DelicateBalance
Peter Sheaf Hersey Newell:
Old Father William Balancing an Eel,
from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (c. 1901)
" … whimpering like a wounded puppy."
I live in a DelicateBalance. I never know precisely how delicate my balance might be until some event or experience nudges me off my center. I sometimes seem remarkably robust with the sense that almost nothing could possibly throw me off balance. Other times, I feel precariously poised upon some precipice and likely to take a terrible tumble. Most days, under most conditions, I feel in no danger. I've always been most imperiled by forces I could not see coming. I seldom accurately anticipate the arrival of any unbalancing. These events bushwhack me into becoming their victim. I seem powerless to avoid these, depending upon my allostatic load, a rough measure of the level of burden I'm already compensating for carrying. When that load's been excessive, a feather in the wrong direction can tip me over and pour me out all over the floor.
I don't suppose I carry an unusually high allostatic load.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 11/28/2024
Claude Monet: The Petite Creuse River (1889)
The Impending Downfall
My Business Law professor told me back when I was still an undergraduate that if I wanted to predict our political future five or ten years out, I should just keep an eye on British politics. He insisted that the United States parrotted whatever our British cousins did over the prior couple of centuries with a few years' lag. It never seemed to matter whether the British did something brilliant or stupid; we'd be following on their tail. Their Brexit vote, arguably the most foolish political movement in modern history–at least up until the MAGA movement kicked in—took place in 2019, with the catastrophic effects starting immediately. Their government's "conservative" response to the vote's impact proved disastrous, for they began to engage in austerity to manage the immediate effects of choosing to walk away from their previous prosperity. After a few years of that absurdity, with government services worn to less than a nub, their conservative movement in Britain effectively ceased to exist, a victim of their own appalling excesses. We're about five years behind. November 5, 2024, was our Brexit vote, and we narrowly chose to leave our union. We will shortly experience an austerity-induced recession, which could become depression-quality depending on how quickly we smarten up. Our unemployment numbers should soar as qualified workers are serially disqualified from contributing because Congress could never codify the rules for their inclusion. They took five years. Like Britain, we chose to follow lies rather than obvious facts, chasing pasts improved with fictional proofs. Our government, by and for The People, seems set to turn against The People in favor of a regressive austerity that can only wound the weakest while enriching the already wealthy. The comeuppance will come after providing a lesson Britain had already learned and we could not quite learn from yet. Divided, we fall. We can only stand tall when united. I'm grateful for the coming comeuppance if not for the impending downfall.
ThanksGiven
Giuseppe Rosso: Thanksgiving (1968)
" … an experience one cannot choose but for which might feel gratitude later."
I had not understood when, sixty-seven installments ago, I began this Being Exiled chronical. I thought I might be trying to release some trauma by recounting it; a strategy long ago rejected as ineffective by trauma specialists. I had no intention of discovering justifications for gratitude, for had we not been wounded by the experience? Didn't it ding our dignity and leave us wondering about our viability? Of course, it did, but those feelings seem no different from what any random day might deliver. Nothing's strictly one thing or another. We live bittersweet existences, usually more salty and savory than sweetness, anyway. As we age, we grow to favor bitter flavors and think of ourselves as more sophisticated for appreciating them. We find our friends in the most unlikely places and grow to appreciate experiences that might have otherwise just made us bitter.
I might as well feel grateful, for all was not lost.
IdEntity
Julia Margaret Cameron: Julia Jackson (1867)
" … I returned an IdEntity with Ego clearly absent."
After bankruptcy took my professional identity, my ego seemed to recede. I became progressively less and less interested in making something else of myself. For the first time, I stopped striving to become something other than I was. I also lost much of my former curiosity for uncovering who or what I actually might be beneath my cloaking exterior. I became more instinctual as I became less purposeful. I began following my senses. I was never skilled at following maps, so I relied upon a kind of dead reckoning to guide me. I'd imagine the topography, then follow where that notion led me. I often ended up very near where I intended. I sometimes ended up in another county, but neither outcome mattered. I usually had no particular place to be. I held few imperatives. I began thinking of myself as more an observer than a player. What I wanted or needed didn't seem to matter very much after we were Exiled.
My therapist friend Carole first noted my ego's absence.
