1995

My daughter was 14 years old. I was forty. We had been on our own for a while, living off the emotional land, as it were. Eeking out an existence in the land of single parenthood. Bumbling my way through one bad decision after another. Plumbing the depths and bobbing back to the surface and gasping for air. Oh, look. Here’s Kristin! You need some air, too? Take a gasp, why don’t you. I did some truly deplorable things yet we both survived without major incident or incarceration. No visits from Family Services, thankfully. Some stars were not only smiling upon us benignly but grinning at us wickedly and saying, “How can we screw with them today, poor little fuckers?”

And for my fortieth birthday Kristin wanted to do something special. She wanted to throw me one of those fortieth birthday parties. You know, the ones with the black balloons and the ‘Over the Hill’ banners? Kids think that sort of thing is funny, you know. Unfortunately she hadn’t learned enough of her Machiavelli to not let me know her plans sufficiently in advance so I could plan my own proactive revenge. Pathetic she.

I announced, quite dramatically, that the first week of March, 1995, in my fortieth year, we are going to Disney World. So that’s that. Take that ya little twerp! Splash Mountain here we come.

As it turned out I was slated to attend a conference in Orlando in the September of 1994. It was a computer geek, database, mainframe conference of interest only to boring computer geek, database, mainframe, individuals like me, but it was in Orlando, Florida. During the week I attended many sessions, lectures, expose’s, dissections of digital parsers, and recursive and repetitive enumerators, and other such incomprehensibles. Plus great banquets and numerous hospitality suites from fortune five hundred companies that wanted to give us tee shirts and sell us products with their platinum blond booth bunnies. You had to be there. It was a slice.

So, of course. I took an afternoon off to go to-where else? Disney World. I and my friend, Rick, spent an evening in Epcot Center. It might have been called EPCOT Center back then, I don’t know if they had given up on that Experimental Protocol shit yet or not. It was fun, anyway. Rick didn’t understand Journey into Imagination. I loved it.

Kristin felt a little betrayed when I told her when I got back, but I told her I had been doing some reconnoitering. You know, seeing the land. Checking out the alien ground. Finding out what we needed to know for our frontal assault and such-not. Besides. I had only gone to Epcot. We still had the Magic Kingdom all to ourselves. I’m not sure she was convinced. But we went the following March and had a wonderful time, anyway.

Flash forward to today. And the next year, 2021, my daughter Kristin will be-Surprise! Forty years old. January forth to be precise. And I want dearly to take her and her husband, my dear son-in-law Seeth, to Disney World. Let’s go see the magic again, shall we?

I feel there will be symmetry. And maybe beauty. Or at least fun.

The Mind Egg

There are two motivating factors. Philosophy and ability. Philosophy tells us what we might do. Ability tells us what we can do. The sister of these is… And so I laid a mind egg.

Maya stood up. She thought. And pondered. And thought better of it. Then thought once again. A thought that might take shape and blossom into an idea and maybe a reconciliation. She created a thought in her mind. She wondered.

Maya stood in the wreckage of my mind and looked around, unimpressed. Her world in ruins around her. She thought, “What am I doing here?” and then she knew. She was a whirlwind in the tornado.

“OK. Focus. Why am I here? Where am I here? And for whatever am I here?” Good questions.

Then she perceived. “I am being tortured to reconcile philosophy and ability.” The daunting task grew upon her like moss on the stones of a village well. “I’m doomed,” she said out loud. Her thoughts did not betray her.

Some time later Maya reconsidered. “If the crux of philosophy and ability lies in the arms of the animal or the spiritual soul, assuming it does, and our embrace of one or the other draws nearer to the one than to the other, then which one? Are we the animal? Or the spiritual?

Then the thinking began.

The Hand Job

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Don Quixote

In the wake of every civilization comes its mockery. Its decay. And its devastation. Ours none the lesser. 

The parasites of culture are its critics, first honestly, then ironically, and lastly with a flag wave of peril to come and a hand wave of warning of what may be if things don’t change.

The Cassandras. The neighsayers. Those who ponder the best and the worst of us all. Those who express moderate discomfort, genuine concern, considerable pause for thought. 

Then, with dismay and horror of impending doom, followed by insanity, increasingly shrill, endless torment, and finally with desperation; the end of it all. And so Babylon the Great is fallen.

