Midnight in America

("Flag" by Jasper Johns)

The world is bleak today. It is one thing to mourn a person, it is a different thing altogether to mourn a country. To see your own grief magnified by millions, most of whom have more to lose than you do, and most assuredly will. 

We have survived dark times before. I remember feeling something like this in 2004, when Bush was reelected. But while we knew he wasn’t a good president, and that he was sure to do worse by us in the next four years, there was still the girding stability of a semi-functional American democracy there to guide our path forward and see us through to the other side. 

Barack Obama was waiting for us there. 

It is hard not to feel like the light has gone out. It is hard not to feel that we are living in a different America now, and traveling blindly. We elected a goon on Tuesday. We elected an unqualified, hate-spewing demagogue whose sole selling-point was that he was authentically evil instead of merely moderately bad. We did this clear-eyed and soberly, ignoring the woman who was imminently more prepared, more credible, more deserving of our faith in her, because some of us felt she was too experienced, too calculating, too tainted by “scandal.” 

The media told us this. They told us so many times, it turns out a lot of people believed them.

My own parents believed it. 

My father, a lifelong conservative, hated Trump, but he hated her more. This is what he screamed at me on the Sunday before the election—his face beet-red, finger jabbed at my face—when I tried to talk him out of his vote. He believed she was more of a threat to our institutions than the orange clown who said, through all his words and actions, that he was. He voted for this charlatan. My mother did, too. I will never forget it. They can attempt to rationalize that decision to their graves. My mom reassured me that they have more life experience to make such a choice—in other words, we liberals are naive chumps to believe that people don’t leech off of government, that people aren’t inherently looking for handouts and shortcuts instead of dignity and opportunity and fairness in their lives. I am not reassured. Conservatives may have more years under their belts, but they stubbornly refuse to stretch themselves and see the people floundering on the margins of their vision. Their myopia is unrepentant, their self-delusion catastrophic. 

But by all means, let’s lower taxes for the lot of them. 

How bad is this? I would do anything in the world to have George W. Bush back in the Oval Office right now. That’s how bad. 

As for Barack Obama…I can’t. I just can’t. We failed the man. We failed him so hard, and so spectacularly, that my eyes—dry from a kind of benumbed sleeplessness—have started leaking again. We failed Michelle Obama. Their legacy won’t be erased entirely—their example will remain in our minds like a childhood we wish we could return to—but the impact of this conman’s election will be devastating to the good, hard, painstaking work they’ve put in the past eight years.

Millions will lose their health insurance because of our failure.

The Supreme Court could be lost for a generation. 

Climate change will accelerate past the tipping-point.

The privatization of Medicare and Social Security are being quietly negotiated in back rooms. Paul Ryan’s honing in on the right, Orwellian language to sell it to the American people, his bland, boyish face the perfect shape of banality and evil. 

Banks will grow too big to fail again. 

As for foreign affairs . . . I shudder to think. This man? In charge of matters of war and peace? No no no no no no no.

And then there’s the matter of our civil liberties. Freedom of the press. Freedom of religion. Freedom from hate and bigotry. Freedom from fear. 

The silver lining in all this? People are awake. People are staggeringly, stupidly awake. The best of us, anyway.

But the darkness is here. It is swimming through our veins. We are living it now. 

I have new eyes today. They’ll need to adjust fast to their surroundings. 

I'm done with the privilege of my own illusions. I'm sick of them. 

I'm ready to see, and fight. 

4 More Days

(finding the path to 270)

Just an anecdote, as we grind through the last few days before the most important election of our lives: 

Our son told me that his sixth grade class went around the room yesterday, telling what they were grateful for. I'm not sure what the context for this was, but I know the talk quickly became political, which shouldn't be a surprise, since our children have been as caught up in all this as we are. 

A couple of the kids said they were grateful for America. One of them seemed especially fervent and, according to our son, rather scolding about it. In other words: you'd better be grateful for America, because we're the greatest nation on earth, etc. 

Which: okay. But also: that's too easy, isn't it.