MissingHistory
Arnold Topp: Abstract Composition, from the portfolio "New European Graphics, Portfolio III: German Artists"
[Abstrakte Komposition, aus Bauhaus Mappe "Neue Europäische Graphik III: Deutsche Künstler"]
(1921)
"I couldn't hope to become a local while being Exiled there …"
Exiles arrive with little knowledge of the history of the place they're relegated. They remain contextless for a time. In some ways, their initial contextlessness never leaves them, for most of the local history could never have been captured in stories and books but needed living to comprehend. Even the written stories impart little meaning without some understanding of locations. Locations take considerable time to imprint on any newcomer who first tries to get from place to place and can't yet be bothered with history's subtler dimension. Later, an insipient disorientation settles over the Exile, and he seeks resolution. He asks questions, hears stories, and slowly starts comprehending.
Once we'd arrived in Colorado, I'd occasionally meet someone who claimed to have grown up there.
TrackingIn
Pierre Redouté: Morus rubra = Murier rouge. [Red Mulberry] (1801 - 1819)
"We couldn't help but TrackIn some of what we'd acquired … ."
The house I grew up in featured a Mulberry tree in the backyard. It grew over the clothesline, resulting in some interesting sheets reminiscent of Batik in season. Us kids would climb high to reach the ripe fruit, TrackingIn bright purple footprints across my mother's kitchen floor. Ever since then, I can't help but imagine myself TrackingIn whatever I've just been walking through. This time of year (late November), I notice my Muck shoes carrying smashed Dogwood berries in their treads. Last night, while The Muse and I were preparing supper, I noticed we were listening to The Big Broadcast, a Sunday night tradition broadcast on Washington, DC's NPR station, WAMU. This show replays radio dramas from the heydays, and it, along with Hot Jazz Saturday Night, became a habit when we were living in Exile in Takoma Park. We continued listening when we relocated our Exile to Colorado and still tune in sometimes now that we've returned home.
Nobody returns unchanged from any Exile.
ElbowRoom
Eugène Delacroix: Standing Lion (1833)
" … lest I become a traitor to my home."
I continued my Discrediting efforts for the duration of our Exile. I wanted to avoid becoming 'of' Colorado, for that would violate my relationship with my true home, the one from which The Muse and I were then Exiled. I tolerated no mixed emotions; even when I found some aspect of our temporary home endearing, I'd find some reason to characterize it as one down from my "real" home. Denver was remarkably easy to characterize so, for it was always a curious major city. It didn't look the least bit pretty, though the views could be fantastic. It grew according to nobody's master plan, being one of those railroad towns that got out of hand. It grew by booms and busts, upward and outward when the times were good, and then down and out when the booms went bust. All the booms eventually went bust except for the population one. A confusion of brick buildings were torn down in the fifties and sixties in the unlikely belief that skyscrapers would replace the resulting naked parcels. The naked parcels remain today and serve as eyesores and parking lots, some with unlikely single-story suburban buildings littering urban views.
Had the place been Vienna or Rome, I would have extended the same treatment, for I was in the business of ego defense.
Discrediting
Edward Donovan: Anchovy, Clupea encrasicolus (1804)
" … not a single deli in all of Denver could hold even a small candle [to the one I left behind.]"
Under the Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder Clause of the Exile's Charter, I set about hazing our new location shortly after we arrived. I've noticed that I do this by attempting to discredit the new place by demonstrating how different it is from the old familiar one. As with anywhere, living there accustoms one to certain readily available items. For instance, people living near the ocean grow accustomed to eating only the freshest fish. Move one of them inland, and you'll likely hear no end of complaining at first about how much better the fish were when they lived at the beach. There will be no slight hint of derision embedded within these complaints. Perhaps they're protecting or promoting their ego. The net effect of these grumbles reduces the validity of the newer place. I'm uncertain why this is so often the case.
