law and order

the meeting will come to order
who called for a meeting?
do we have a quorum?
you all received a copy of the agenda
oh, no we didn't
I didn't get the minutes from last time
me either
me neither
my hand is up here
the meeting will come to order
what meeting?
I was just walking by
me too
me three
what's the topic?
or topics?
does anyone have a gavel?
we'll start with a prayer
the hell we will
there are no banners allowed, sir
it's not a banner
no banners, ma'am
can we please come to order?
I pay my taxes
actually, you don't
that's a fact
everyone here knows that
you don't either
order, please, order
we'll begin with the pledge of allegiance
that's the wrong flag
who says?
will someone read the minutes?
call the sergeant at arms
why?
knock some sense into you
and you
you too
youse
and you
not me
not us
we already have a tank here
we do?
in the back of the auditorium
who could miss it?
that's not a tank
it sure is, it's mine
yours?
sure, a BV202 Mk II
how'd you get it here?
I drove it, who's gonna stop me?
order, can we have some damn fuckin order
watch your fuckin language
your honor
you don't have any honor
you never did
even a tank can't bring order
jeez
it's Swedish, a Volvo
Volvo? they're known for safety
I feel very safe in this tank
where'd you get it?
online, 25 grand, Sweden
does it work?
of course it works
it does?
it does?
it just did
no, it didn't
it sure did
right, it didn't
we still can't bring this meeting to order
can't get it off the ground
off the ground?
bring in airborne
I have friends
amphibious too
lucky you
friends with jets
and choppers
friends who have friends
bring 'em on
neutralize the zone
call 'em in
we'll finally have some order around here
amen
I thought we weren't praying?
amen
 

taking a knee

A genuflection of reflection. Take one for the team (in this case, the nation, the e pluribus unum). Forgive us our trespasses, chokeholds, tramplings, blindnesses, deafnesses. So we genuflect. On bended knee. Wounded Knee. Forgive us our silences, forgive us our words. Forgive us our comforts. Genuflect symbolically, metaphorically, physically. Bow. Shots fired across the bow. Bow and arrow. Bury my heart. Genuine flection. Yield and you need not break. Flex your muscles. An inflection of speech. The fire next time. A perilous predilection. An election. The elect. Take a knee. On the chin. Break-neck speed. Life and limb. Out on a limb. Leap of faith.

hey, sir!

Walking to the Boulangerie bistro by the coffee shop, I was in a hungry hurry. (The name of the place begs for a spooky underwear promo every October.) "Hey, sir!" I heard but kept walking for a step and a halt. "Hey, sir!" is the perfect intro for a panhandler or evangelist. Someone asking me to sign a petition, or to sell me something. Ask for exactly $1.73 to get a bus ticket to Auburn. As if. Keep walking. I was annoyed, mildly irritated. But I stopped. I stopped and turned. Did he say it twice? Was it an undertone of sincerity blended with urgency that stopped me in my tracks? "Did you drop this?" Or was it: "Is this yours?" A young professional. White shirt and tie. Who wears a white shirt anymore? Even in my corporate life I hadn't worn one since the 1990s. When our company president wore white short-sleeved shirts with a tie, I'd mock him. "Lee, what do you think this is, NASA in the Sixties?" He never wore one again. My interlocutor was Asian American. In his twenties. Is this what they call a millennial? A white envelope sat on the just-rained-on sidewalk. I picked it up. Or he picked it up and handed it to me. I saw right away that it was a bill from St. Camillus, the long-term care facility (nursing home). For Mom. A bill that had come in that day's mail. It must have slid out of my grip holding my laptop portfolio with my other mail, nothing of consequence. If so, I'd've handled it all more carefully. "Thanks." Now I can't piece it together. Did he say this from his Mercedes (Audi? Ford? Saturn? black? white?) with the window rolled down? Or was he walking in my wake? But my thanks was real. I detected an honest civility in his act, an uncommon courtesy. What if it was something terribly important, not just a bill that would be re-sent? An atmosphere of gratitude washed over me. No, seeped out of me, from within somewhere. I could have kept walking, I could have ignored his entreaty. Likewise, he too could have ignored what he saw, something dropping from a stranger's personal effects. He didn't ignore the seemingly minor mishap. Neither did I ignore him, ultimately. My irritation, disturbance, "rude" interruption took on a different complexion and turned things in a different direction. And I hadn't even bought my hungered-for lunch yet. 

Quotidian encounter. 

Small miracle.

can I have one for free?

