What You Need To Do Now

“I’ll tell you what you need to do now,” he said, “and I know you don’t want to do it, but believe me, trust me, you need to do this now.”

How did you get in here?

“I live here, my friend. Don’t waste energy puzzling over pointless questions. This is what you need to do.”

I don’t need anybody to tell me what I need to do.

“Your opinion, which I respect as much as your asshole. Look, we all have them, doesn’t mean anything, really, outside of excretion. If you would be a little more wise, stop interrupting and listen to me.”

Who died and made you the boss?

“Dave. His name was Dave. Look, are you going to keep playing the fool or are you going to straighten up and fly right? All you have to do is open your ears right now.”

Says you.

“Nobody else here.”

How do I know that?

“Jesus, man, you really know how to channel that old friend of your’s who read the article that pointed out that just because a thought pops into your head doesn’t mean you have to express it. He told you how much of an impression it made on him, although not enough of an impression to stop him from acting like you are now. You remember how things escalated and escalated simply because he could not stop to think if the thing he was about to say was about to make things better or worse?”

You made your point, go ahead.

“I just want you to know that you did good yesterday. What you wrote was good. You set the stage, the difficult father, the lifelong war, the fact that he was a good man and also a prick. There was a distance to the telling that was not in the previous version where you tried to condense the whole personal story into a few claustrophobic pages. The description of your father fading before your eyes, the brutal fact that he was astride a ticking time bomb and didn’t know it, though he also must have known it, that there was no time to waste, though you two managed to waste it nonetheless, all good stuff.”

Do you know another adjective besides ‘good’?

“Do you really not know how to simply shut the fuck up and listen?”

The sound of cars shushing like a river on the nearby parkway.

“What you wrote yesterday, with a little cover letter, may get your foot in the door somewhere, to the office of someone who knows how to get you paid. The best authors work with editors, in fact, every published author works with an editor. You remember Robert Caro’s story about finding the right editor. These people are like midwives, the best of them experienced in helping to birth the most unlikely of creatures. You need to find one of these, a talented one. Before that, a literary agent is probably your first move. The literary agent will help you sell something and find you an editor.”

Wake me up when this part is done, would you?

“We’ve been over this a hundred times, ass-bite. Now I have to show up to tell you what to do. You resisted the impulse to be a smart ass in that piece you wrote yesterday, which was… good. I know referring to being a lawyer as ‘the world’s second oldest profession’ flashed through your mind, and you resisted. The impulse to whine about how hard it is to write a meaningful book, you cast that aside this time. All of that, good. Nobody who hasn’t attempted it knows what hard work, what an unlimited truckload and barge-load of hard work it is, to write a coherent book. In less than three years, my dogged friend, you’ve assembled a 1,200 page first draft. Mazel tov. Now I’m here to tell you what you need to do.”

Go ahead.

“That’s a good boy. Now you need to write a very short cover letter, a few hundred words at most. This letter will first and foremost not waste an extra second of anyone’s time. It will describe the project you’re working on, perhaps refer the recipient to the website where you got paid to let them publish a couple of short pieces. The first of those pieces tells a major story of the book in 1,000 words. If your letter is good the recipient will read the four pages you wrote yesterday. You need to send between 20 and 50 of these letters out, to literary agents, obviously. You got that?”

Yiss.

“Now here is the important part. This thing you wrote yesterday, once you’ve worked it over a few more times, is probably as close as you’re going to come to giving this your best shot. Don’t worry over that part much more. This is important: give yourself a date to send these letters out. You can do it in waves, ten at a time. The main thing is that you send some of them, say ten, by a date certain. What capitalist guru Seth Fucking Godin calls your ‘ship date’. You need to keep to a schedule now, otherwise, you’re riding in a car, astride a ticking time bomb, talking to imagined dead people instead of the father who was disappearing in front of your eyes, as your life itself slips away. You got me?”

Yes.

“Good. Now, pick an arbitrary date.”

September 30, 2018.

“Excellent. My work here is done.”

Heh, you do know an adjective besides ‘good.’ That’s good!

Hello? hello?

Recuse me, Jeff

Granted that current Attorney General Jeff Sessions is one of the few judicial nominees in American history to be denied the position because of his racist past. [1] He was nominated by Reagan and his nomination was voted down by a Republican-controlled Senate committee. Can you imagine how racist you have to be in America to be denied a federal judgeship because of your racism? It actually boggles the mind.

Still, Sessions behaved properly as Attorney General when he recused himself from an investigation into something he’d already denied his involvement in, and then had to amend his answer about, because of the clear appearance of impropriety. That is the standard for recusal: an appearance of impropriety.

It is a standard Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and their ilk routinely ignored while ruling on important partisan cases they or their families were intimately connected with (such as the 5-4 decision in the 2000 election case Bush v. Gore that stopped the recount in the close and disputed Florida presidential election). Though the appearance of impropriety was strong, the involvement of Thomas’s wife and at least one of Scalia’s sons in the Bush campaign, they simply ignored the standard for recusal in order to cast deciding partisan votes.

