will be a struggle. After weeks of sleeping past 10:00 a.m., my daughter will be roused from sleep by her iPhone, and trudge droopy-eyed to the kitchen, where, without opening her eyes, she will fill a bowl with rice krispies and milk. I know better than to talk to her in the morning. She tells me that she hates school, a sentiment which cuts me, given that I have spent the last 17 years working for the local school district. My aspirations for her are modest -- that she learn to think critically and challenge what she is told to take for granted, and that she enjoy learning for the rest of her life.

I am an introvert by nature, and prefer small gatherings to large ones; I need to spend a good deal of time alone, and I do, particularly in the early morning, before the sun rises and my family wakes. I read, scribble in my notebook, sip coffee, listen to the birds. As I get older I think about mortality, how life can be so fragile, so easily upended by a single encounter or the caprice of chance. I scan the news, read, with sinking heart, about the flooding in Louisiana or the war in Syria; I imagine brown water rising to the roof line of a house; I imagine a refugee family trying to decide what to take and what to leave behind. Life can change course in the blink of an eye. I can’t protect my children from this harsh fact.

I recognize that I am getting older, crankier, more judgmental, because the young women who live across the driveway from us annoy me no end with their loud voices, vacuous conversations, off-key singing. Their names are Chloe and Tiffany and Kira, but I’m not sure which one is which. One of them drives a black Audi. People come and go over there, a parade of faces, cars, voices.

John Coltrane playing, the miracle of digital music, everything at one’s fingertips, with almost no interval between desire and fulfillment. Amazon delivers happiness, even on Sundays; but no day is sacred in a capitalist society. With the rising sun comes another opportunity to be sold, to buy, to acquire. Technology without limits is a deal with the Devil, all of us down at the crossroads on our knees, our heads bowed, ready to pay a very dear price for ephemeral happiness.

Wrong Way On A One-Way Street

“I think Trump will be a neofascist catastrophe and Clinton will be a neoliberal disaster.” Dr. Cornel West

Fiesta time again on the Platinum Coast. Later tonight, when the festivities officially kick off, the streets will be crowded with tourists; white people who know little about Spanish colonialism will holler Viva la Fiesta! at the top of their lungs. Tourists in search of the Old Mission, the County Courthouse, and De La Guerra plaza will become lost and drive their rental cars the wrong way on one-way streets. Locals will say they have seen it all before.

The Solstice parade, 4th of July fireworks, and Fiesta make up the holy trinity of Santa Barbara’s summer. Many locals are indifferent to these spectacles and hunker down as far away from them as possible, happy to let the city preen, revel in its unique beauty, and emerge only when the last drunk has stumbled home.

For a local boy like me Fiesta is a nuisance but this year it will help distract me from the circus that is our presidential election. Trump or Clinton – the choice that isn’t a choice at all. The political duopoly, Democrats and Republicans, still rule the roost, make the rules, and keep third parties marginalized.

Tweedledee and Tweedledum, same as always. Democracy as farce.

The clips of the Democratic Convention that I saw were depressing, not because Hillary spoke from both sides of her mouth – I expected that – but because Democrats have enthusiastically embraced War and Imperialism and blind Patriotism. Hillary said the US has the most powerful military force in the world, which is true, and we should, given that over half of the federal budget is devoted to our military. No other nation is as devoted to its military as the United States. We fawn over retired generals and pay constant lip service to our brave men and women in uniform. But if we are so powerful why are we still in Afghanistan after 15 years of military operations? Why are we once again bombing Libya? These questions are lost in the chants of USA! USA! USA!

We wage war on a tactic and wonder why we can’t win. Or perhaps the truth is that we know we can’t win, ever, nor can we stand down, so we keep doing the same things and getting the same results. That’s the definition of insanity, right?

So neither party represents the interests of working stiffs, environmentalists, or folks who want the US to stop bombing other countries. Trump and Pence will most likely implode between now and Election Day, leaving us with neoliberal Hillary and her puppet, Tim Kaine. What a pathetic state of affairs. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to see a woman earn the nomination, it’s high time that barrier be broken, but Clinton is the wrong woman; she’s not nearly as competent as corporate media make her out to be, and I don’t see her doing much beyond maintaining the status quo, which is great for Wall Street banks, defense and intelligence contractors, resource extractors, polluters, and income inequality.

And I’m almost positive that Hillary will get us into an ugly confrontation with Russia.

Hillary’s only appeal, beyond her gender, is that she’s not Donald Trump. Many voters will cast a vote for Clinton for this reason alone, a vote against rather than a vote for.

But hey, America is still the greatest country on earth, isn’t it? Generous, kind, fair, just, trustworthy, resolute, and steadfast. We believe our own BS. When we bomb you it’s because we are righteous.