“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.
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