When Scalia was asked why he hadn’t recused himself from a case involving Dick Cheney and the disastrous deregulation of energy on the west coast, even though he and Cheney had recently gone on a hunting trip together, Scalia answered: “I think it’s a sad day in America when Americans question the integrity of the Supreme Court.”

The reporter was overmatched, she couldn’t manage to stammer, “I agree with you, Justice Scalia, it is a sad day. But that is also not an answer to my simple question. Given the appearance of impropriety raised by your personal relationship with VP Cheney, who recently took you hunting on Airforce Two, how do you justify not recusing yourself from the case involving Mr. Cheney?” Scalia was slick, and not only that, had perfect SAT scores and never got less than an A in any course he ever took. He didn’t even bother to refer to the highly applicable riddle “why does a dog lick his balls?”

Sessions behaving with integrity in recusing himself has apparently long infuriated his boss, the temper-tantrum prone man with the troubled psyche at whose pleasure Sessions serves. On Fox yesterday, Sessions’s boss said this:

President Donald Trump: “Jeff Sessions recused himself, which he shouldn’t have done, or he should have told me. Even my enemies say that ‘Jeff Sessions should have told you that he was going to recuse himself, and then you wouldn’t have put him in.’ He took the job, and then he said, ’I’m going to recuse myself.’ I said, ‘What kind of man is this?’”

What kind of man? A man who, in this instance, at least, is showing respect for the law and for the integrity of his office.

The lackeys are already lining up behind their president, like the loyal servants of his will they are. Can you listen to someone like Lindsey Graham without vomiting in your mouth a little?

All I can say is I agree with Scalia on this one. It is a sad day in America.

[1] In the end, the Republican-controlled committee voted 10 to 8 to block Sessions’s nomination, with two Republicans joining Democrats to stop it from going forward to a full vote in the Senate. At the time, CNN calculated, Sessions was only the second nominee in 50 years to be denied by the Senate for a federal judgeship.

Reading and writing

I have noticed this before. Faced with two library books to read, one beautifully written and deeply considered, and the other telling a story that makes me turn the pages, I will always read the second book first.

Not to say the writing in the story book can be crap, the story has to be well told, which takes skill, but I can tolerate a lapse of sloppy writing in the service of a good story that I can’t abide in the deeper kind of book (even though lapses of this kind are extremely rare in a beautifully written book, or in the book of any good author, actually). The compelling story-teller’s book makes me turn the pages, gives me a tasty revelation at the end of each chapter that compels me to read the next.

Walter Mosely, whose Down the River Unto the Sea I am imbibing now, is a universally appreciated master story-teller, like Stephen King. Both are also excellent writers, make no mistake, but they are primarily in business to tell a story. That is, on one level, the business of every writer, to make us want to read the rest of the story. The genius of non-fiction writer Robert Caro is to take a mountain of careful research and turn it into a seamless, self-propelling story that sucks us in. Journalistic writers like Jane Mayer and Jeremy Scahill do no less. The words matter, and none of these writers wastes a word, but the words always serve to advance the story. The story is king, Stephen, as you know.

In a life, what is the story, what is the overarching story of a life? What are the essential small stories in a life that make us sit up and pay attention, make us turn the pages, hungry for the next set of revelations? I have no fucking idea, really, but I know it when I read it. And you do too.

Death Approaches

I recall my shock, not having seen my father for a few months, when I spotted him waiting for me in a small crowd by the gate at Ft. Lauderdale airport. It was nighttime. He was there by himself, my mother was back at the apartment, reading a murder mystery or watching one on TV, perhaps assembling a puzzle on the dining room table. A tall, heavy man throughout his life, my father appeared shrunken, weak, attenuated. His skin, under the florescent lights, was a pale greyish color. Seeing me he lifted a hand and gave a tenuous half-smile.

His hair was white, as it had been for a while, but his aura, something I’d never believed in, was undeniably sickened. An air of death surrounded him, like an outline drawn around him in a unhealthy color. His approaching death was palpable, I could see it clearly there among the families happily greeting their members from up north. It was as though our long, senseless war had taken its final toll, was draining his blood and the last of his life force. He was fading before my eyes.

My father was, it must be said, in a word he often used of others, a prick. He was also heartbroken and hopelessly frustrated by the time my sister and I were adolescents. He had all the tools to be a great friend, and he’d had close friends throughout his life who roared at his dark quips, pondered his insights, but as far as his children, he was all thumbs. My sister and I couldn’t help but take it personally, the blame, the sudden, towering anger, the abuse. Still, he saw himself as first and foremost intellectually honest and this led me to believe there was some case I could make to show him the folly of his ways. My belief was naive. No case would be heard until the very last night of his life, and it was a case he made against himself, me saying only what was necessary to console a person dying with painful regrets.

