Sawing Concrete

The great political divide is now between people who should apologize and people who should be apologized to, though our marketers, spokespeople for the system, like to say 'we're all in this together.'

Machiavelli's time has come again; or rather we've gone back to it--that the state is not immoral but amoral and more than half of it exists 'outside the good.'  

Shakespeare, born a mere 37 years after Machiavelli's death and so somewhat in the same renaissance timezone, uses the word "honor" 692 times in "Hamlet", the bloodiest of plays, and yet I'd rather be ruled by Hamlet than anyone I currently see on the politicial horizon.

Solitude is the cure for almost anything troubling you, but loneliness is something that can only be cured with the help of a therapist. Lonely, you can chat with a licensed mental helath practitioner on Zoom or FaceTime until you are pronounced ready to move away from your loneliness and enter the realm of the sort of solitude that is the cure for almost anything that troubles you.

Just when the new normal was getting a pleasant little bounce to its step--by this I mean the pace of social life, the calm, the quietness so compatible to human life- there are disturbing signs that its days are numbered. I watch from behind a window. Every ten minutes or so two or three new motorists are added to the traffic mix, and then auto repair shops, hardware stores, banks, those services the governor deems essential: nail salons and tattoo parlors will soon follow. We rush to return to the old normal, starved it seems to resume a way of life that made the majority miserable.

Once again, The Free World (Europe and the USA) lead the world in the race to death. This sad statistic is verified by first-responder media, many of whom are posting record profits. The best of us are ambivalent and the worst are full of a lack of common sense and compassion. Not to pay one's taxes--as advised by the lonely maladjusted Thoreau--seems the politically responsible thing to do, though would it actually change the things that need changing? And are there still any disobedients among us?   

By 4 pm I'm ready to venture out of the house and take a long walk around the park or to the beach. Walking is one of my core competencies, a pleasure fit for a king. Walking under the trees or beside the little lake in the park or along China Beach is one kind of clear thinking; walking, it's possible to see how subtle the lack of clear thinking is, how this lack catches up to us all in the body politic, and the possible infection points along the way. 

Home by 5 or 5:30, this citizen makes a little drink and walks downstairs, turns on the tv, and from his favorite evening chair prepares to be transfixed and anesthetized by the evening news.