At first, I thought the sign said MUG SALE. Then I figured: RUG SALE. Two simple rows of letters were crudely and sloppily painted on some beat-up plywood, on a sandwich board, off to the side of the roadway. It could only have applied to one of the few stores on the other side of the heavily traveled road. I was driving by, so these were fleeting thoughts my brain was rapidly processing. MUGS SALE? Plural? Who'd give a shit about that? "Hey, let me grind to a stop, put my left-turn signal on, and get on over there and buy a car full of mugs!" I don't think so. Rugs? Possibly, but how many do you need, and how often? And you would need a store larger than the ones I saw, to make room for the rugs, unless they were bath mats or welcome carpets. The mind tries to fill in the blanks in order to make a familiar and expected word. 

Aha! That first letter is an H! The topmost first three letters, all caps, sans serif, and SALE below it were in white paint over a yellow background, which partially explained the readability challenges. HUG SALE? Wrong again. The sign painter or painters splashed on an E after HUG, a dark gray-black E, as if the E were an afterthought, or a correction.

Now I get it! 

HUGE SALE.

Incidentally, I noticed after a subsequent drive-by that the E was painted over a white background, which seemed to indicate that the E indeed was a correction. Omigod, what could the earlier version possibly have been? HUGG? How many ways can you misspell HUGE anyway?

So, they're having a huge sale over there. We don't know if the hugeness refers to the size of the items for sale (bulldozers? semi-tractor-trailers? railroad freight cars? aircraft carriers?) or the quantity of items, be they large or tiny, or the amount of alleged discount. 

Either way, it did not interest me in the least, not enough to swerve left.

HUG SALE would interest me. Wouldn't it interest you? Maybe not. Some people shy away from direct physical contact. They want their private space. They just happen to be like that. No law against it. Such individuals would keep driving. But some people undoubtedly would turn left for a HUG SALE, especially if the store had tawdry and gaudy neon lights, evoking an aura of illicit activity. On the other hand, the hug emporium could just as easily be family-friendly, in fact radically friendly, welcoming one and all, no matter your race, ethnicity, gender, social status, education, age, history, talent, background, mental state, physical condition, health, political persuasion, religious or secular beliefs, marital status, mobility, legality, sobriety, cordiality or hostility. (Did I leave anything out?)

HUG SALE.

How much would a hug cost? After all, no hug is truly free. Both the giver and the receiver invest immeasurable doses of time, vulnerability, physical exertion, emotional risk, social capital, and spiritual energy in the act of hugging. Oh. You were thinking in monetary terms. I suppose you can let the market determine that. (Is hug even the right word? Is a hug the same as an embrace? The sign had no room for that longer word, which invites its own misreadings.)  

Who would be the huggers and who would be the huggees? Couldn't the roles be reversed?

What would be the optimum duration of each hug?

I would limit it to one hug per visit, then get back in line if you're that hug-hungry.

What would be the appropriate firmness of the hug? Both arms? Slapping on back?  

No words exchanged?

Hug Monitors (HMs) would be able to sort out these practical matters, right?

open sesame

You approach the doorway. It is a public thoroughfare for walkers, the entrance to a department store in an age when no one knows exactly what a department store is or should be. Nevertheless, you walk through the portal. Actually, you intend to walk through the entranceway (or exitway, if you are proceeding out of the building), and to do so, you must first open the door, since you cannot proceed through the glass as if by osmosis or by sci-fi, special-effects walkthrough. But wait. Someone is ahead of you, pioneering their way into the building. The person in front of you breezily opens the door. You are a few steps behind the person, maybe a step or a half step in back of the person who just opened the door. You expect the forerunner to hold the door ajar for a moment so that you can hold the door open for yourself. You anticipate a mumbled "thank you" from your own lips and perhaps, though not likely, a "you're welcome" from the other. "You're welcome" is a dying phrase, even more so than "thanks" or "thank you." But the door is not held open, so those are moot points. The person in front of you, the one who countered your blithe expectations by not holding the door open, proceeds briskly into the store, the door left ajar, left to do what it must: close in your face unless you and your hand intervene. They don't look back. You wonder: did they know that you were a mere step or two in their pedestrian wake? Couldn't they hear your footsteps? Didn't they see your reflection in the glass of the door? Didn't they catch a whiff of your expensive, recently purchased fragrance? Should you have cleared your throat or coughed to alert them to your presence? This line of conjecture riles you. You tell yourself you are blaming yourself for another's rudeness. You are making an excuse for someone's incivility. True, you argue, you can't conclusively discern nor prove the motives of the person who walked before you and failed to hold the door open. You fully admit that the other person may not have even been aware of your presence in the aftermath of their footsteps. But that does not let them off the hook so easily. Were they unaware of you as a result of self-absorption? Or were they unaware of you because they were in a hurry, a mad dash, under a deadline or in need of a restroom? Possible, though not likely based on their speed of walking and the expression on their face as you caught a glimpse of it, a side glance, as the person turned, pivoted, after opening the door and letting it close by itself. You even generously allow the notion that the person who was in front of you was lost in a reverie, a dream of sorts. You consider the chance that a loved one was gravely ill or had just passed away; maybe a pet had shuffled off its mortal furry coil. You say this to yourself, but, no, you don't really believe it, not for a second. Who knows, you imagine, maybe the Recalcitrant Door Person (RDP) was mentally rehashing, or preparing, an argument with a friend, foe, spouse, lover, politician, driver, colleague, boss, subordinate, or stranger. But you doubt this as well because the person was not gesticulating nor were their lips moving in silent rehearsal or silent reenactment, a phenomenon you used to witness when you worked in Manhattan, as employees de-stressed on the sidewalk as they walked to Grand Central or the Port Authority. You resign yourself to the fact that you will never know the answers to these questions, not unless you see that person as you walk through the store, or as you exit, fearing a repetition of dour doorness. Besides, you doubt you would raise the issue with the stranger, even if you were certain it was the same person. Where and how would you begin? "They say that when one door closes another one opens up." If you were to utter that platitude, could you do it without irony at best and sarcasm at worst? And then what, you imagine, as you walk toward the exit on your way out the door. 