I will never forget the sight of him at Ft. Lauderdale airport that night, three years before his death from undiagnosed liver cancer, faded, weak looking, wearing his mortality heavily. He was a dead man walking, in the evocative cliché, though the hematologist, endocrinologist and cardiologist he saw regularly had no clue about what might be ailing him. The ER doctor knew at once, my sister read it in his face before the doctor could give her the bad news. Our father was shrunken and jaundiced, suddenly unable to move, and the doctor palpated the inflated drum of the patient’s stomach. He tapped it and shook his head almost imperceptibly. We learned the word “ascites” — the fluid that builds up in the abdominal cavity, in this case due to liver failure. That fluid, the color of death itself, drained steadily into a large bag attached to his hospital bed. Six days later I would be closing my father’s dead eyes.

I don’t recall the car ride back to Coconut Creek that night two or three years earlier, a drive of about 25 minutes from Ft. Lauderdale airport. My father and I no doubt shot the shit somehow, both of us were fairly adept at making conversation, no matter how meaningless. I suspect the unrelieved tension between my father and his only son was one reason my mother had decided not to accompany him to pick me up, to give us time alone to talk. That and her basic laziness about things like changing back out of her housecoat once she’d put it on for the evening. We drove north on I-95, or, more likely, the Florida Turnpike.

Such drives were exhausting for both of us. My father needed to prevail, he would do whatever it took to remain indomitable. Most of the time we both tiptoed around the explosives at our feet. At this point in my life I was an adult, almost at the age when the mail from AARP begins to arrive, and it was clear my father would never listen to reason about certain subjects. This knowledge made the air between us heavy. Still, I had one last idea, would make one last try to get through to him. I didn’t feel hopeful about it in the least, but something urged me on.

I’m thinking this visit must have been a few months after the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01, since, in the days after that I finished a long letter to my parents attempting to put some things on the table between us. The discussion of this letter, during that visit, would be my last attempt at reconciliation, my father made sure of that. I’d been a lawyer for two years and was still scrambling for work, feeling very reluctant to practice the mostly futile art of making arguments for a living. My ambivalence toward the law was hard to conceal when I spoke to potential employers. I’d had an interview with a group of amoral lawyers from China scheduled for the bright blue early afternoon of 9/11/01, but their office, in tower two of the World Trade Center, was blown up a few hours before our meeting. A few weeks later I took partner Chris, my contact in that firm, to lunch in Little Italy. He insisted on sitting at a table outside, in that persistent smell of burnt bodies and toxic chemicals, and I remember he ordered, and consumed, two full meals, though he was a thin man.

I wrote to my parents in a mood of agitated despair. I’d borrowed a huge sum of money to pay for law school. The sum I borrowed, doubled with interest over the life of the loan, was more than what I would ever earn as a lawyer. Partly my own fault, because over the course of the misadventure that was my legal career, I’d mishandled, for purely personal reasons, the two cases that should have netted me large sums. Banking those sums might have partly changed my view of the profession. I was unable to divorce personal repugnance for a particular client from my need to make a living.

The fees I should have earned on those two cases would have allowed me to pay off my student loans and choose a life more suitable to my personality. I didn’t have the stomach to persevere on either case, finding both clients despicable. I persisted unhappily in a distasteful career I’d undertaken mostly to try to please a father who nothing could have pleased.

My mother years later reported someone had called me “the dumbest lawyer in New York” though the remark was made after she’d done the exact opposite of what her son the lawyer had advised, and urged, her to do. As far as doing whatever it took to make more than a subsistence living as an officer of the court with a license to print money, I was dumber than dumb.

Ironically, the idealism that made it hard for me to argue on behalf of the guilty, the unlikeable or the powerful (not that the latter have any use for a late in life lawyer with a public education) came directly from my father. He wanted something better for me than he had, he wanted me to be happy. The miserable man once explicitly told me that, in a discussion of whether I should go to law school or continue trying to be an “artist”. There are endless layers of irony in my father’s wish for my happiness, laid heavily one upon another, but that was his true wish, in his heart of hearts, his broken heart of broken hearts.

There is birth, there is life, and there is death, that much we all find out. As for happiness and misery, both of which appear in the course of every life, happiness turns out to be a delicate art that can’t be mastered without a loving community, a cheerful mentor or wise partners. Contentment, joy, happiness were not things my father had any handle on, even though he could be hilarious. It took detective work on my part, but in the end, toward the end of his life, I understood the reasons for my father’s essential misery. Still, my father was actually, almost to the end, an idealist.

He once told me a story that made a deep impression on me. A skinny stray dog was out looking for food when he was approached by a well-fed, well-groomed dog who asked him what was the matter.

The stray reported that he hadn’t eaten in several days and was feeling like shit.

“I have humans who give me as much food as I want,” said the second dog, “I can get you a meal in five minutes, I live right around the corner. Come on.”

As they trotted off the stray dog noticed some fur rubbed away around the neck of the other dog. He slowed down to ask what was up with that skin disease.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” said the dog, “that’s just from the collar that goes with the leash, it’s nothing.”

