My brain hurt like a warehouse

Let's shut down the shutdown! Am I right, people? This is clearly not working. Our legislators have lost all purchase on the national interest. What the country needs, not pandering to what the country wants. It burns me up, so that I have to start ignoring the news. There's never any hope any more. No hope of good governance. No hope of real change. Not anything that you can use to fuel yourself with. What keeps us going? The pursuit of cash. Is that all there is? A crass, advertising-driven profit society? I am so disappointed.

Sketch 1

W- The face of the popular girl from high school, thirty years on. The eyes still have the girlish twinkle. There are some lines around them, but not many. Even in her late forties, she still has kept some of that spark about her. She wears skirts short enough to draw the eye and introduce a vague question involving dress codes and seemliness, one that fades. She tends to say 'blahblahblah' to quickly gloss over something that doesn't need to be pounded out in detail.

Her whole aspect is a double entendre, and begs another question of how to interpret her. Is she the attractive older woman who has held her power to turn people's heads? Or is she rather the desperate fortysomething who has, frighteningly, never changed? [Would I be considered an anti-feminist boor in some circles for the manner in which I pose these questions?—A separate question entirely, you will agree.]

[bracketed digressive interspersals doing anything for you?]

I saw a shock of gray emerging at her hairline yesterday and was struck by how well the dye had done its duty: I never once considered how old she must be. It was all I could do not to stare at it after that. Does she know that I have guessed at her secret? [A hint here at the secrets we all keep in plain sight and we think people don't notice. They must have, though, no?]

These questions I'm inclined to pose about her make her one of the only people in the department who is truly interesting on her own merits. What happened to her? How did some part of her become arrested in a stage of growth, before it was fully mature [I am presuming, but what is life without presumption?]? I can only hope that it is not one of the darker mysteries that is hinted at by the evidence. Assumption: she married young to a high-school sweetheart, felt trapped, but stayed in it, and acts out in barely perceptible ways to assert her lost freedom. And who says you can't judge your elders and postulate their life stories based on appearances and surface perceptions?

It's a question of scope, how far you're willing to go

The thing is, this is in no way the end of the world. It simply isn't. So a Republican who ran a strong campaign focused on connecting with the voters won the election against a Democrat who seemed cold and distant and may have taken her victory for granted. Stop the presses! This stuff happens every day, and you really think your world will come crashing down around you because, horror of horrors, Massachusetts elected a Republican and the Democrats only have a 59-vote majority? Please, get over it.

I'm a little bit disappointed in Massachusetts tonight, but then again, I can't help but feel this nagging sense of pride. We don't do what people want us to do. We do what we like, and forget the consequences.
Massachusetts people are pretty cynical. I don't know that Scott Brown was necessarily someone that everyone in MA could get behind, and a real feel-good story, as he was made out to be in some circles. It's more like everyone was collectively trying to stick it to the man. Everybody loves the proverbial 'Washington outsider.' Everybody hates the perceived elitist (pronounced Coakley). People in MA wanted to say, hey you thought this was a solid Democrat state? You thought Coakley could coast, you thought we would do your bidding and return another Dem to fill Kennedy's seat? Think again! We're Massachusetts, we're independent, and we'll elect a Republican just because we can!

I'm not saying it's right, I'm not saying Scott Brown is the greatest thing since sliced bread, I'm just saying that's how I see it. And if any good could come out of this, I can only hope it would be that the Democrats will finally have the balls to take some action and get something done before their majority, whether it's 60 votes or 51, is gone for good.

As the time that we can share never is enough it seems to me

There's really nothing like the nihilistic pleasure of knowing that you'll be dead before climate change really gets started on ravaging the earth in life-altering ways. The temptation is great to just say "I won't be here, so good luck with all that."

For now, I'm ready to indulge that temptation. Am I wrong? Probably. But I'm also an American. I'm free to think whatever I want. And right now, I think that I'll be long gone by the time the German tourists are learning to swim in Arizona Bay.

So as the sea level rises, I urge you to not worry about it too much because, frankly, it's not your problem. We're probably talking about at least three generations before things get really drastically wicked bad. And someone else will think of a cheap, easy, nearly effortless way to stop global warming by then, right?

Right?

It's 16 miles to the promised land

I was completely fascinated by this quotation from an article by David Hare in the New York Review of Books:

"It's incredible but the country itself still feels provisional. Of what other state can this be said? I notice when I am in Britain that you plan for 2038, you say that there will be this railway or that airport. But no Israeli plans so far ahead without feeling a pang in his heart which asks whether we shall be here at all. We look so strong from the outside, we have such a large army, so many nuclear weapons, we're so certain in our expansion, and yet from the inside it doesn't feel like that. We feel our being is not guaranteed. You might say we have imported from the Diaspora the Jewish disease-a sense of rootlessness, an ability to adapt and make do, but not to settle. After sixty years, Israel is not yet a home."

Hare is quoting an unnamed Israeli writer. What he said floored me. Sixty years gone by, that's a lifetime for many people, and his insight into the country is that it is deeply ingrained in the souls of Israelis to wonder whether each day might be the last for their nation. Sixty years of being, followed immediately by suddenly not being. Can you imagine the great, great fear that state of mind would bring? Can you imagine living in constant terror of the end of your existence?

The writer is correct, we could never think of the state of things that way in a country like the US, Britain, or almost any other on earth. The mentality he describes is so inconceivable from where I sit that I am having a very hard time putting myself in his shoes. I'm not sure if I believe him either, but if it was true, what consequences it would have for our planet! Would we finally understand the Israeli mentality? Would we know the secret to peace? Would we have fairness and justice and equality on both sides? But we cannot the greatest question of all, and the one that may never be answered, Will Israel ever feel safe enough?