Maybe a cross between Charlie Brown and George Bailey. Charlie is loyal and a bit wishy-washy, though at times can be quite determined; George is haunted by unfulfilled dreams and worried that his presence in the world has made little difference to anyone.
Untidy
Beyond cause and effect, besides action and consequence, I have trouble believing that everything happens for a reason. That’s a pretty wide-ranging, convenient generalization.
If someone is always looking for a rational explanation, or a silver lining, I believe they may be grasping at straws, searching for something that isn’t there. Not everything in life can be made sense of, or wrapped up with a nice bow, or is possessed of some intrinsic meaning.
When a young child dies of cancer, or a couple succumbs in an accident on their wedding day, or war breaks out and people die needlessly at the hands of some cold-hearted politician on a power trip, there are few things less comforting than someone offering that God has another angel in heaven, or that some terrible occurrence is God’s will. If I hear someone say such things, I want to grab them by the collar and shake them awake.
Of course, I don’t do that. I instead grimace like I just heard someone scratch their fingernails on a chalkboard, then find somewhere else to be.
We go to great lengths to put a square peg in a round hole, to sooth ourselves, find that balm in Gilead, and tell ourselves that all is well when it’s not.
We grieve, we make peace, we lean on each other. We walk with a limp, learn to live with the loose ends and the mystery.
Simple
I don’t have a style, really. Just clean and uncluttered, functional furniture, some artwork and family photos on the walls.
Power Trip
To the mainstream media: stop covering him like he’s still a curiosity. He’s an anomalous malignancy that must be removed before the body simply succumbs. There’s nothing honorable or upright— or interesting— about him. He is a known quantity, a dime-a-dozen carnival barker, a master of distraction, conniving and scheming his way to some ignominious prominence where he hopes to remain entrenched until he dies.
Trouble is, he’s just the tip of the iceberg. As AOC once observed, “…removing Trump will not remove the infrastructure of an entire party that embraced him…”
Trump is a figurehead, the malleable, empty-souled shell of a human that Kevin Roberts and the rest were dreaming about.
Potpourri
-Now he’s bringing his talents, however diminished, to Philly. I guess he’s still God’s gift to somebody. Lebron must be kind of full of himself. Remember, ‘Sixers fans—he’s 42 years old. Not sure why he hasn’t called it a day yet. It must be that competitive spirit, eh?
-If the Supreme Court allows widespread implementation of Trump’s Executive order limiting mail-in ballot voting, then we will have official confirmation that the highest judicial body in the land is in Trump’s back pocket, and we can proceed to place our heads firmly between our legs and kiss our ass goodbye.
What possible argument can Trump’s lawyers bring to this case that would supersede people’s right to vote? Trump and the rest see the writing on the wall, and they’re scraping and clawing for any advantage, no matter how desperate and hair-brained or unconstitutional.
A decision in Trump’s favor should be viewed as aiding and abetting a freaking felon.
Scratchin’ the surface…
It’s not the only phrase I know, but the first piece of lyric to come to mind is from Pink Floyd, off of Dark Side of the Moon: ”The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older, shorter of breath and one day closer to death.” Yikes. The first time I heard that, I thought it was clever, and accurate, but was also wondering what kind of head space Gilmour and the rest were in.
There are so many bits and pieces of lyrics. Billy Joel’s And So It Goes is filled with one poignant, personal, heartfelt phrase after another. The Beatles sign off with “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make…“
And who can forget CCR’s “…there’s a bathroom on the right.” 🙂
I know. But that’s what I was hearing for the longest time.
Hard To Improve
Daily writing prompt
If you could rewrite any book’s ending, which one would you choose?
The ones I’ve read have all ended the way they were supposed to, even The Old Man and the Sea.
Sometimes I wish the Bible came with an addendum filled with corroborations and more recent eyewitness testimony, maybe even a stamp of authenticity from a trusted expert. I guess that wouldn’t change much, though.
More Dare than Truth
He has no appreciation for what he’s messing with. He doesn’t care if it all falls down. I feel like this should infuriate us more than just about anything else to come out of Donald Trump’s 11 years in the political arena—the complete disregard for history, for the thought and the blood, sweat, and tears that went into forging this grand experiment.
He’s so focused on himself that he barely notices or mostly ignores the dissent, other than to post an empty-headed threat or sign an Executive Order that blames someone for something or takes away funding for important research—anything that basically reveals his immaturity and cold-heartedness, and the whims and wishes of those who support Project 2025.
He loves setting people off. Why else would he don a Trump 2028 hat at the joke of a WHCD?
Nothing Extravagant
To manage to remain healthy and live at home with my wife for at least another ten years, long enough to see at least one of our grandchildren graduate high school.
A reasonably close second would be to come into enough money to live comfortably, travel a bit, and be able to buy a hybrid vehicle that’s comfortable to drive and get in and out of.
Of course, the longer I go without publishing this, more possibilities come to mind, like living in peace, living Trump-free, leaving these dark and confusing times behind, and undertaking a wholesale effort to reverse human-induced climate change.
Rumblings
I had a weird dream overnight. My wife and I were in Ukraine, of all places, I guess on… vacation? This particular scene took place on a street where there were a couple of Russian troops causing quite a panic. I remember a group of Ukrainian students running for cover, I remember catching a glimpse, from a distance, of these invading troops, and fretting over if we’d get out of there alive.
I remember thinking, in the dream, that even in the midst of war, people were trying to carry on as if it was a normal day. Then I woke up and got to thinking that if there were only a couple of Russian troops, how could they wreak so much havoc? You’d think they would be mincemeat, sitting ducks.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to take from this, but I do think about what life must be like for residents of Kyiv and other places that are under constant threat of Russian bombardment. What an awful way to live—with the daily specter of violence fomented by a detached, anachronistic billionaire hundreds of miles away who, for some reason, feels empowered to make life miserable for people who just want to live their lives without interference and with a certain self-determination.
And here I am, sipping cold brew in my pjs on a quiet Saturday morning, listening to birds sing, ready to start breakfast. The contrast is striking, to say the least. Though, I suppose with Trump in office and mid-term elections around the corner, our day of reckoning is never that far away.
3 Cents' 