“The collar? the leash?” asked the stray, slowing down some more “what the hell is the collar and the leash?”

The other dog explained that he had a leather restraint around his neck, connected to a leash that was chained to a stake on the front lawn for much of the day, to protect the home of his masters when they were at work.

“Your masters?” said the stray dog, stopping. The other dog urged him on to dinner, but the stray turned around and trotted off to his life of precarious, difficult freedom.

So we drove north through the dark Florida night, my father at the wheel of his leased Cadillac, me tapping back whatever banter my death-haunted father offered. In a very short time the man would be buried in his grave, become a skeleton, and though there was no time to waste, we wasted it anyway.

1684 words

Son of Why Do You Bother?

I was extremely reluctant to spend $152 for a pen, even a fountain pen with a beautifully flexible nib. I’ve dreamed of a pen like that for years, but $152 seemed nuts. I carry several favorite pens with me every day and their price in total doesn’t come near $100. Which is not to say I don’t value each of my favorite pens greatly, I do. A good pen is like a true musical instrument, one that stays in tune and is a pleasure to play. You can’t make music without a true instrument, nor love the marks you make on a piece of paper without a pen that feels good leaving its mark.

Still, $152 for a pen struck me as ridiculous, even in a store that sells $4,000 pens. It was a beautiful pen, with a wonderfully flexible nib. I tried it for a long time in the store and sighed when I handed the pen back to the salesman. The salesman took the pen back when I told him I couldn’t spend that much for a fountain pen. He smiled and said “you’ll come back for it.”

A few days later I did. It quickly became my favorite pen. The salesman had assured me that the soft, delicate, flexible nib was under warranty for three years. That was reassuring, especially since, from the beginning the pen was temperamental, finicky. It was a challenge to get it to write sometimes. I learned a few tricks to gently help get the ink flowing. I cleaned it with cool distilled water periodically. I learned I had to use it every single day to keep it flowing. My cheaper pens never hesitate, this little prima dona rarely wrote as soon as you picked her up. I began carrying a little pill bottle filled with distilled water to clean the nib, on subways and wherever else I drew.

Over the course of seven months I had worn the nib down, mostly from trying to get it to write when it didn’t feel like writing, and, eventually, found myself trying to write with the dreaded “sprung nib”. This means the nib no longer flexes since it cannot return to its thin state, the tines being now permanently separated. Picture two fingers splayed apart. The pen is ruined. I hesitated for a long time, dreading the likeliest outcome, and finally brought it back to the “Fountain Pen Hospital” where I had purchased the fine writing instrument. Sekhnet met me there for moral support.

The kid at the counter was sympathetic when I told him how much I loved this pen and that the patient was in bad shape and needed a fountain pen hospital. He recommended a place I could send it where they could fix the nib for about a hundred dollars. I reminded him of the three year Namiki warranty. The older man at the desk chimed in to tell me there was no warranty for the nib. He told me he’d been doing this for sixty years and that nobody gives a warranty for a nib. I told him what his salesman had told me. He said it was impossible, Paul had worked for him for twenty-five years, he could not have told me the nib was under warranty. Paul himself passed by a few times. I was clearly a desperate man, lying, and Paul was cool as a cucumber, his boss had his back.

I somehow left the store without expressing any anger and walked away feeling a little bit kicked in the balls, but there was little I could do but call the number the kid had given me and plead my case to Namiki/Pilot. I’m not optimistic there either, but it’s worth a shot. Japanese companies still seem to take a pride in their products that American corporations have long ago realized is for losers.

Our next stop was the Samsung store in the ultra-trendy Meat Packing District of New York City. The guy who sets up the repair appointments admitted that the oversensitive moisture sensor of the Galaxy S-8 that prevents charging with a cable was a design defect. They had fixed the defect in subsequent models, Jose said, examining my phone. In high humidity the sensor goes off, and even though the phone is advertised as surviving immersion in water… but hold on. My screen was cracked, my warranty was voided and I’d have to pay $249.99 for Samsung to correct the design defect that prevents me from charging the expensive phone with a cable. Here is my cracked screen:

I snarled and stalked away from the guy to cool off, as Sekhnet continued to talk to Jose. A large security guard, hearing my curses before I walked away from Jose, came over to stand guard nearby. I calmed myself, looking into the distance, breathing slowly. After a minute I went over to the guard, who had been watching me. I explained why I’d gotten angry and showed him the phone. He agreed that the tiny scratch voiding the warranty was bullshit. He agreed that corporations regularly fuck customers, it’s just part of their business plan. Profit making means breaking a few balls here and there, no big deal for a “person” who only has one job, maximizing profit. The security guard was a lovely guy. I told him about “The Corporation” available to watch on youtube, and he told me he’d definitely check it out. My friendly chat with him helped calm me the rest of the way down.