I felt the lack of Italian delis almost as soon as we landed in Colorado.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 11/21/2024
Mary Cassatt: Meditation (1883)
You Were A Gem
My first wife's mother, Nancy, my first mother-in-law and kids' grandma, died this week, aged ninety-six. Her mother, "Grandma Nelly," had lived into her nineties before her, just like most purebred Norwegian women do. She was an educator and a former Dean of both Seattle Central Community College and Chemekita Community College in Salem, OR. She profoundly influenced me, her son-in-law, who had been designated Not College Material in high school. She encouraged me to continue my education after I'd been out of high school for seven years. She gave me a book that showed me what my working-class upbringing had never known. It explained which clothes fit what conditions, when to wear a brown suit and what to wear with it, and how to comport myself in business, stuff my business school studies never covered. I learned to dress at a price point above my station and to shop the all-essential menswear sales. Her master's degree was in home economics, and her PhD was in education. She was a whiz in the kitchen and could paint, hang wallpaper, and sew with the best of them. She finally convinced her caregivers to stop trying so hard to prolong her life. She told them this dying stuff was boring, like watching paint dry. She died like she'd always lived, on her own terms. Rest In Peace, Nancy. You were a gem!
AWriter_(4)
Lambert Antoine Claessens,
After Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn:
Philosopher, Meditating (18th-19th century)
" … evidence that I'm at least still trying to make some difference."
I recently realized that this year, 2024, I have been meditating twice daily for fifty years, with very few instances where I could not maintain this pattern. I have yet to give up on the promise the practice held, and while it promises nothing explicit, the implicit benefits continue to attract my almost undivided attention. Initially, the promoters of the practice promised no end to the benefits. They described it as a backdoor route to everything from perfect health to increased intelligence. Some of the devotees went on to carry their originating metaphor out of all reasonableness, claiming they could break some of the otherwise immutable laws of physics. I never held much interest in violating otherwise immutable laws of physics, so my practice has encompassed much more modest objectives, like no explicit objectives at all.
I firmly believe that it's beneficial for me to engage in something diligently, so fervently that I will not shirk even such a trumped-up obligation as meditation.
AWriter_(3)
Edouard Vuillard: Album Cover for Landscapes and Interiors (1899)
"I became AWriter by typing with my two-and-a-half typing fingers: Another Summer."
The Muse recalls always thinking of me as AWriter because I always seemed to be writing, but I had not gained the discipline being AWriter requires. She says she thought I'd become a consultant to collect material, and she might be right. To my mind, AWriter, a real one, writes. Their writing can't be contingent upon how they feel or whether they're inspired unless they trade in mere transcription. I once believed writing required inspiration or some other high-minded situation to express itself. That became a self-defeating belief because it often dissuaded me from writing. It generated excuses instead. Whatever else might be the case, a straightforward fact underlies the whole writing business: Writers Write. It's just as simple and certainly no more complicated than that.
That said, though, it must matter what AWriter writes.
AWriter_(2)
John La Farge: The Dawn [Former Title: Dawn on the Edge of Night] (1899)
" … before I could properly proclaim myself AWriter."
When my soul brother died of ALS, I became the apparent heir to replace him as the author's representative on our mutual publisher's board of directors. This nomination boosted my sense of legitimacy as an author, if not necessarily as a writer. It was unusual in the publishing industry for an author's representative, let alone an actual author, to serve on a publishing company's board. Other board members included a bookshop owner, a diversity and inclusion expert, also an author, and a woman who worked for a prominent author's company, so it was more than just me there representing author interests. The assignment confused me since its details had little to do with what interested me. I was never that into balance sheets, but the responsibilities leaned more toward encouraging a coherence between the firm's philosophy and its operations. That purpose was right up my alley. I even felt hesitantly competent to serve.
The firm's CEO took to coaching me through a book idea I'd been harboring but hadn't managed to get flying.
AWriter_(1)
Jan Ekels II: A Writer Trimming his Pen (1784)
"I wasn't quite a writer yet …"
I discovered that I'd become a writer while in Exile. This discovery took a while, for I needed to work through the usual stages of acceptance to make it. I had already become an author by the time I made this discovery, and though I'd been writing for decades, this discovery shocked me. I had previously considered myself a wannabe writer with the aspiration but without the necessary certifications. I didn't yet understand just how one became a writer. I just knew that I hadn't become one until then, I had. The final transformation came in a moment of begrudging and beligerate acceptance, an "alright, then, dammit" moment that finally quieted the roiling questioning and controversy forever. Before, I wasn't. After, I really was.
This discovery resolved nothing but the lingering background uncertainty anybody might hold about any aspiration.
