Post No. 989: Close Observation

 “You give me power in your God’s name.” Cult of Personality, Living Colour

The last time I wrote, wildfires were burning in Canada and this week wildfires are burning in Greece and Algeria. Swaths of the continental US are baking. Ocean water off the coast of Florida hit triple digit temperatures. The world is out of balance, too much taken and too little given back; too much abuse and far too little care. Are you prepared for the reckoning? 

I have a condition in my right thumb -- de Quervains tenosynovitis. It’s painful and inconvenient, slams the breaks on my fitness regimen, makes it harder to do household chores, and, combined with the stabbing pain in my trapezius I often feel when riding my bike, keeps me from cycling to and from work, which I enjoy. I’ve also got some stiffness in my left thumb, probably the same affliction as the right. 

Because of these injuries and aches my fitness regime demands alteration, a shift in focus from strength work to balance, flexibility and mobility, a mish-mash of martial arts, yoga, tai chi. I’ve got a work shift coming up, which means between 12-15 miles of walking; I have to wear a brace to support my thumb. Five days since I had an x-ray at the walk-in clinic. Without my fitness routine I’m not sure I could do my part-time job the way I do it, though I’m always conscious of how I move, bend, and reach. It helps that I’m down to 16 hours a week, usually the early shift on Tuesday and Saturday. I do more than I’m asked and usually feel good when I clock out for the day. 

As far as living is concerned, my life is good, really fortunate, luck holds. My family isn’t struggling or suffering. I spent several hours today reading, on our back patio, under the big market umbrella and towering Bird of Paradise. Finally finished a wonderful work of nonfiction by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. It came out more than ten years ago but is no less relevant now. Americans of European descent forget that Indigenous people existed on this continent for thousands of years. They learned how to survive and the workings of the natural world by close, careful observation, and considered the Earth sacred because it was the source of their survival, a subject, not an object. I’m going to take a run at writing an essay for the California Review of Books about a few of the concepts the book raises, in particular that of collective responsibility. It’s a wise book, full of reverence for how nature provides if properly understood as a living thing, with a spirit. It’s a different and alternative mindset, based on balance and mutual abundance, not scarcity. Suffice to say that it’s a mindset foreign to the majority of Americans. Ask the average American the significance of the term “Honorable Harvest,” and you will receive a blank stare. Huh? Honorable what? Is it on TikTok? 

I’m still keeping one eye on the political scene, in particular indictments of Donald Trump, but I’m doing my best not to fixate and obsess. There’s a lot of political malpractice happening at the moment, by Trump’s allies and lackeys, in Alabama and Georgia, but if I stare at it too long I become angry and anxious, caught up in dire thoughts and worries. 

Has Mark Meadows flipped on Trump or has he decided to lash himself to the Orange Menace and go down with the ship? Pray tell, motherfucker. Trump surrounds himself with a lot of punks, but Mark Meadows is a punk’s punk, not to mention a coward, and I have a tough time believing he’s willing to do prison time for Trump. It’s more likely that faced with evidence of his criminal scheming with Trump’s mad fantasy that he won the 2020 election, Meadows sang to Jack Smith’s investigators, possibly copping to lesser crimes in exchange for his cooperation and testimony against Big Daddy Trump. 

Trump is starting to panic, to rattle, hum, and shudder. You can tell by the increasingly unhinged tone of his public statements. Like the rat that he is, Trump can see the escape routes narrowing, and all he can think to do is stir up his base about his legal predicaments. But this is a tougher sell to the MAGA faithful. “Lock her up!” and “Build the wall!” resonate more than “I did nothing wrong!” and the “Deep State is out to get me!” More indictments can’t come soon enough. Bury the Orange Menace. 

Speaking of menaces. Did Bibi Netanyahu just pull off in Israel what Donald Trump dreams of doing in the US? Place himself and his cronies above and beyond the reach of the law. That’s an autocrat’s passport to top-tier looting of the public treasury and destruction of the rule of law. Tens of thousands of Israeli citizens poured into the streets in protest. In Tel Aviv, authorities dispersed the protestors with water cannons and tear gas. 

The weather app on my phone claims it’s 76 degrees outside; feels more like 80, just after eleven a.m. 

Monkey Business

 “The body is strong, but the world always ends up crushing it.” Aleksandar Hemon

Wildfires in Canada. Floods in Vermont and Pennsylvania. Killer heat across the American southwest. Donald Trump. A summer of threats that residents of the open air asylum that is America will do their best to ignore. America is still a powerful nation, but we’re not a serious one. 

In 1987, Senator Gary Hart was campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination when he took an ill-fated boat trip out of Miami with a young woman, not his wife. When the press questioned Hart his initial reaction was to deny the allegation, but there were photographs, and the shamed candidate withdrew from the race to repair his marriage. A few months later Hart attempted to restart his bid for the nomination, but the damage to his reputation was done. The Democrats ran Michael Dukakis against Pappy Bush and lost. 