I went back over to Jose and Sekhnet to confirm my appointment for the following day and Jose said he hadn’t made the appointment since I’d walked away from him. I told him he would have walked away too. He admitted he probably would have. “I can’t lie,” he said, as likable a response as you could hope for in that circumstance. I’ll be going over there in a couple of hours to have the phone ‘s design defect repaired, the battery replaced with an improved one, the screen replaced. All for only $249.99 plus tax. Minus the 15% goodwill discount Jose said he’ll give me, which brought the actual price down to a mere $230.43.

Minor interaction in an art supply store we went to next left me feeling no better. The manager was confused and defensive regarding a refund for a bunch of piss-poor nibs I’d bought in another store of their chain. She told me she couldn’t refund anything without the original packaging (they came out of boxes behind the counter, there was no original packaging), and that to her knowledge they didn’t make the 3B mechanical pencil leads I was looking for (I held up my pencil with the 3B lead in it– another branch a few blocks away, I learned later, had it in stock)… etc. I started getting pissed off and left my credit card with Sekhnet to take care of the business while I sat outside, calming myself, reading off my “cracked screen”. A few minutes later Sekhnet handed me the receipt and I saw that, for whatever reason, $2.18 had been not refunded. Well worth the price of not walking back into the store.

Then I remembered Sekhnet pays for insurance for the two phones, about $25 a month. Almost 40 minutes on the phone with T-Mobile (the first 25 or so on hold, with a syphilitic robot periodically coming on to tell me to please continue to hold, we don’t value you pieces of shit enough to hire enough representatives, all of whom are busy helping other customers) eventually connected me to the third party that Sekhnet pays to insure both of our fancy phones.

I could send my phone in, they’d send me a temporary replacement phone, and they’d do the repairs for only a $175 deductible (about $60 less than Jose’s place which will do everything within 3 hours today). I asked her what the deductible is if the phone is lost or stolen. $175 she said.

“So your company’s policy incentivizes fraud,” I said, “I’d be better off just tossing the phone into the nearest sewer, or selling it to a crackhead for $20 and reporting it stolen.”

“Well, that’s why our rates and deductibles have to be high, because people take advantage of insurance companies, that’s why it’s so important for us to be watchful for fraud,” she said pleasantly.

“No,” I told her, ” that’s insurance industry b.s.. Your rates and ‘deductibles’ are high because insurance companies are in business to pay out as little as possible. It’s a fabulous scheme as far as your profits go, even if a bit sleazy, though nothing personal, you sound like a very nice person.”

I managed again, for a third time in a few hours, not to get unreasonably angry. One’s asshole eventually gets used to the uninvited probes, I suppose.

If the corporation was actually a person it would be someone like Donald Trump. They owe nothing to anybody. They are incapable of real conversation, of any kind of mutuality, really. They control the terms of every interaction. They refuse to lose, or even compromise, no matter what the price. They can never admit wrongdoing, nor can they apologize. They do what they do because the law allows it, or at least does not explicitly proscribe it. If it comes to it, they’ll change the law to make their latest profit-increasing scam legal. They have an army of lawyers, on salary, just waiting around to make their boss’s day. Ever been sued by a billionaire? Nothing like it, boys and girls.

Capitalism, its defenders always say, is the most accurate reflection of human nature. It is an expression of human freedom that incentivizes creativity and innovation, rewards the entrepreneurial spirit, maximizes liberty and the pursuit of happiness for everyone. These defenders are always at least moderately wealthy. Those who do not fare as well under the Darwinian law of the jungle may be excused for seeing the out of control greed-driven psychopathic form of capitalism that is currently energetically destroying our habitat as a reflection of only a certain facet of human nature: the insanely greed-driven psychopath.

A powerful church that rapes children and protects the rapists is… we may as well just say it, even if the Pope can’t … evil in the eyes of Jesus, and of every dispassionate child you can ask. An economic system that makes obscene wealth possible for a very few and a decent lifestyle possible for another 10% or so, while creating health-destroying insecurity or inescapable poverty for many times that number… and unspeakably brutal poverty for billions more worldwide, the unseen collateral damage of the global “free market”, well, you do the math.

And have a blessed day…

Why Do You Bother?

A voice started nagging me the other day, a familiar voice with famously bad breath. “What the hell are you doing?” the voice said, with annoying, random inflection, the words arriving unpleasantly warm and fetid in my ear after wafting past my nostrils.

“You continue, day after day, to sit and write. You seem to write about whatever comes into your head. You write clearly enough, we’ll stipulate to that, but the larger question is ‘what the fuck’? Seriously– what is your plan?”

A fair enough question, ass breath.

“More than fair, really. If you are writing literally every day, taking the trouble to clearly set out all these things that are on your mind, document your long wrestling matches with anger, futility, depression, vexation with the ongoing triumph of incoherent narratives… why are you not spending as much time every day branding, marketing and selling your content? Why are you not monetizing the skill you’ve been honing for decades?”

Nicely summarized, my inscrutable dilemma, there, toe cheese breath.