TheLight
Warren Mack: Colorado Landscape (First half, 20th Century)
"The last half of our Exile would surely cast lasting shadows."
Before we left Takoma Park and The East, I would tune into television serials set in The West to vicariously experience TheLight. The atmosphere in the East becomes heavier. It seems to blot out much of light's native intensity. A few Spring and Autumn days might approach the everyday clarity of TheLight in The West, but in Colorado, every day features blinding brilliance. I noticed that difference first. I'd rise early to write on the East-facing concrete pad porch of our Barbie and Ken transitional apartment to watch the sun rise out of Kansas to bathe the bluffs and plains in its purity. At better than a mile high, the air's thin, so the sun slips right in. Sunglasses were never optional there. I wore long sleeves and havelocks to avoid melanomas.
I watched for that returning sun every morning The Muse and I lived there.
Suburbia
William Michael Harnett: For Sunday’s Dinner (1888)
"I said I thought I might be able to live there …"
Though I was raised in the fifties and sixties, I came of age without developing an appreciation for the modern American suburb. We lived in a turn-of-the-century castle, compared to the concrete slab construction passed off as Mid-Century Modern. I disliked the gently curving streets inevitably leading into cul-de-sacs in which those places tended to be built. The streets typically sported what I labeled Tourquise Names, with hyphenations stolen from far-away places, describing nothing similar to the local topography. Mar-a-Lago Lane overlooking high desert terrain. Their cookie-cutter sameness and visual blandness, with each place identical to its next-door neighbors, disturbed something wild within me. I'd always dreaded ending up in some Suburbia somewhere.
Exiles exist to expose us to our worst-case scenarios.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 11/14/2024
Archibald McLees, Engraver: New Spencerian compendium of penmanship, Part 2 (1879)
We Can Be Certain Now
When I began writing this series, I couldn't have known we would experience something like another Exile together when I was halfway through creating it. Exiles might be much more common than I had earlier appreciated. I had innocently figured that most people never experience that sort of trauma, and it was consequently a rare sort of event. I recognize familiar tells when surveying my friends and colleagues' reactions since the recent election. We're all Exiles now, seemingly kidnapped against our will and forced to cope with conditions we'd hoped we'd never have to face. Our faith has already been wounded, and we anticipate it will get worse, much worse. We're heartbroken, and we damned well should be. What's coming still seems utterly unnecessary. We seriously believed that we were better than this. It sure seemed like we used to be. These feelings provide the context within which Exiles have always existed. The sense of unfairness never completely relents. It would be unreasonable for me not to doubt my ability to cope with the upcoming insults. Must we exist on platitudes now? We were formerly engaged in serious business. We're forced to struggle to barely achieve survival, and even that's in question now. All Exiles start the same, with their end in question. Every Exile ends differently; of this, alone, We Can Be Certain Now.
VenueChange
She wrangled a transfer to her lab's home office in Colorado, where real estate seemed more affordable. Slip over here for more ...
Visitors
Isaac Israels: Two Donkeys (1897 - 1901)
Gallery Notes:
Scheveningen’s donkeys were not just entertainment for seaside visitors; Israels made grateful use of them in his paintings. He portrayed them a few times, either with children riding or a boy leading, or as here, waiting for the next ride. Their keeper lies in the foreground, on the sand.
"I remember we'd once been Exiled before our Visitors found us home."
Visitors transformed our Exile. On our first days there, two old friends just happened to be passing through the area to visit relatives, and we spent two days easing into that terribly unfamiliar place together. It seemed much less foreboding with them there to distract us into entertaining. Something about visitors brings the host out in us. We might not usually take ourselves out to dinner, but when we have Visitors, we're much more likely to consent to the splurge and even try to find the best. I become tour guide-y, even when I'm unfamiliar with the territory. I have an almost uncanny ability to find interesting places, and our Visitors almost always appreciate my efforts. We wouldn't have visited half the tourist traps in DC had Visitors' presence not quietly goaded us into agreeing to go.
The GrandOtter was our most frequent Visitor after we were Exiled.
Just_Visiting
Philippe Pigouchet: Visitation, from Book of Hours (15th Century)
" Who would greet us when we returned?"
