EDLM Diary 20 February 2020
I had intended for my last diary entry to be, in fact, my last diary entry, but the project’s administrator prevailed upon me to reconsider, and so I have returned, gimlet eye freshly honed to a cunning wormy sharpness, or topped off with strong cold gin and tart lime, depending on what you’re looking for in a gimlet.
It was a busy, mentally exhausting day, so I’m writing this entry in the evening, based on jotted notes and memory. It will track in approximately reverse chronological order, because life is too short to be predictable and boring.
Evening Reflections
It was the kind of day only Marvin Gaye can soothe away, so I’m listening to What’s Going On?, one of the greatest records to appear in my lifetime. And Marvin reminds me that I am especially missing my good friend S tonight. S was a millwright at the Bethlehem Steel Works in Burns Harbor, Indiana; a Gary native; a recovering cocaine addict who had the bad fortune to be born Black and poor in a country that devised a carceral system specially intended to grind poor, Black, addicted men into a compliant grist. S was smart (and lucky) enough to avoid serving much time, though. How we met and became friends is a story too long and personal to recount here, but he literally saved my life once. I miss his voice, his booming laugh, his apparent wonderment at the absurdity he saw around him. I miss talking to him, chain-smoking cigarettes and playing Scrabble late into the night. We had fallen out of touch for a decade, then rekindled a long-distance friendship in the lead-up to the Tang Emperor’s fraud election, sharing our fears of what would happen next. He had moved to Florida; he said he liked the weather and the women, but he sounded lonely. His addiction came back and claimed him in the end. He’s been gone almost three years, but his presence is still so vivid and larger-than-life in my memory—as if we’d talked just yesterday. I’m just shy of 50 years old, and I have already lost so many—too many—dear friends. I just learned about another one earlier this week.
I’ve been an avowed agnostic my entire life, but at the start of this year, I began praying again. Or maybe not praying, exactly: each day I make an effort to light a candle and bow my head for a minute or two to recall the friends I’ve lost, to thank them and let my mind’s eye linger upon them for a moment; occasionally (uselessly, ridiculously, I sometimes think) asking for their intercession. Asking the cold Universe to heal those broken souls that have no peace and lead us all from darkness into light.
This Afternoon
Today was a busy, exhausting day at the tax prep site. I subscribe to the idea that you should learn something every day, but today stretched that philosophy to the limit.
These are politically fractious times; thus, in the interest of remaining focused on the task at hand, I try to remain apolitical, professional, and bland of affect while helping taxpayers—a policy not followed by all of our preparers, one of whom shouted out, in response to a comment I missed, “Sure, blame Trump! He’s not here to defend himself!” My head still throbs from the ensuing ruckus, during which I privately enumerated the things I’d have rather been enduring: endoscopy, root canal, traffic court, emergency plumbing repair….
One good thing about today (and most days at the Senior Center tax prep site) is that I saw a lot of regular clients, gentle old souls, mostly, senior citizens who I know so much about that I regard them almost as surrogate grandparents. It is good to be recognized, appreciated, conversed with, seen, in a way that has been lost in our smartphone era. There is a human warmth in their words and gazes that is no longer cultivated. They are steeped in history, have lived through so much, and it makes me thrill with happiness to see that they’ve made it through another year. Though one encounter has a bittersweet quality: I have a conversation with M, a woman who lives down the street from us and whose taxes I’ve prepared for several years now. She’s 96 years old and still mentally sharp. She asks after my dog; she sees us walking by her house from time to time. When I tell her that I’ll see her at tax time next year, though, she demurs. “I really hope not,” she says. “My world is gone. The way it is now, I hope I’m gone soon, too.”
This Morning
A brief recap of the news:
Last night featured another in a seemingly endless series of Democratic presidential debates. The deeper into the Tang Dynasty we regress, the more I’ve come to view these spectacles as empty rituals of a dead democracy, a television game show meant to keep us pacified and feeling “involved” as our institutions are hollowed out. As always it was covered by the media as though it were a sporting event, beauty pageant, or dance competition; we are well-primed to digest such programming as a comforting source of entertainment. As always, we learned nothing we didn’t already know, aside from who looked tired and who outshouted or insulted whom.
Meanwhile, former New York City mayor and multi-billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the man who turned a once-vibrant city into a playground for tourists, an exclusive intentional community for the wealthy, and a nightmare for just about everyone else who lives there, continues to spend hundreds of millions of advertising dollars on his own vanity campaign for president and continues to receive plenty of press for doing so, raising the possibility that the Democratic candidate in the November election will also be a racist billionaire from New York, albeit one with better breeding and manners. Everyone seems to think this is normal.
Today marked an inflection point: the New York Times reports that Trump fired his acting Director of National Intelligence because one of his apparatchiks told Congress that Putin is helping Trump’s reelection. The long knives are out. There is no turning back; Trump is unchained, and we will now find out how deep is the abyss into which he is dragging us. This week executive clemency and pardons were granted to a bunch of criminals: Rod Blagojevich, Bernard Kerik, Michael Milken, Edward DeBartolo, Jr., David Safavian, and others. Roger Stone’s sentencing is today.
Still we refuse to admit how closely our moment rhymes with Weimar out of a superstitious fear of Godwin’s Law.
The Wuhan coronavirus is still spreading. I’m frankly less worried about this virus itself than what it says about our ability to respond to future pandemics.
And finally, someone stole the Little Free Library box full of children’s books from the alley behind my neighbors’ house because no one is allowed to have nice things.
But I’m beginning to depress even myself, which means I should probably wrap up this bitter little time capsule. Good night, reader of the future! May your days be less bleak than ours.