What's That Smell?

My thanks to any of you who have continued to check in during my period of existential ennui. I'm almost ready to join my friends who believe in astrology; its explanation is as good as any for the tumult in my corner of the world.

I'm going to try to ease back into blogging without an agenda, just riff a little and see how it goes.

Which brings me to the above cartoon, shamelessly stolen from Salon.

Dear friends who have weathered past campaigns with me know me as one who chooses a candidate early and supports him or her with a clear vision. But when I look at the 2008 presidential race I peer into a kaleidoscope.

In 2004, I did not think it would be possible to ever, ever, ever want to elect a Democrat more than I did at that moment in time. I was wrong. But my present fervor is matched only by my indecision.

A gnat is buzzing around my head, buzzing "Electability! Electability! Electability!" I am susceptible to punditry in ways I haven't been before.

My heart is with Edwards' populism. Except when it's with Obama. I quiver with excitement at the thought of any of the six intellects involved in the married couples serving as a quartet of leadership. Hillary and Bill and Michelle and Barack and Elizabeth and John.

But reality is harsh. I live smack dab in the middle of Red America, and I can tell you something. Don't let caucuses and primaries fool you. Many, many, many people simply will never vote for Hillary. And I mean people who might otherwise vote D in November. Yes, I know, it makes no sense. I honestly don't think it has anything to do with gender. But it is. And it breaks my heart.

And Liberal Republicans (yes, Virginia, they exist) feel similar despair on their side of the ballot as well.

Poor Liberty.

Life in the Tunnel

"Wow. That's some procrastination you've got there, missy."

Why, thank you. It's my specialty.

"Been at it long?"

Come to think of it, I have. 'Avoiding the Written Word Since 1977' Or maybe it was 1978. You get the idea.

*****

Thanks for checking in, dear reader. No boring details on offer, no gushing revelations of midlife angst, no tear-inducing riffs on mortality (at least none beyond those last three passive-aggressive/narcissistic phrases).

Answer the following multiple choice question:

Over the last six week,s my life, metaphorically speaking, has been

A. a hamster wheel
B. one of those annoying "optical illusion" posters at the mall, the ones in which you can never see what you're supposed to see
C. a yo-yo
D. Floam
E. A and C on even-numbered days, unless it's raining
F. B, if you can't get the knot out of C's string
G. all of the above, or none

Discuss.

Meet me tonight in Dreamland...

(Yep, title nod to the B-52s.)

Years ago, during graduate school, I was discussing insomnia with a friend - let's call him Nightbird. Despite the fact that I loved sleep, it did not always come easily to me. I sought it with a vengeance. Said friend, on the other hand, seemed to avoid it. When I asked him why, he told me he didn't want to face his dreams.

For decades, I've had a mundane dream life, at least to my knowledge. Even when the bad ones come, they are firmly rooted in real world situations, peopled with familiar faces. Every once in a while I get to fly (more often, I run effortlessly), but for me a wild night in the subconscious is when, say, OF and I are asked by Benjamin Netanyahu to write the menu copy for his soon-to-open New York restaurant (don't laugh...this is an actual dream from about ten years ago).

But something's going on. Change is afoot.

It's not just the calendar, although I suspect that's part of it on both micro and macro levels. Fall is usually my sweet season. The glory time. I come to life. Frolic outdoors and such. But this is a bizarro autumn in Texas, and it's a bizarro autumn in my heart. Nothing is as it should be.

When I began this blog last spring, I remarked upon the number of friends and acquaintances going through difficult transitions. It appears to be my turn, but in ways I can't seem to identify, much less articulate.

I can usually find my way through the tangles with a comb made from words, but that's not working this time around (hence my sparse postings these days). But at night? Things are hopping.

My dream life is changing. I crave sleep, not just because I'm tired and not for escape, but for a return to the stories I'm telling myself, stories I know I'm hearing but can't always recall. Last night, as I was drifting off, I was reminded of this speech, Caliban's, from The Tempest:


Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.

I can't begin to tease out all these lines have to offer, although I now wish I'd offered the first two to Nightbird back in the early 80s.

I do know that, most mornings these days, "when I wake....I [cry] to dream again."

Sitting careless on a granary floor...

Poetry and I don't always get along. Give me a novel any day.Much poetry leaves me cold, but - ah - the few poems that call to me really call to me.

Today fall arrived. You must understand, this is not a gradual thing. Yesterday I wore shorts. Today, at 3 p.m., it was 48 degrees. It is drizzly and glorious.

And, to celebrate, I am going to reveal something very personal: one of those special poems.

Read it slowly, savor, and enjoy.

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or, by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

-John Keats (1795-1821)

Dear poetry purists: I know the formatting isn't exactly right on this. Consider me "(d)rows'd with the fume of poppies" or something, but I can't get this program to indent the way it should, at least not tonight, and I'm going to bed. Hopefully, I'll be able to fix it tomorrow.

Phoning It In

I'm going to let the folks over at salon.com provide today's content. I thought we could all use a little satire, I'm I'm too wrung out to bring it.

Rain Should Fall Tonight

'round midnight

It's late. I'm tired. My brain is swirling. The sky is heavy. The air is wet. Pendant clouds are sulking.

And, it seems, people everywhere are very sure about many things.

Me? Not so much.

Lately I've been enjoying a new (to me) blog by an old friend. The writer strives to be a primary, unedited source, to - well - just tell. Her clarity and tone refresh me every visit.

On the not-so-refreshing side, I've been following local coverage of a capital murder trial. I started watching because another friend is involved with the defense, someone whose intellect and intentions I respect. I kept watching and reading, however, for an additional reason: the varied media perspectives. Every channel, every paper featured individuals intent on the same things: a guilty verdict and a lethal sentence.

The case was nasty. Lots of violence, blood, ironclad forensic evidence, tragedy, and grief. Media websites drew comments so vitriolic I felt ill. People with no connection to the victim and with no knowledge of the case other than what they read or heard were fervently hoping for the defendant's death, as soon as possible. The jury reflected local sentiment. The guilty verdict was returned in less than an hour, the unanimous death sentence in about three. Such certainty. Such knowing.

And that knowing is why I feel so unsettled.

We can truly know so little, and a big chunk of that is ultimately subjective. I know I like Thai food. Does that make it good? I know I don't like licorice. Does that make it bad? Of course not.

Such false certainty matters not a jot when all that's at stake is menu planning. But it's driving our society in directions that make me squirm. From a recent Supreme Court decision restricting reproductive rights because women need to be protected from the consequences of their choices to a municipality disguising an anti-immigration agenda in residential painting restrictions , policy makers impose their certainty on our lives, often in very personal ways. Activists are comfortable with those who “know” a patient in a vegetative state would want invasive measures such as ventilators and feeding tubes, yet deny others who “know” a patient would not want to live via machine the right to remove mechanical support. In the latter case, only the activists’ knowledge matters.

This arrogance of presumption is rampant in our country. It permeates the air like the humidity I wipe from my face each day. Such selective, politically driven certainty isn’t knowledge. It’s an agenda.

When did we stop being willing to say, "I don't know"? To say "I believe" rather than "it is"?

I am not a lawyer, and I hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong about this; generic murder (please don't flame me...I know every murder is tragic and sick) alone does not qualify a case for the death penalty. The state must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, some kind of special circumstances that justify such an extreme punishment. In the case I mentioned above, that special circumstance was robbery.

The victim was seen earlier in the day wearing expensive jewelry, jewelry that was missing when her body was found. The property has never been recovered. The defendant was never seen in possession of the property. Yet the state claimed that a missing Rolex was proof of robbery by the individual it had charged. And the jury agreed.

Logical? Yes. Circumstantial? Yes. Downright Likely? Yes. But proven beyond a reasonable doubt, to the degree that a man will be put to death by lethal injection, a process whose constitutionality is even now under consideration? Arguably, no.

The defense came before the jury with humility and honesty. It did not deny its client's guilt or seek acquittal via technicalities or tricks. It called no witnesses in the initial phase of the trial, choosing to focus on questions of punishment. Instead, it asked the jury to put personal, visceral feelings of justice and vengeance aside and act not as individuals but as citizens charged with insuring that law rather than emotion was honored. I feared such an approach, ethical and rational, would be far too subtle and contingent for our certainty-drunk, answer-loving society. My fears were confirmed this afternoon.

Our laws don't always make us happy. Sometimes they protect us in ways that are counterintuitive. Despite our personal feelings of disgust toward such a violent crime, we MUST remember that such safeguards as "standard of proof" exist to protect us all. I'm glad to know some attorneys will, for the low sums court-appointed lawyers receive, work tirelessly to insure that our laws take precedence over our emotions. I’m proud to count one as a friend.

Constitutional democracy requires us to rise above "eye for an eye" thinking and, sometimes, put aside personal preferences. I presume none of us wants to live in a nation where the fact that the government says "it is so" makes it true.

Earlier today, a case went to a jury. Out of twelve citizens, none could or would say, "I'm not sure" or "I just don’t know."

And their certainty, stoked by emotion rather than proof, has condemned a man to death.

I wish it would rain.

Phantoms

Possible blog ideas float around me every night as I walk Large Dog.

I pass through interesting neighborhoods.

I recall conversations and daydreams.

I savor possibilities.

I sometimes regret.

But these days are so full. They begin at 6 and go full tilt, careening around this small world.

When I unleash Large Dog, toss him a biscuit, chug down a big glass of water, and settle in to write, the hours and their concerns fall on me like weights. As my darling niece once said, about 20 years ago, I feel squashded.

I confess to finding my bed more attractive than the keyboard. Mea culpa.

But the mornings and nights are finally cool. This is always, always an occasion of joy and renewal in my life. Those of you who communicated with me around this time last year can expect that Keats poem, the one I love so much, to come calling again the first time my exhalations take visible flight in the cold autumn air.

Here's hoping it won't be long.