“You can sit there asyntactically smarting me all you like, as you worry about the warranty for the nib of a very expensive fountain pen you love, the fairly new acoustic/electric guitar that is no longer electric, trying to overcome the frustrations of a smart phone that is smarting you daily, having failed to write down the robotically delivered authorization code for PT that the health insurance company robot read to you– foolishly assuming that same code had been sent to PT (it hadn’t, of course) and now you can’t make an appointment for tomorrow’s session since they are no longer picking up the phone, after you called Healthfirst back and were eventually connected to the third party who had the authorization number you need to continue rehabbing your sore knees…”

I get it, sweat gland breath.

“A blessing that you can’t smell your own breath, my decomposing friend. I’m just giving you a little friendly advice: you’re not a writer just because you write, even if you write clearly and convincingly, even if you do it every single day of your life. You are a writer if your writing is in print, paid for by somebody else, and with a check written to you for writing whatever the hell it is. Period.”

Sure thing.

Our President at 5:06 a.m. Sunday morning

The stable genius at work, early Sunday morning:

Screen shot 2018-08-20 at 1.00.07 PM.png

I wondered about the absence of spell check there. With a little research (just google “councel”) I learned that “councel” is apparently POTUS’s preferred spelling for “counsel” and he always spells it that way (on at least 14 previous tweets). Not a mistake, not a mistake!!! He will change the proper spelling of that fake word, have no doubt. MAGA! USA! USA!!!!

It’s a jungle out there

Whitefoot

Note to those who have never known the love of an animal: substitute the image of a child in poverty for every mention of a kitten in the following.

Turtleback, who was found dead a week or two ago, shown here as a five week old kitten playing with his mother’s tail, had three siblings. Two girls and his brother Whitefoot.

IMG-20180504-WA0000

Turtleback was interactive and very interested in humans, but did not let a human touch him. Once when he was lying close by, watching Whitefoot brush me with his tail, I put my hand close to him and he raised a soft paw, his claws retracted, and gently but firmly swatted my hand away. I thought this a very noble gesture on his part, since he had a fist full of claws as sharp as hypodermic syringes in that paw. I’ve never known a kitten to show this kind of restraint. It was touching and spoke well of his character.

His brother Whitefoot was that rare feral kitten who loves to be petted by humans. He was the dominant kitten of the litter, much bigger than the rest, and he was the most friendly. He was always ready to play, to roll over to have his belly scratched, he’d rub his face happily against Sekhnet and me, even if he didn’t want food. As a tiny kitten he was already adept at the tail caress. Naturally his affectionate nature endeared him to us. Turtleback often sat close by, clearly interested, but not yet ready to try this tenderness with another species.

Because these kittens depend on us for food, greet us happily when we bring their food, because they live in the garden and sit close by Sekhnet, watching her as she works, because they are beautiful, mysterious, playful little creatures seemingly doomed to live very short lives, it is easy to grow attached to them. We try our best not to, since they rarely live beyond five or six months and we can do little to get them adopted as pets. It is hardest to keep this detached view in the case of a kitten like Whitefoot, who so clearly wants our affection and so freely gives us his. He was born wanting to be a pet, ready to make the deal of his love for kindness, safety and a full cat’s life.

Those are Sekhnet’s legs and garden shoes. She captioned this recent photo “Handsome 4 1/2 month old cool cat seeking contact…” He is lying, as familiar cats often do, partially using a human as a pillow. One white foot is stretched out making contact with the human’s other leg.

Think now for a moment, not of a doomed kitten wanting love, but of a tiny human child doomed to die because people rich enough to prevent her misery cannot be bothered to look at her tiny hopeful face and do what any of them would want done for them. In defense of the world of self-serving competitive “winners”, that poor baby’s face is one tiny hopeful face among billions, after all.

A woman spraying organic insecticide on Sekhnet’s fruit trees was the one who called to tell us Turtleback was dead. She was very upset to find his little corpse and contacted her friend, a cat rescue person, about getting the other kittens adopted, or at the very least, spayed, neutered and given shots against the major diseases that kill cats who live outside. Her friend came by a few days later and gave us instructions. She would trap the kittens and take them to the vet.

On the appointed day she reported two captured: Whitefoot and his father, a strange, sharklike looking cat with wide shoulders and a massive head. His coat is mostly white, but he has a few large, ill-placed spots that do nothing for his looks. Sekhnet calls him Spot and chased him from her garden for a long time, until she saw him and Mother Kitten nuzzling one day and realized he was the father of all these kittens. He comes by once in a while for a feed, but is very wary, as any feral cat that grows to adulthood should be. Sekhnet noted that he has enormous balls. For all we know he rules a large area and has as many offspring as Genghis Khan.

Spot and Whitefoot were at the vet’s, their operations done. The woman was coming back soon to try to trap the females. The next day she reported that Spot was fine, eating well and almost ready to be released back to his former domain. I did some reading on cats and learned that his status would probably be very quickly challenged by a male cat with balls. Spot, castrated, would lose status and the aggressiveness necessary to defend his turf. Nature is cruel that way, or, at the very least, indifferent.