When it was our son's turn, he said he was grateful for his family, his house and his dog. Then, he added (in a small voice, I'm sure, and with his eyes cast down, because he's rather shy): I'm grateful for America, too. But I'm sorry we're going through such an awful time right now. 

He didn't say he was grateful for Hillary Clinton. (Someone did. Another scowled.) Instead, he acknowledged a greater truth: it is possible to love one's country and hate what's happening to it. Not just hate it for your own sake, but for everyone's. Even the people who disagree with you. 

Patriotism has always come easy for Americans, at least since I've been alive. It's been easy enough for people to fly the flag and reproach others for not loving that symbol the way that they do. It's been easy to take boring things like journalistic integrity, tolerance and civility for granted. It's a wake-up call when you see those norms fly out the window, and not enough people seem to notice or care.

There's a tear in that flag. The threads are showing. I think a lot of us feel it. And, even if my candidate wins on Tuesday, I have no confidence it can be repaired. That's what this election has meant to me. That's what it has so miserably laid bare. How much I love my country. How much I fear it, too.

I am proud of our son for what he said to his peers. I think if we're going to be saved, his generation is the one to do it. 

I just hope we can wait that long. 

Disillusionment isn't done with me yet

I want disillusionment
to follow me
the rest of my life

I want always
this sore
and unworldly
belief

that people
are just
when given
the chance 

and a cynic's
delight
is his iron
lung 

Shine shine shine

Fog on the hillside
and running through my lungs

The sun spokes through
the wings of a sparrow
   
as it beats a bright path
across the field 
                 
spilled open with dew-dappled
spiderwebs
like a pirate deciding
his treasure
was ours


Shine shine shine 


Later, a red leaf
takes off on a lark
and gambols downriver

and I am the only one
wise to its stumble,
its easeful incision
into a current

peopled by pond skaters
saving their best dance
for light


A fawn
pokes its nose
through the brush
alongside me

to look,
with alarm

and—
curiosity

From time to time

(Screenshot from Tarkovsky's "Stalker")

"It's been so long since I wrote pure dialogue."

"Then let's get started."

"I—why don't you tell me what it is you want first."

"Me? I want silly things. Romantic things. Things that have nothing to do with the body and everything to do with the space between. I want the moon. And why not the stars? And how about a creek bed at sunrise with a nice topsoil of fog. And maybe—maybe just—a tender phrase, from time to time."

"It's important to want those things. It's important to remember to want those things."

"You'd forgotten?"

"No, but I wanted them only for myself. I trusted only myself with them."

"There's poetry enough in solitude."

"Yes, but hold on."

"Sure."

"No, I mean it—the kids are in the other room, arguing. Hold on."

"I'll go."

"No—don't. Please. Don't leave."

"A tender phrase, from time to time."

"Yes, but—"

"A creek bed laid from skipping stones."

"I—yes."

"The stars."

"The stars."

"The moon."

"The moon."

"A thousand eyes alongside."

"A thousand  . . . "

"What is it? Your voice just dropped."

"That's what scares me anymore."

"What? The eyes?"

"I feel—I feel exposed. Especially lately, with all the rejection. I feel so terribly exposed. Which is, in itself, embarrassing. As if people were actually watching me. As if they had anything invested in my success or failure as a writer. It's madness. And yet—"

"I can't hear you. You're mumbling."

"I said—it doesn't come as easy anymore."

"Then open yourself wider."

"How wide?"

"Wider than embarrassment. Deeper than self-consciousness can stomach."

"How—how's this?"

"Better."

"Okay. I have to go now. The kids—"

"Go on, then. Get out of here."

"Just one more thing."

"What?"

"Come back?"

"All you have to do is ask."

"Come back."

"Alright."

Good morning

Maybe there's not much to say about turning 40. 

Maybe it is what it is, like it is for everyone, and will be for me again, if I'm fortunate.

Instead, here's a picture of a fawn, come to drink from the lake, which has a clarity only morning can muster. 

Isn't she beautiful? 

Wasn't I lucky to capture that?