During Exile, The Muse and I were able to infrequently return to the scene of our banishment to visit family and friends. We learned early in our Exile that holidays were lousy times to visit since people already had their traditions, and the last thing they needed was some fifth-wheel visitors messing up their rhythms. Also, we ached to visit ordinary times rather than during celebrations when people might be on their best or worst behavior. The one visit we made over Christmas, early in our Exile, proved disastrous. We never attempted a repeat performance.
I usually managed to make it back for my grandson Roman's birthday, even though it was in February.
DaGoils
Beatrix Potter: Cats in the Window (1909)
" … those fading days may never go away."
Before I move these stories away from Takoma Park, I must recount one of the most fulfilling activities I engaged in there. Our Sherman Street neighbor and benefactor Clair had been involved with a group that cared for the town's many feral cat colonies. He recruited me to take a turn. Rather than try to domesticate these critters, these people trapped and neutered them, then returned them to the wild, returning daily to feed them forever. Each volunteer agreed to feed a certain number of cat colonies for specific days each week. I decided to service five drops, four days each week. I was responsible for buying and dropping the food off each designated day.
The colonies lived invisibly.
StatusQuoing
Constant Troyon:
Vache qui se gratte [Scratching Cow] (1858)
"I knew most people only in passing."
Eventually, that second Exile settled into the very soul of domestic tranquility. The Muse's early struggles to adapt to her job's politics settled into her widely acknowledged mastery of that context. She held a job that made a difference and was held in high esteem by her colleagues. I, too, had found a level. The yard in Willow Street offered me opportunities to tend a garden and mow a lawn. That house could have been more reliable. The HVAC repair man and I were on a first-name basis. He confided that the owner had installed the air conditioners upside down and backward. The house was so big, and the climate was so fierce that two air conditioning systems were stacked into the attic. The heating system, too, exhibited problems. We returned from a visit home to learn that the young woman we'd hired to tend cats and plants hadn't noticed that the furnace had failed. We lost about half the house plants, and the basement filled with millipedes. Millions of them. That took some serious cleaning up.
That landlord had hired a management company to watch over his home while it was rented out.
Preservation
Pieter van der Heyden after Pieter Bruegel: Everyman (1556 - 1560)
Gallery Notes: The bearded figure with the lantern represents Everyman during his lifelong search. The legend explains, ‘Everyone searches for himself in various things, all over the world. How can anyone then get lost, when one is always looking for oneself? However, no one knows himself, … Whoever understands this has insight into a great miracle’.
"We live lives of ritual and habit …"
Pieter van der Heyden after Pieter Bruegel: Everyman (1556 - 1560)
Gallery Notes: The bearded figure with the lantern represents Everyman during his lifelong search. The legend explains, ‘Everyone searches for himself in various things, all over the world. How can anyone then get lost, when one is always looking for oneself? However, no one knows himself… Whoever understands this has insight into a great miracle’.
"We live lives of ritual and habit …"
Life continues in remarkably similar aspects even after being Exiled. Conservation and Preservation Laws applicable to physical systems also seem to apply when considering social ones. My rituals and familiar patterns continued trying to replicate themselves even once their originating contexts disappeared. Many attempts seemed absurd, though I rarely considered whether my intentions were reasonable. We were used to taking Sunday toodles when living in our small city, so we attempted to continue the ritual after moving into a big one. It might have taken us half the afternoon to get to what we might consider country, at which point we'd have to turn around to get back home by suppertime. We toodled anyway! In this and a thousand other ways, we preserved our rituals even into Exile.
Before, we'd home-can tomatoes every summer.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 11/07/2024
Charles White: Harvest Talk (1953)
Frequent readers might recall that The Muse and I started a project to remodel our front porch in the first week of August. We end the first week of November without a completed remodel, ultimately violating our original worst case by not completing it by Halloween. Halloween found me camped out in front of the blocked-off front porch steps to ensure no goblin fell into our porch deck frame's black hole. I’ve reset my original expectations a half dozen times since we started. Everything I knew about project work informs me that we're executing normally. No project was ever supposed to be completed on the initially expected schedule. Each rightly became an exercise in recovering from the shock and shame of turning out different than initially expected. Project Mastery, a subject in which I once taught well-respected workshops, was always about managing emerging expectations rather than ensuring the originals occurred. No force in the known universe could ever ensure satisfying original expectations and it's at best naive to presume that anyone in this generation could so succeed. No, we're born to experience serial failures and somehow manage to recover from them. The MAGAs will prove to have been every bit as cruel and unreasonable as we expected they would be, and we will prove to be worthy of unexpected opponents. Who will ultimately win depends upon whether one believes in an end to history. I suspect the people to whom I will become the 16th great-grandchild will still wrestle with the same dichotomies. Evil might be just as eternal as good. My job, and your job, must be to stand on the side of good, however seductive evil might seem this time. Thank you for following along!