Whitefoot was not coming out of the anesthesia, we were told. They were keeping a close eye on him. The woman meanwhile dropped Spot off. He hasn’t been seen since. The two remaining sisters were suddenly staying much closer to Sekhnet. The bold little female who looks like Whitefoot, and faces off Mama Kitten when her mother gets aggressive, was now rubbing against Sekhnet and letting herself be petted. There are a few adorable little phone videos of this loving exchange.

Whitefoot, meanwhile, reportedly came groggily out of his comatose state and was showing affection to the people attending him. They all saw this handsome little feral had all the qualities to be quickly adopted as a pet. He was dehydrated, they gave him an IV. He was trying to eat a little but didn’t have much appetite (which made Sekhnet cry because he always ate with gusto, more like a dog than a cat in his eating habits). The cat rescue woman was beside herself with worry over Whitefoot and every detailed report from the vet she sent Sekhnet released a new wave of sorrow. The details were all horrifying.

It was possibly an error in the amount of anesthesia given the small kitten. Nobody at the vet’s was close to admitting a mistake could have been made. We don’t admit such things here in the USA, USA! An apology is an admission of liability here. It’s a tic, really, since no legal action can be brought against a veterinarian for accidentally killing a patient. The remedy at law, for the loss of a cat, is another cat of equal or greater value. The value of a soul? A trifle with which the law does not concern itself. Something I immediately realize is necessary to the speedy administration of justice, most of which revolves around actual, quantifiable economic harm.

The cat rescuer, a religious woman who takes a very different view of the value of each tiny soul, was inconsolable about the critical state her actions had seemingly put Whitefoot into. I am, for better and worse, a man– meaning I have been trained since my earliest days to show how little I give a shit about emotionally difficult things that I can’t control, while somehow not being a monster (if possible). I’d skim these long, agonized texts from the cat rescuer that Sekhnet would forward and I realized Whitefoot was a goner, no matter how you sliced it. It made me very sad, but my job was to console the inconsolable Sekhnet.

Over the next few days, Whitefoot in critical condition, in a cage, on life support, the texts and veterinary theories kept coming. Decreased liver function, increased bilirubin, a possible heart issue. The woman had already spent close to a thousand dollars on medical tests and life-saving treatments for Whitefoot. She had him “ambuvetted” to her own veterinarian, who held out some hope for the little cat’s survival.

It is worth noting here again that 95% of Mama Kitten’s more than twenty kittens do not survive beyond six months. We are going to have Mama Kitten “fixed” as soon as this latest newborn has been weaned.

A few more days, Whitefoot listless, enlarged heart, decreased lung capacity, only 25%, further tests. In the end the question was whether it was worth keeping him alive if he was suffering with no hope of recovering to lead a decent cat life. This was not a question, really, but the cat rescue woman was desperately trying not to give up hope.

Turtleback looking on as his little sister attacks Whitefoot, who does not take the attack lying down.

The vet and the cat rescue woman decided there was no hope for Whitefoot, and so, after almost a week trying to save him, they gave him a quick, peaceful death yesterday afternoon. The cat rescue woman arranged for a private cremation, so that the one ounce box of ashes would contain only the mortal remains of Whitefoot. She wanted to know if we wanted the ashes. She was praying over him and was prepared to bury the ashes in her own yard. We are sure she’ll give him a proper burial.

Sekhnet cried. I was very sad, but this news yesterday was not really news, and so my only tears are the metaphorical ones here, writing this poignant post. Poignant only to those who know the caress of a cat’s tail.

Sekhnet’s caption: The sweet, energetic 4 and a half month old semi stray who wrapped his little body around my leg seeking affection; now a stiff baby corpse and me, a terribly sad human…

This morning, as an exhausted Sekhnet slept late (she drove for hours yesterday on less than two hours’ sleep) , I went down to feed the kittens. Mama Kitten jumped up on to the rusty metal table where we petted each other a little and I gave her some food. The two girls had some food. The little one who looks like Whitefoot, who had always been wary of me, was suddenly rubbing against my legs. I sat down and she came over to be petted. I obliged her.

As I came back inside to finish this piece I heard the cries of a hawk and went downstairs to… I don’t know what. From the hawk’s point of view, he has his own problems, eating being one of the main ones. For all I know his cries were hunger pangs. My new friend popped out from her hiding place into the open and started toward me. I shooed her away. Go hide, I told her. Might as well have told her to stop being so delicious.

Democracy in Action

I am very impressed, if not always in a good way, by the Trump administration’s ongoing policy of posting details of White House press conferences on the internet. I don’t know if previous administrations in the internet age did this, I suspect now that they probably did, but every time I search for some striking moment I see reported in the news (or more often in the comedy of Colbert, Noah, Meyers, Bee) , there it is on the official Whitehouse.gov website.

The principle of making government actions accessible to the public is a cornerstone of democracy. Let the people know what the government is doing in our name. Let the people decide how they feel about what we are doing, after seeing all the details for themselves. Let the people then speak, and not just 40%, or 1%, and let the government reflect the will of the people and protect our interests, majorities and minorities alike. This is the theory our democratic, republican government is founded on.

