With my periscope I am seeing Cheney who Hobbes might have defined as “short, nasty and brutish,” Darth Vadering the TV shows, exhaling toxicity like some primal creature. We actually have a “debate” in this country, if you call it that, about what is torture, the equivalent of describing a chicken as if we don’t know what it is. It only confirms my belief that democracies are closet dictatorships unless held in check — oh, Jefferson! that government governs best which governs least. We find it unimaginable, citizens, that we can play the Nazi game — I was only following orders. Jessie Ventura expressed it well on Larry King, that dessicated man who reads index cards for a living, when he advocated that every person from the President down to the private who participated in torture be prosecuted. You and I will not see that, but it is a moral necessity. Hurrah for Jessie! We are such hypocrites that it is mind-numbing. We prosecute others and allow the fungal Bush and the crabbed-corpulent Cheney to walk free. At heart I am an anarchist and when I went to college and read about them and their philosophies they were laughed at. I revel now in the richness of their thinking, Goldman, Vanzetti, et al. This country reeks in shame at this point.
At this point let me quote from Richard Burton, no, not that constipated actor, but the world traveler and iconoclast of the Victorian period:
“Do what thy manhood bids thee do/ From none but self expect applause;/ He noblest lives and noblest dies/ Who makes and keeps his self-made laws.”
Good words for this shabby age.
I am writing now before I take off to see a doctor about getting scoped. Dreadful preparations for that, drinking a purgative water based brew that cleans you out so that a fantastic voyage can be taken by the gastro man. Last year he discovered a polyp or two and now he is back again to see if I have a coral reef somewhere; it is a do over just in case something else is afoot. They scoped Cheney recently and discovered a black tin box in which a heart mechanism was discovered.
The house has passed inspection and we need to attend to some minor repairs, all to the good. We are dealing with the Patriot Act in which all monies have to be vouched for in this paranoid period we live in. Banks, like the whores they are, made it too easy to buy housing a year or two back, remember! and now they are making it inordinately hard to process mortgage stuff even if your credit is excellent. And we have bailed them out. The moral and psychological mayhem going on in this country is like the ocean waves slapping 20 foot waves over a a 10 foot high pier. One has to be anal, hypervigilant to pass muster. And when Jane and I had to resubmit data on what we felt was an invasion into our privacy I associated to this event. Allow me.
In 1999 my daughter was in a horrific car accident. All her limbs were broken or splintered. She was put back together by terrific doctors in an Albany hospital. It took a week or two to stabilize her and then she had to be transported down to New York City for further operations and rehab. The doctors I dealt with informed me that she had improved for the ambulance trip down state, that she was ready to go but when I queried as to time and date they informed me that they did not have a release. In short, the doctors had done a great job but a bureaucrat was holding up the transfer for no apparent good reason. The doctors were being water-boarded.
I was angry as hell. I got the honcho’s name and called and the “conversation” was simple: “I’ve been told by doctors that Brett is ready to be transferred to downstate and that you are holding it up. Can you tell me on what floor your office is? I want you to know that you should get some security down there because I am coming down right now and I am going to tear your fuckin’ heart out of your chest. You can believe that, you better believe that…”
Half an hour later the release was given. I didn’t realize in my fatherly rage that I could have been arrested.
As I have said for years to those who wish to listen, that if I were 6 feet tall I would have been jailed decades ago. The rage in me is considerable, but I manage it just as we manage reactors. I use words, thank god for sublimination.
So fuck the Patriot Act.
I get scoped next Monday. Of course, I hope all will be well. I am now on that slippery slope that leads to the eternal blackness, as Jane termed it some time back. Futile…resistance is futile…to beg, ask, plead, deal, bargain, barter, weep, pray, dicker for anyone up there, or down there, to extend life’s moments. I get the sense some times metaphorically that I am constantly shuffling cards before a hand is dealt and as I await the hand I am also involved with the shuffle, and I realize that I extend or take my time with the shuffling because I am deluded into believing that it may affect the hand. It may or it may not, but a hand is going to be dealt. And no use asking for a new deck, one can’t take time back or all the wasted years dribbling along the court to a basket that is not there. Take the fuckin hand and be done with it. Anxiety increases before the decision. Take the call and take a look at the hand. Do the best you can. Alas, few of us have mature people around us to show us how to live, or be brave, or courageous. It would have been nice in my case if I had a nurturer who would have explained trhe workings of life’s compass to me. I could manage the voyage, but I sure could have used help to find directionality. So be it.
This blog ends now.
Leave a Reply