Tourististan
C. M. Bell: Smithsonian Institute.[still image Stereograph} (1870-79)
" … charge nothing for admission but leave a much more lasting impression."
Neither The Muse nor I had ever lived in such proximity to famous places until we were Exiled to our nation's capital. There, a National Mall holds a collection of monuments and museums that contain something akin to our national heritage. Millions of visitors travel long distances to visit these places. It's a tradition that if you're about to graduate from a high school located anywhere along the Eastern Seaboard, your class will travel by bus to what The Muse and I came to call Tourististan. On any odd summer afternoon, tour busses line The Mall from Fifteenth Street to the foot of Capitol Hill, idling, belching diesel smoke. They disgorge their passengers into swirling crowds of the usual suspects: boys showing off to imaginary girlfriends and preening teen females carrying identical non-functional purses. Add to the mix families pushing strollers filled with kids too young to appreciate anything they might witness. Welcome to Tourististan.
We gave The Mall wagon room and usually went out of our way to avoid the place.
Dislocated
7310 Willow Street, Takoma Park, MD (2012)
"Dislocations do not always prove to be as perilous as they seem."
Three years into our Exile, The Muse and I were Exiled again when our landlord informed us that he would sell the Sherman Street house. He and his wife were relocating back to the States from The Hague and needed the cash out of that house to buy themselves a place in Houston—no hard feelings, nothing personal. We would have put an offer on the place if we had been in any position to purchase it, but we were still recovering from our bankruptcy three years earlier and couldn't quite imagine floating the deal. We'd been juggling finances since we began our Exile. The Muse had contracted with a couple to make a down payment on a rent-to-own arrangement that gave us some cushion, but that deal had fallen apart after less than a year. Those renters had left the place worse for their wear. The Muse's son agreed to move in and help recover from the damage for reduced rent, so we'd been paying premium rent in Takoma Park and subsidizing our original mortgage back home.
The last thing either of us wanted was to go out searching for another place to live.
Self-Determination
Laura Theresa Alma-Tadema: Self-Help (c. 1885)
"When I could no longer believe in who I might become …"
Besides laying open the myth that I could return home for Christmas, my Exile also displaced my inherited faith in the great American Self-Determination Myth. Most Americans of my generation were taught that we could accomplish anything we put our minds to and that any of us could grow up to become President. This might have been an odd offshoot of Jefferson's assertion that all men are created equal, a helpful fiction not necessarily intended to have been interpreted literally. Anyway, like almost everybody, I came of age believing my lot in life, if not at that moment improving, was definitely, if invisibly, trending better. Sure, my current trajectory might seem unpromising, but the magic of Self-Determinism would shortly muster a miracle. I just needed to contribute faith, patience, and persistence.
The thing about belief was always that it conveniently becomes self-sealing.
AwayForHolidays
Lucian and Mary Brown: Untitled [boy with Easter egg] (c. 1950)
" … celebrations exclusively reserved for nuclear families …"
A myth promotes the idea that anyone far away might successfully return home for holidays. I'd attempted to accomplish this end for most of my adult life before being Exiled. Once Exiled, the underlying truth finally sunk in. Before Exile, I grew up and moved away, dutifully returning almost every Christmas and many Thanksgiving holidays. I considered these excursions high points. I'd reclaim my childhood bedroom and introduce my kids to country Christmas traditions, though I might have noticed I no longer belonged there. It had not been my home for years, and my annual return was more nostalgic than substantial. I'd forgotten how to appropriately dress there, and my interests seemed more distant from theirs every year. I sincerely wanted to be everybody's favorite uncle, but nobody ever gets to be an absentee anything. You're either there or not; if you're not almost always there, you've already gone, your annual appearance more ghostly than actual.
Exiled to the odd other coast, returning home for Christmas was mostly out of the question.