The world gets more beautiful, not less, with time. I think so—if you keep your eyes open. Maybe that's why aging hurts so much. It's not all sadness or the yearning for a youth gone past. 

It's the exquisiteness of having, when all of life is positioning you toward loss. 

And yet—isn't she beautiful?

Wasn't I lucky?


And don't you just love it when you're in your own skin and the silence surrounding you— 

lasts? 

Two thoughts, scotch-taped

Hats and Beards by Martel Chapman

Sometimes
it feels
like silence
is truth

and I am
constantly
on the cusp
of holding
it near

But once
possession
presses
its face
to the mirror

silence turns
cold—

like anything
else


---

I don't remember his name, but there was a jazz pianist playing in Harlem during the 1920s who'd routinely battle it out with other pianists over who was the best. They'd go on for hours, banging it out, like the Lost Boys that Ragtime wrought—holding the world at bay with the curve of their wrists. So that his wife would have to come down there to fetch him, taking the subway to Harlem from Queens, because he had lost track of time, so absorbed in this jazz they'd begun to call "stride." He'd lost track of everything but the press of the pedals against his feet and the sweat of the chords sliding out from his fingertips. What a feeling that must have been. No wonder he lingered, no wonder he lived for the ivory. 

I imagine his wife walking down the streets of Harlem back then, stopping and listening every time she heard some piano plinking, or crashing, past that brownstone's curtains. Think of the number of pianos being played back then. Seriously, think of it. The range of talent one heard on any given day in Jazz Age America. How many people bucked boredom, or hunger, with their music in this manner. It's staggering. We can hardly imagine a world like it today. But there it was, playing itself out, like it was no big thing. Just another Saturday, in Harlem. 

And this woman—this wife—had to listen carefully, in order to single out the right piano, because she never knew where her husband might end up on that particular afternoon, and which particular people he would put in awe of him. She had to know intimately the timbre of his sound, the bounce of his beat, the chime it sang through the ears outside. She had to know him the way birds must know other birds of their type. There was a whole language there, built up over all the Saturdays preceding it. Her feet would slow, she would listen hard. And then she'd hear it. 

I think I can imagine how she felt just then—the immense exasperation undercut by tenderness. For there must have been riding underneath her impatience, after she finally stumbled upon his mix of swing and jump—a beam of pride, like the sun coming out. Resentment retracted, if just for an instant, because this was her man. And he was the best.

I hope she was stern with her husband—stern, but not withering. I hope she made him make it up to her later. And I hope he felt her pride of ownership, even while promising her it would never happen again. 

I hope they both knew he was lying but I also hope that she was thinking to herself, silently:

Yes, but it's him, and this is us, and it's worth it, in the end.

Because there is something searching in us that makes us bend toward creation. That lets us treat artists like gods, when they are so far from it.

It's not a bad thing, I think, to believe we are as good on the inside as the most beautiful parts we show on the out.

Illusions have their place in our selves.

Birth of a nation

Yes, it's true:
I want to take
your guns.

No, I don't care
what they wrote
on a piece
of fine parchment
eons ago.

Because—you know what?
I've never worn a petticoat.

Or found myself bound
by a sermon or corset.

I didn't die
in childbirth
and neither did either 
of my kids—
not even the one
with the cord
wrapped around him.

Medicine didn't stop
at leeches or mercury.
Science wasn't squandered
on witchcraft and mediums.

Instead, Einstein stood up on
the shoulders of Newton
and drew us up with him,
where we were new to the universe—
and it was good.

Jonas Salk invented
a vaccine.
Maybe you've heard of it?
Saved millions.
(He gave away the patent, too;
What can I say? The man was a mensch.)

The whole world—
or very nearly!—
wised up and decided that the death
penalty was barbaric and that torture
was a stain on the human condition
we could no longer suffer.

That is our pedigree.
A civil society flowering 
as we grew the technology.
Evolution our Bible,
Darwin my father—
God love him.

It's the reason why roads don't smell
like horse shit anymore.
It's how come you don't have to worry
about stumbling out to the privy
in winter.
That's how women got the vote,
and blacks collectively spit 
on a three-fifth's citizenship.
It's not a bad thing—I swear it.