And in the end, absurdity. But absurdity with a seed of what comes next. The prophets who foretell destruction also declare rebirth. Always death, then birth. 

Let us hope so. We could use a new world of hope and the rebirth of ignorance of what has gone on in the past, the faceless time before us in our all encompassing here and now. Just like every other one who came before us. Let them dream their own dreams and tilt at their own windmills.

Let them observe their own ceremonies of ignorance. For a while. Until.

Peace

Vlad Tepes, Champion of Christian Peace

"If there is to be peace in the world,
There must be peace in the nations.
If there is to be peace in the nations,
There must be peace in the cities.
If there is to be peace in the cities,
There must be peace between neighbors.
If there is to be peace between neighbors,
There must be peace in the home.
If there is to be peace in the home,
There must be peace in the heart.” 

                                        Lao-tse

All governments employ authoritarian tactics, even those we like.

The Chinas. The Russias. The British Empires.

The Israels. The Saudi Arabias.

And yes. Even the saintly USAs.

All.

All have their Gulags, their Guantanamos, and their Gazas.

All have their Shea's Rebellions, their Tiananmen Squares, and their Yemens.

All deploy their jack boots and dispense their tear gas.

All have their killing fields.

Cruel Vlad Tepes impales on our behalf,

Christian Europe counted on him to hold back the hordes.

Else anarchy will reign, barbarians will invade.

Else empire will fall.

All pitch towards abuse and sadism, revolution and vengeance.

All presage the rise of another oppressive regime.

All end in the sinkhole of despair.

We tolerate them provided they accommodate us,

Til our time comes

The boot on the neck keeps the other boot off ours,

Til it comes to our own neck.

The oppressed bide their time till they become the oppressors and thus, once again oppressed.

The tally of peace is outnumbered, its ledger is chaos.We are all adrift in the basket of hypocracies.

The citizens understand this, beneath layers of self-righteousness.

The authoritarian regime is sanctified by its people.

Law and order is a temple of war supplications.

We fear the war lords in our neighborhoods and prefer the barons in our cities.

“Keep the peace,” we pray. “Peace at all cost.”

For there is no peace in our hearts.

The Mask and the Idiot

I’ve been using a makeshift mask from a bandanna folded up and held onto my head with some twist ties that came with a power tool I bought recently. It’s infinitely adjustable and makes me look like a hillbilly bank robber. I decided to get some official masks, in case I want to go someplace that was respectably infected.

Since I had been voted, ‘Most likely to be required to wear a mask,’ in high school, I decided maybe I should get a better quality one. I ran out of paper painters’ masks, which only really caused me to fog up my glasses and take the mask off anyway, so I went to the Great Oracle Google at Delphi.

Entering ‘Masks’ brought up some great ones of Thanos, The Skull, and Hulk. How come the girl superheros don’t have funny faces? Thanos would be an improvement and possibly fulfill my high school prophecy, but I didn’t see any with an N95 rating. So I tried things like, ‘Surgical Masks,’ ‘Covid Masks,’ and ‘Medical Masks.’ This time I found something more interesting. There were plenty to choose from.

I was looking for something reusable and washable. I was being optimistic that I would live that long, I guess. So I entered, ‘Reusable Surgical Masks.’ Again, I got a lot of returns, some even what I had actually asked for. One said, ‘Best Cloth Face Masks Still Available Online for...’

For…? For what? For free? For rent? For love or money? For the Discriminating Infectee? Sounds too dicey. Let’s try, ‘Washable Masks,’ for One Thousand, Alex.

After scrolling through a bunch of ads for Amazon masquerading as search results, I found, ‘Best Washable Reusable Face Masks Reviews 2020 – Red Hot...’ OK. I’ll worry about 'Red Hot what?' later.

Scrolling down through the entries, which were hardly reviews, I found some interesting ones. But since the web site didn’t specify what their criteria was for ‘Best,’ I went somewhere else. ‘Somewhere else’ being another search query at the Google well.

This time I found the site, ‘Top 10 best reusable face masks medical review.’ Oh, a top ten list, as in David Letterman! That’s gotta be scientific. I scrolled through and found a number of masks, many modeled by pretty Asian women. Is that racist? Accurate? Irrelevant? Each of them had a concise description and click box that said, ‘Check Price & Detail... amazon,’ and the Amazon logo.

