Fish are Flying and Birds are Swimming

The path is strewn with wet leaves and the words of writers I’ve read before. It seems to me to be true that 70 to 80 percent of all literature is now officially dystopian, in which a list of misunderstandings has replaced the table of contents. The subject of domestic politics is now on the best-seller lists, and to become a politician is to join a growth industry. It’s about time some writer had some fun with climate change, not in the role/guise of a libertarian in which all problems are solved by either making new problems of the old ones or denying that problems exist at all, but by taking a personal literary interest in conserving dead languages rather than consuming them.

The question: can satire live up to reality, depending as it does on exaggeration and the elasticity of boundaries? Or is it the new hand sanitizer?

I pair this question with another: will we ever get tired of lying? Lying is so much fun and, in the proper hands, it’s a powerful form of satire in which the writer is able to pry reality away from its sticky little shell long enough to either tell the truth or laugh out loud. As a seemingly inexhaustible line of liars are now lined up to testify, one after another, the list of satirists is growing, as there seems to be an endless parade of satirical subject matter. Example #1: previously undocumented military aerial bombings, many of them hitting civilian targets in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, have been front page stories in major newspapers coast-to-coast. The day after the journalistic reveal, the President signs the National Defense Authorization Act into law, officially authorizing $768.2 billion in military spending; this is 5% more than the President requested the front page stories note. Example #2: the Republican re-districting project continues apace; one legislator is heard to say that it’s about ‘defining community.’

I join the liars, telling people I’ve decided I’m not going into a nursing-home when it’s time but will instead take matters into my own hands by strapping a 12.oz. t-bone steak to my waist and wandering out into the wilderness behind the cabin in Wyoming. And if that doesn’t get a reaction I’ll say I’ve changed my mind, deciding instead to bolt myself to the cabin’s metal roof during the first signs of a lightening storm.

It’s raining this morning. I was going to cakewalk into town today, walking with my head down toward the bluest places in the sky, to pin another medal on Joan Didion’s grave, but it’s much too wet out there. I’ll stay at home instead and listen to a podcast of The Pope rallying the Christians.