After all, is progress
not the most American
of traditions?
(Or is this just a story
we sing to ourselves?)

So no.
I'm sorry.

A musket is not
some AR-15 masturbatory
fantasy.

A militia is not
a thing serious
people talk about.

The words "well regulated"—
okay, we can keep that part,
if you like.

Otherwise,
the rest of the world
will just keep staring,
aghast,
shaking their heads
at poor, dumb . . .
us.

And you know what?
It is embarrassing.
Our stupidity is a blight.
I am ashamed—
personally, I mean,
at the idiocy we condone.

But what the world might not know—
and what I hang my hope on today—
is that the majority of Americans
overwhelmingly agree.

We're just not allowed to matter,
not yet.

Why?

Because this is where we've been dragged:

Beholden to ignorance.

Married to a terrorist organization.

Shattered by the whim
of the meanest will.

Emptied of words,
carved up by suffering.

Sticking our victims
to graphs 
with bullets
where they will stay
the same age—
always, and forever.

Seeing in the face
of a good man
and President
a reflection of the carnage,
an allergy for platitude—
a nausea of loss.

So yeah—
I'm going to take up my pen
again
and write the scumbags
who brought this upon us—
all those NRA brides
offering others' blood up as dowries
who've been trained, in their money,
to roll over like dogs—
and hold them over the coals of their cowardice,
until the halls of our Congress
are howling with rage, boiling over with grief,
until they're all history
like the Redcoats and the Rebels 
before 'em—

Until we make them
move to our side.

Because—

I want your guns. 

All of them.

I hate too now, see.


----

Everytown is a great organization to support and give money to. So is the Brady Campaign. 

17 years

The cicadas were everywhere. She couldn't take a step without squashing one or having a bug fly at her, often just missing a collision—other times landing on her chest, neck, or shoe, content with being there until she hurriedly brushed it away, heart pounding. One time, she watched a sparrow snatch one out of the air, with a fly-and-chopsticks precision she applauded. The birds and squirrels were the triumphant gluttons of that summer. Even her dog snacked on the bizarre backyard intruders, when there was nothing better for him to do.

The invasion of cicadas happened every seventeen years, for as long as six weeks per brood and region. It took them that long to molt from their nymph state, to woo and mate, before the entire lifecycle turned over, and their progeny spent the next seventeen years in a dark dormancy beneath the earth, sucking on the paltry nutrition of tree roots to sustain them during the births, deaths, retirements and divorces up above.

And, for some reason she couldn't articulate, she found the whole thing electrifying.

It could just as easily been scary. Or at the very least, gross. These bugs were big, with red, alien-like eyes and erratic, whirring wings. Back in the summer of '99, when she had been in her twenties, she'd avoided them. She remembered a vague alarm surrounding that June. The racket they made was almost deafening, especially in certain spots uptown, and on the university's campus, where they took the place of vacationing students rather naturally, and with less destructive results, in whole.

But for her—and for this brood—the insects' buzz built a frisson in the blood. She felt some new excitement pounding within. She wanted to write like she had, before. She wanted to take the chances she hadn't taken, then.

She wanted to know that in another seventeen years, when she was deep into her fifties, she wouldn't regret a thing from that summer.

And that meant him.

When next she saw him, he was smiling at her. He was always smiling at her, but she didn't know what it meant, not for sure. As she drew nearer, a cicada flew blindly at their faces, coming to rest on his right shoulder, where it stayed.

"You have a friend," she said, pointing to it.

He looked down. "So I do."

He didn't brush it off, but let it stay. They watched, without moving, to see what it would do.

And as their eyes met, it stayed.

And when he leaned in to kiss her, it stayed.

And when she pulled back to look at him, it stayed.

It stayed.

For seventeen years, she thought. It might just—stay.

Ver Klimt

I wake

from my sleep

with a song

in my head

and your lips

on my neck—

Stop.

Wait.

Feel the kick

of my blood

as the dream

takes shape