Be Here Again
Wednesday. Don Asmussen has a nice panel in the Chronicle this morning. I thought it worth stealing. Dr. Strangelove indeed. Jon Carroll also used the metaphor in his column, Cheney in a wheelchair as Strangelove, and it does connect with the dread I've experienced over these last eight years, but dread of nuclear war without the sinking feeling the foundations of the nation were dissolving right in front of our collective eyes. There was plenty of political madness in the sixties but it didn't feel like we were sinking into 1984 the way it did in 2004.
You sure? Why do you suppose Orwell wrote 1984 in 1949?
Well, we all knew about J. Edgar and his FBI, HUAC and the like, but for some reason these last eight years were worse. Then again I was young in the 1960's and thought truly bad things like these couldn't really happen here. Silly me.
Dr. Strangelove, the movie, was in so many ways exactly right for its time, forgetting in the interim, I guess, times can sneak back into the house through an unlocked door. We keep our doors locked out here on the left coast, but I understand it's a point of pride that people in the red states don't. Keep their doors locked. Time now to put Mr. Bush and his Vice President behind us and hope there's no reason for the Doctor to show us his face again.
Overcast this morning, the temperature mild, the day ahead. For some reason this marks two breakfasts in a row without a follow on stomach ache. Maybe the fact I've been drinking lemon ginger tea instead of coffee. Could be. Reading the papers over breakfast my waitress mentioned that all of the news boxes outside had been emptied, someone putting in their fifty cents and taking the entire pile. The inauguration coverage, of course. Souvenirs. I thought briefly of not leaving my newspapers on the free for all stack when I left, I mean they must be valuable and all, and then I snapped out of it, tossed them on the pile and headed home. You start thinking that way and your house begins to fill up with junk, piles of “significant” trash in the closets. I have enough junk in my house as it is.
Later. Some rain this afternoon, colder, feeling fidgety, but fidgety within bounds. Tomorrow lunch with friends who were once in my section with the old company whom I haven't seen now for a while, so that will be nice. I say I'm feeling fidgety in the sense I want to get out of the apartment, but can't think of anywhere I might like to go. Now, is this a function of getting older and more timid or boredom or the mind making progress in its trip around the bend? Probably not. I've been here before. I'll be here again.
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