Certainties
Life is a moment by moment thing. Early morning sun rising over a hill. The radio playing, a spoon hitting against the side of the bowl in the kitchen. Prosaic everday stuff that you just don’t notice. The colors of the foliage, the shape of the leaves.
A song I heard yesterday really impressed me. That’s what poetry does, it wakes you up to the reality of beauty that we hold in our consciousness at all times.
They bought a round for the sailor
And they heard his tale
Of a world that was so far away
And a song that we’d never heard
A song of a little bird
That fell in love with a whale
Here’s the video of the version I heard. It’s a cover of a Tom Waits song. I think Tom Waits deserves at least a Pulitzer, since Dylan got the Nobel.
When you get to a certain age, nostalgia comes as easy as wiping your nose. The past weighs heavier in your brain just because it takes up greater bandwidth. And so you notice that time passes, as we all know, but that simple fact takes up a prominence like a mountain that at first is distant but gradually grows, crowding out the sky and the fields.
Death is something you have to imagine in order to prepare. It helps to see your parents die, because once that happens, you know you can do it too. My mother accepted it as a matter of course. Her body had been betraying her for decades, but she was a great believer in the miracles of modern medicine, always prepared to wager another round of chemo on beating the grim reaper until at last the doctor told her the thing had spread beyond their capacity or willingness to contain it. She said to me “I guess this is when the cock crows, isn’t it?” And I just held her hand and tried to steady her.
My father fought it as a point of honor, a futile exercise but of course it burnished his reputation as a tough old bastard, even when he stopped being able to get out of bed or wash himself. He called for a glass of gin the day before he died. I was on the phone, a continent away, telling him I had always appreciated his example as a father. Later he told my sister, who was at his bedside, the good daughter, that that was the nicest thing he’d ever heard me say.
Metaphorically we are led by the heart as much or more then the brain, as individuals and as collectives, science tells us so. The ways of the heart are a mystery. The passion that leads us is a thing to be honored, I believe. It gets stronger the more it is held back, stamped upon, killed, mocked, and belittled. And those that would use it, manipulate it for their evil ends, in the end suffer defeat.
That’s what I believe will happen to Trump. He’s on the run now, aparently suffering panic attacks from the shame of the eventual release of the Epstein files. His heart must be rotten, don’t you think? Mocked, abused, and belittled by his own father yet able to channel his rage for so long into building an empire, a literal empire built on corruption and lies. We must acknowledge his ability to manipulate group responses — it’s self-evident that he is successful as a politician. But eventually the spell will wear off as even his ardent supporters determine that he is a cold-hearted narcissist and lying to them.