PoliticalExile
Emil Orlik: Three Women 1905
" … a much broader connection than I ever could have discovered had I just stayed home."
Our Exile was as much a political act as it was social. Our business went bankrupt in no small part due to the corrupt practices of the George W. Bush administration. The mortgage bubble his supply-sided economic policies promoted ultimately brought down the economy on our shoulders. He'd been doing damage to the high-tech industries our consulting firm relied upon since the very beginning of his very first term. His hasty invasion of Afghanistan, followed by his foolish incursion into Iraq on blatantly false premises, had amplified uncertainty, which is one thing every economy fears. The oughts were fraught with stupid political turbulence. We fled into Exile and the welcoming, reassuring arms of the first term of the Obama administration. Washington, DC, in those days, was a palpably hopeful place. Obama had made viable a hope many had not dared to dream. We relocated to a place very near the center of that renewed enthusiasm.
We had been politically active before being Exiled.
TheInvisibleHusband
Carle Vernet: Hussard Walking in Front of his Horse,
Smoking a Pipe (February 8, 1817)
" … one impossible plan."
It might be true that every Exile serves their time alone. Certainly, The Muse's Exile seemed very different than mine. She would disappear into the Takoma Park Metro Station every morning and return every evening, off to engage in meaningful work and petty politics. She was an increasingly significant presence in her workplace, expanding her role from its initially forgettable status into something with genuine if informal, influence. She was becoming something. I was the one who ensured she got up on time and would often give her a ride to the station. In the six years we lived in Takoma Park, she drove the car to work three times. I regulated her departures and arrivals. Having supper ready when she returned became my primary occupation.
I had rarely had so much alone time.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 10/31/2024
Edvard Munch: The Vampire II (1895/1902)
We're Not Going Backward
I have avoided making overt political statements in my stories, and not only because politics tend to render stories less timeless. For instance, I did not write a January 6, 2020 story, though I've never tried to hide my affiliations. Like you, I have always believed Trump was a dumpster fire. He represented what was always reprehensible about Americans stretching back before and including Andrew Jackson’s champions, which included some of my forebears. I might be remiss if I missed this opportunity to acknowledge at least that these Exiled Stories, as well as the preceding Grace and Fambly stories, were all created beneath a pall of the possibility that old Mr. Corruption might get reelected. Now, five days before the election, his reelection seems even more impossible than it appeared eight years ago when we were all blindsided by the most catastrophic election returns in the country's history. Trump didn't disappoint my expectations for an instant of his term. He proved inept and incapable, the very soul of terrible. He's only gotten worse since.
But I come here to praise Harris, not to recount Trump's many shortcomings. If he didn't have shortfalls, he wouldn’t have any falls at all, for he's a singularly unimpressive person, a failure by almost every measure; even his purported wealth appears to have been phony. He still owes money to every venue he rented for his 2020 campaign. This campaign only made that debt worse.
Harris has already accomplished what so recently seemed impossible. She's managed in a few scant months to remind us who we were and who we might become again. The seething foreground her opponent foments was never once a threat unless, and of course, we took that noise seriously. She didn't and hasn't, and in the process of taking her opponent unseriously, she's reminded me of who I intended to be. I had been afraid and needed reassurance. I believe we all needed to see a slim woman stand up to that shameful fatcat and his minions as if they couldn't ever lay a hand on her. They haven't. They couldn't. They can't. They will continue to ineffectively rant, but we're well on to their con.
I feel courageous now, American rather than cowardly courageous, the kind that proudly hails instead of disgracing itself. Harris did the impossible. She reignited a flame that most commentators had insisted might never burn again. I could not have been more delighted to vote for Harris and Walz. I have avoided engaging in the traditional catastrophizing Democrats always engage in every four years. I have at times pretended to feel confident that the American character remained intact, that it had only been napping and would be ready to engage again once awakened. I'm awake now that we're not going backward but forward again. Finally!
Good For A Goose
Fambly (93)
Grace (92)
Humor (2)
iAlogue (1)
Letters to the Editor (1)
NextWorld (1)
Personal (19)
Steam Festival (4)
Vaporized (6)
Work (16)
November 2024
October 2024
September 2024
August 2024
July 2024
June 2024
May 2024
April 2024
March 2024
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