I heard the reports of the president’s recent public chastisement of a Trump critic, former CIA Director John Brennan. Not only angry tweets, but cutting off Brennan’s security clearance. Raising the ante in the argument in a way no previous president has ever dared to do. It looks like the kind of petty thing an aggrieved tinhorn dictator would do, immediately before arranging the former top government official’s death. The official statement, which you can read here in its entirety, reads in pertinent part:

Mr. Brennan has recently leveraged his status as a former high-ranking official with access to highly sensitive information to make a series of unfounded and outrageous allegations — wild outbursts on the Internet and television — about this administration. Mr. Brennan’s lying and recent conduct, characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary, is wholly inconsistent with access to the nation’s most closely held secrets, and facilities [facilitates] the very aim of our adversaries, which is to sow division and chaos.

Trevor Noah said “unfounded allegations, wild internet outbursts and lying? it sounds like Sarah Sanders is just reading from President Trump’s daily schedule.” Others have noted that Michael Flynn, former top presidential advisor, the fiery cheerleader who led the “Lock Her UP!” chants at the 2016 Republican Convention, a man who was forced to resign as National Security Advisor and later pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials, still has his security clearance. [1] The president’s outburst seems to be a fairly clear case of what psychiatry calls “projection.” I know you are, but what am I?

I love the way the transcript is so honest and transparent that it shows the original language mistake: and facilities [facilitates] the very aim of our adversaries, which is to sow division and chaos.

Stephen Miller, or some other young genius, must have been in a hurry, under pressure, to finish crafting the president’s polished written statement. It was an act of restraint on the part of whoever wrote it, I think, not to point out that sowing division and chaos is clearly the president’s job.

That Trump himself, so challenged to marshal his “best words, very best words”, didn’t write the presidential statement is obvious. It reminds me of a great scene from low culture. In “Back to School” Rodney Dangerfield plays a rich buffoon who goes to college when his son is admitted. In an attempt to impress his freshman English professor, played by Sally Kellerman, he hires Kurt Vonnegut to write his paper on Cat’s Cradle. When Kellerman returns the paper to him, with a C, she tells him “whoever wrote this paper, and it clearly wasn’t you, doesn’t know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut’s work”. The Dangerfield character promptly strikes back, angrily calling to tell Vonnegut he’s canceling his check and telling him, over the phone: “Hey, Vonnegut, read my lips– FUCK YOU!”

But all this is an aside, another of a million distractions. The main thing, somehow, is not to look away. The truth matters, it actually does. Remembering the inconsistencies week to week, day do day, is important. Participating in participatory democracy is essential. Speaking calmly, and clearly, and pointing out actual facts, is the best way to convince people currently voting against their interests to wise up, straighten up, fly right.

Everything this president does is an attempt to enhance his own image, a fake “brand” of a brilliant, highly successful business genius with a Midas touch. He is none of these things. Just look at his colossal, hubris-driven failures in Atlantic City, where, prior to one of his more spectacular bankruptcies, the Artist of the Deal owned the top two casinos in that town and put them both out of business going deep into hock to build a third, the Mother of All Casinos, his idiotic Taj Mahal. His genius was in not paying a penny out of his own pocket, stiffing thousands of chumps, retaining his reputation as a business genius.

His only business success in a life that started with millions from dad, and massive political connections that garnered him hundreds of millions in tax breaks, was as a highly opinionated fake billionaire genius/mentor on “reality TV”. He has not shown himself to be smart or successful in any business he’s ever been involved in, except as the abrasive, self-aggrandizing star of his long-running hit TV show where he played the man he pretends to be. And that TV endeavor, I point out sourly, was produced by people who knew what they were doing.

“FAKE NEWS!” may resonate with those who can’t believe the mainstream news is not reporting how much the damned, ungrateful blacks hate the Klan, for no goddamned reason, or how much money greedy Welfare parasites are stealing from the government every year, or how many illegal immigrants sneak into the country to bust their asses at shit jobs where unscrupulous employers ruthlessly exploit them and the ungrateful aliens still won’t learn English.

The idea of fake news is fake. Do not go for the fake. Stay tuned. Don’t let these two year-old temper tantrum tactics make you so disgusted you stop paying attention. We all need to pay close attention, and start getting busy heading into these 2018 midterms, which many are calling the most important elections in American history.

I have nothing more to say about this, except to salute the tinhorn Trump administration for making these important presidential decrees available to the public, for pundits and comedians to discuss and for the rest of us to read over and think about while having our morning coffee. Viva Democracy! With the help of a merciful All-Mighty, and the hard work of millions of us, this threat to the planet too shall pass.

[1] On December 1, 2017, Flynn appeared in federal court to formalize a deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller to plead guilty to a single felony count of “willfully and knowingly” making “false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to the FBI.^[18] He confirmed his intention to cooperate with the Special Counsel’s investigation.