Rain-Slicked Streets

Reflecting about Matthew Yglesias' comments about the creeping Putinization of American life, Jim D. at Burnt Orange Report conjures up a good metaphore for our current situation:

[BurntOrange/Comrades]: ... walking the rain-slicked streets of the gray present, I must wonder what is happening to America, and worry what will happen if we keep on the road we're on.

11:26:10 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

We Missed the Bus

We missed our transfer. It was a long way to walk from the one bus stop to the other, and there were two busy streets to cross. And as it happened, the #10 bus we were trying to catch got to the stop just a minute or so before us -- far enough ahead that running would have done no good, close enough that we knew at that moment that we had a half-hour wait ahead of us.

The sun was bright, and there was no bus stop bench. The traffic raced by just a few feet in front of us. We sat on a limestone shelf sticking out of the hill and gazed longingly at the man across the street selling watermelons from the back of his old Chevy pickup truck.

Taking the bus involves a certain sacrifice of control. You are not the master of your own destiny. Time is not yours to manage. The keys and the wheel are in someone else's hands.

But there is this...

If you can get past the loss of a half-hour now and then. If you can enjoy a cool fall breeze even while the fall Texas sun is blazing down on your waiting face. If you can convince yourself to smile while you sit there. If you can fold a little dragon out of an old twist-tie just to pass the time. If you can laugh at the ticking minutes running down the drain. If you can do these things, your life is certain to be longer and happier than it would otherwise be.

11:14:48 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

Ignoring the Burning

There are serious things to do. Serious things to say. So what do we do?

• We sleep late and eat fried eggs almost at noon.
• As the sun burns thru the morning clouds and climbs into the sky, we dig in the dirt and water the plants and move squirming earthworms from one bed to another.
• And we sit. While there are all these other things to do and say, we sit in the shade and let the breeze blow by and let the dappled light dance on the grass at our feet.
• In the evening, the setting sun lights up the high clouds and wisps of pink spread out before us. Look, I say. I saw it, she says. And we stand and point and look and marvel.

There is so much we should be doing. The world about us is burning. We should be quenching the fires somehow, carrying buckets. But our hands cannot help. Our voices cannot be heard. Our votes will be recorded, but they will not count -- not our votes from here.

So instead of agonizing on this day, we chose to do other things and ignore the burning for just a little while.

9:48:15 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []