Too Much Stuff

 

“Behind every beautiful thing there’s been some kind of pain.” Bob Dylan

= I came across a quote by Thomas Mann that seems to sum up the age we are living in here in the barely united United States.  Mann wrote, “Fanaticism turns into a means of salvation, enthusiasm into epileptic ecstasy, politics becomes an opiate for the masses, a proletarian eschatology; and reason veils her face.” The batshit antics of the Trump-owned GOP, from the surreal ballot recount in Arizona, which may be ruled illegal if it gets any nuttier, to Trump urging all his sycophants to run Liz Cheney out of her leadership position, to the hundreds of anti-democracy voting bills introduced in Republican-controlled state legislatures. The assault on Liz Cheney, who sits third in the House hierarchy, behind the power-mad Kevin McCarthy and Trump bootlicker Steve Scalise, is an example of the GOP eating its own. Cheney’s transgression? Refusing to carry water for Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election, which, let’s not forget, he lost. I haven’t forgotten that Cheney is the spawn of Uncle Dick Cheney, one of the most devious VP’s in recent history; she’s a hard-right Conservative about whom the only positive thing I can say is that at least what she believes is tethered to reality. If it appears that Cheney is standing alone against the Forces of Trump it’s only because the bar for integrity in the GOP is an inch from the surface of the cesspool. McCarthy, McConnell, Hawley, Cruz, Rubio -- this bumper crop of political miscreants -- who daily trade their honor for power, are going to destroy the GOP as a viable political party. Since the Reagan Revolution conservatives have run the table, as dominant as the best Manchester United teams under Sir Alex Ferguson, but they have lost the magic and must be relegated. They’re out of ideas, other than obstruction and destruction. They’re deathly afraid of Donald J. Trump, who sits on his fat behind down in Mar-A-Lago and whines about election fraud, and SAVING OUR GREAT COUNTRY to small crowds of devoted fans and asskissers like Kevin McCarthy. America might benefit from more than two political parties, but at the very least two are necessary, and they must do more than obstruct, undercut, and sabotage each other. We’re headed for a bad patch, of this I am sure. The GOP is too far out to sea to rescue itself. Thanks to Trump, the man incapable of accepting defeat, every election from here out will be doubted, contested, and denounced for impropriety. Democracy runs on faith in shared norms, and rules written and unwritten. Trump always thought, and still does, that no law applies to him. 

=One week in our new digs. First time we’ve ever lived in a house. Still surrounded by boxes in need of unpacking, but we’ve made good progress in a week. Got the cable and the WiFi connected -- after I dashed down to Office Max and bought a new cable modem. Washed our first loads of laundry, ironically the last in our 15-year-old GE washing machine. Blew the bearings the first time we used it in our new home. We bought a refurbished Kenmore for $450 from a man with a side yard full of appliances of every description. Commercial grade stoves, a huge gas range circa1949, refrigerators, cannibalized washers and dryers, hoses and motors. It was like an amusement park of appliances. 

We have real windows. By that I mean double-windows which slide up and down. Of the many things I loathed about our apartment, the casement windows were at the top of the list. I’ve always wanted a front porch wide enough for a bench or chairs, and now we have one, with a little bistro set my wife purchased from Wayfair or such. (Inexpensive stuff, made in China by human beings who earn very little money, a fact not lost on me.) We have a solid front door. We have nooks and crannies, a kitchen you can actually move around in without bumping into something or someone. We even have a fireplace. Yet this first week we have struggled to adapt to the space, our minds and muscles trained over two decades to a very different configuration of light switches and cupboards and drawers. Waking up one night to pee, I was momentarily lost, not sure where the bathroom was. Long way to go yet, but this is going to be a wonderful house to live in, though I suspect it will be cold in the winter months. Another month, possibly two, before we’re dialed in. 

The move has also been difficult because clutter and disorder unsettles me. I can handle a certain amount of both, but when I reach my limit I get cranky as hell, a problem for my wife and daughter, both of whom tend to hoard. Over twenty years we had simply accumulated too much stuff, a lot of it useless. I counted six upright fans, a big box of board games no one has played for at least five years, a bolt of muslin that I’ve wanted to toss for a quarter century, a broken telescope that belonged to my wife’s father. To me moving day felt like drowning. We loaded box after box into the U-Haul and still there were more. For the first couple of days we climbed over and around boxes and hunted for toothbrushes and Q-Tips and prescription medications. It kind of made me snap, I just lost my shit over the futility of moving all this stuff from one place to another, only this time without a large storage space to put it in. Six plastic storage boxes full of Christmas ornaments, enough to decorate three trees. Rolls of wrapping paper, some sealed, most open, loose, torn. Boxes of shoes. Stuff, everywhere. I’m still looking for a black belt. 

=My beloved Chelsea Football Club booked a place in the Champions League Final later this month, brushing aside a struggling Real Madrid team. This is a stunning achievement for a team that six months ago looked to be going absolutely nowhere. Frank Lampard’s team was bereft of identity and solidity, and some players, like centerback Antonio Rudiger, and wingback Marcos Alonso, had been shunted aside like surplus parts. When Lampard got sacked and the German Thomas Tuchel took over,  it was a reclamation project of the highest order. But Tuchel has been more than up to the task. The hallmark of successful football managers is their ability to make good players great players. Tuchel has a good football mind and very high standards for his team.