I clicked on the link and was brought to a page that said, ‘SORRY we couldn’t find that page. Try searching or go to Amazon’s home page.’ Below it was a picture of a bored black dog, presumably the anthropomorphic representation of Amazon’s search engine. When it is bored, at least.

And anyway, none of these masks looked any better than my Billy the Kid mask, though they were more stylish. On Billy, at lease. I couldn't be sure any of these would look any good on me.

Also, when I did find some, always on Amazon, that looked reasonable, the reviews were all over the infection rate chart. None had a high overall rating. One of the comments said their order had come with white finger prints over all of the masks. One said his mask was dirty, including smeared with lipstick, so it was obviously used. Some had been stuffed in a zip lock bag. Obviously, these were outliers. I hope so, at least. But this is a medical item, after all. That kind of stuff is OK if you are buying it for someone else.

I eventually did a search for ‘Medical supplies,’ and found some non-gimmicky places. The top one was for ‘Binson’s Home Health Care Centers.’ OK. I’ll give this son of a bin a shot. I was concerned that it might not be wholesale, but it was worth a click.

They were legit and even had a medical mask right on top of the page. It looked good, made in America. It would block dust, particles, smoke, etc. Not an N95, of course, but I’m not looking for an Aqualung. None of them can legally say, ‘blocks viruses.’ Not for nine dollars for three masks which might arrive in a sandwich bag smeared with bio-matter at least as questionable as the virus. This one was the only one that was treated with an antimicrobial and guaranteed to last one year, while still being reusable and washable. It didn’t come with the Rolling Stones logo on it, though. So, naturally, I took my Googling elsewhere.

I didn’t find anything else I liked, so I came back to the Binky site. Overall the mask looked good, after all. It was one of the cup shaped ones, with a prominent pleat to accommodate my generous nose. It was adjustable, one size fits most, androgynous, and biologically correct. And wash and wearable, of course. It was more expensive than the Dr. Nick brand masks, but I expected as much.

If anyone is looking for a good mask that is from a medical supply store, check out www.binsons.com. I’m not recommending it, of course. It's just a suggestion.

It’s gotta be better than a head scarf.

A Canticle of Our Times

The Gyroscope

“Wherever two or more people are gathered together there is politics,” speaks an anecdotal quote from somewhere long gone and strangely relevant.

Tough words.

For a tough crowd.

But there we are. At the center of it.

The center of politics.

Politics drives us as we deny it.

Politics changes us.

We change politics.

It is in the bone and marrow of our lives,

In the very blood of it!

Politics is us.

Hail, Politics! The bane and business of life!

Hail, the destroyer of worlds!

Are you bloody enough yet?

What is political?

Ay, there’s the rub.

Politics is as politics does, each and every kind. One and another.

What are politics?

That is the question.

The politics of what is possible,

Or what is inevitable?

Which prevails?

Who decides?

Who or what makes it happen?

Which one is better? Which one works?

We are the gyroscope, the spin machine that does not cease turning,

The claw that ever clutches, the crowd that continues to grow,

The hate that ever musters,

And having mustered, dissipates into the void,

And comes back again.

The mob that will not cease.

The butterfly that turns back into a cocoon and regrows into something else, through pain and grief.

We are change,

And change is an abomination and a godsend.

We are the future,

Guernica reborn.

Mi Lai on the 6:00 O’clock news,

Kent State cast down, once again,

A girl crying over a fellow,

In anguish.

The change we long for comes and we are not satisfied with it,

Yet we strive for it again.

Insist on it!

Change! we say.

Change!

We demand it!

And yet we stay the same.

The widening gyre does not cease but widens on,

Ever growing,

Never stopping,

Never slacking.

It slows not nor knows where it goes next, plundering always.

It just keeps on, as it has always.

Every step is death,

Every grope forward kills,

Every death nourishes,

Every boot grinds forth a new life,

A new pain,

A new hope.

And in some foreign Bethlehem we are reborn,

Maybe,

For a time,

Until death drowns our ceremonies again,

And another generation of innocents learns the gyre of politics.

Thus the gyroscope spins.