How far we’ve traveled on the road to normalized corruption. Shame no longer has any influence over powerful people. Look at Trump. He has paid no cost for bragging about grabbing women by their vaginas, for paying hush money to a porn actress, for shaking down the president of Ukraine, for stealing classified information and withholding it from the government for more than a year, for being impeached twice, and for instigating an attempted coup. People have forgotten that Trump’s incompetence caused thousands of unnecessary fatalities during the early days of the Covid pandemic. 

Like a landfill, our collective memory hole is running out of capacity. 

In a normal country, Donald Trump wouldn’t be a candidate for president because people with a functioning moral compass wouldn’t allow it. In a normal country, Trump would be shunned, ignored; his name and image would be synonymous with failure and corruption; if he had the temerity to appear in public he would be jeered and mocked, laughed at, ridiculed. His fact-free word salad speeches would draw boos, not cheers. 

The orange-hued Dragon of Lies cannot be shamed. That’s Trump’s super power. It’s also what makes him a sociopath. 

Who turned the world upside down?

A summer of threats. A summer of dancing and baseball and hot dog eating contests in the courtyard of the open air asylum. Don’t worry inmates, we can consume our way out of any difficulty. Eat, drink, be merry, and pay no attention to the choking smoke, withering heat and rising floodwaters. Don’t worry, be happy. All we need is make-believe and Amazon Prime. 

The boat that left Miami with Gary Hart and the woman not his wife on board was called the Monkey Business. Those were more innocent times. If Donald Trump took a cruise tomorrow with an underage Ivanka look-alike, the corporate media would yawn.

No shame. No honor. No decency. 

Post No. 987: A Good Day to Read Bukowski

 “Through unity, survival. All flourishing is mutual. Soil, fungus, tree, squirrel, boy -- all are the beneficiaries of reciprocity.” Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

The sun has burned the marine layer off and it’s lovely and bright and warm, and old Neil Young is playing the Bowl down the street. Should be good. Loud, probably. Neil’s always had things to say and a compelling way of saying them. He’s got quiet songs and rocking songs. 

I saw a fair number of tourists on State Street when I was out earlier. Saw a wedding at the Courthouse, Mexican family, heavy young women in tight dresses, coiffed, glammed up head-to-toe for the occasion, men and boys in dark suits, baggy trousers, new shoes. Someone’s big day. The lawn in and around the Sunken Garden is covered with beach towels, blankets of many colors, folding chairs, for the movie that begins when darkness falls. Friday night, SB. 

The mean world is at bay, for the moment, so why not enjoy it to the full? Because it doesn’t sit right, the complete, random dumb luck of being born here, not there, on this side of the line, not that side, on this continent, rather than someplace much meaner and harder than anything I’ve been forced to experience. Lucky, that’s all. In no way better or more deserving, just lucky. And because I have no illusions of permanent security of any kind. Circumstances can change quickly. Health. Money. Housing. Job. Family. 

That’s why it’s a good day to read Bukowski, because he had a take on life, and luck played a significant part in his outlook. Luck with women, luck with wine and booze, luck at the racetrack, luck with the word. Roll of the dice. Snake-eyes, double 6’s. Have gratitude because it won’t last, nothing does. Nothing can, except the earth, and that is uncertain as of this week, when the hottest surface temperatures in recorded history were written into the books. 

Consequences are felt, lives disrupted, the poor and less fortunate, the less lucky, feel the effects first and hardest. How it goes, right? Every time and place, under every social structure, bishop or king, queen or lord, mayor or general, chief or tsar. Some survive the consequences of greed and ego and fear, wars and pogroms and massacres and floods and earthquakes. Luck holds, they have the resources to sidestep pain and loss. Others die or get dispossessed or flee. 

We’re on a planet that’s spinning and we trick ourselves into thinking we’re in complete control. 

Bukowski knew that in America fear is piled atop fear. He wasn’t unaware of law and politics and racism and injustice but never paid it more attention than he thought it deserved. He knew politicians lied, priests buggered young boys, poor people were routinely exploited, women were raped, many of his fellow white people were racist; he’d been on the seamy and ugly side of the street, worked for years in soul-grinding jobs. He knew that in America a man as malignant and awful as Donald Trump would never be assassinated. He saw the knife’s edge and wondered why others couldn’t. 

Bukowski was appreciative but never expectant. 

How deep into the catalog will Neil Young go? Man made some great songs. Nostalgia time for some in the crowd. “I remember…” The old person’s opener. 

How to describe it, gratitude laced with melancholy? Bukowski called that a gin & tonic.