The Embarrassment Manifesto

I am embarrassed. I have become embarrassed. I am embarrassing. Switch pronouns. We are embarrassed. We have become embarrassed. We are embarrassing. We are being embarrassed. We are an embarrassment. "We" here stands for the Disunited States of America. The good ol' DSA. What is it to be embarrassed? Embarrass: "to perplex, throw into doubt." The estimable Online Etymology Dictionary tells us "embarrass" comes to us from the French, meaning "to block," which came to us from the Italian "to bar," which came from Latin. Embarrass came to mean "to hamper, hinder," and then later "make (someone) feel awkward." Other meanings over the centuries have even included "mental state of unease." With this FACTUAL word history in mind, no matter where you perch on today's razored fence of political discourse, you cannot deny the reality of embarrassment. Whether you lament it or celebrate, it is here. The Age of Embarrassment. Whether you are on the barricades or hiding from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement [Embarrassment] (ICE), welcome to Embarrassmentville. "Welcome" is hereby spelled e-m-b-a-r-r-a-s-s by edict of Embarrassing Executive Order No. 001. So, get used to it, boys and girls -- and anyone in-between or off the charts. Get used to a state of being perplexed, doubtful, blocked, barred, hampered, or hindered. Get used to feeling awkward and ill at ease. Get used to being embarrassed or making others feel embarrassed. Please show your Embarrassment Visa on the way out the door.

 

 

hugs anonymous

I bought the Friday $3 lunch special at Wegmans (with its absent apostrophe). Hot dog, soda, chips (Fritos). The cost for lunch goes to the United Way. It was sweltering outside. Heavy, dense, the wet heat a blanket. I went inside the cafe area to eat. Cooler. After a few bites, ketchup dripping off, I noticed, almost felt, a figure come toward me from my right, just beyond and then into my peripheral vision. Before my mind could calculate, I'm being jostled, hugged, but not harshly, playfully not violently. Almost the way someone would administer a noogie but this was around the upper body, my chest, my neck. It was a heavyset young man, late teens or early twenties. It scared me until it didn't. Before I knew it, he was walking away. A caregiver was upset. "Don't do that. Stop. You can't do that." The caregiver, a tall young man, apologized to me. I waved it off. I ruminated for a few seconds on semantics. No, we didn't use phrases like "developmentally delayed" as I was growing up. The designations were harsher. And yet in today's culture, America's current environment, let's be thankful I was not armed and quick-triggered, paranoiac, quick to defend, protect, and save myself and all others from all harm or threat.

a secular prayer

Have we lost a sense of commonweal? The common well-being, the body politic. A shared welfare (another word whose shades of meaning are often shrouded).

Commonweal.

A Secular Prayer

Would that we could summon, or have someone, or something, summon unto us, for our own behalf, the solidarity of community, not riven by solipsism or divided by dissonance. Would that we could respect and honor our very own commonweal, even if by not trashing the land we traverse, or by unlittering the litter strewn before our averted or blinded eyes. Amen.

too true, too often

Provocateur / activist / friend Dan Valenti has video-chronicled pandemic neglect in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He strolls through urban scenes of weeds, litter, abandonment, indifference, foolhardiness, ignorance, indignity, and self-defeat. It all adds up to neglect that reflects a lack of care, class, or hope.

Sad.

Sadder yet is the inescapable conclusion that the locale could have been any of — what? — 137 cities in America.

I don't have a simple answer (or even a complicated answer) except to lament bygone days of community, commonweal, pride, and humanity. How does one teach or inspire those attributes? Can leaders instill those civic virtues? Can these positive energies and exertions swell upward, churning a rising tide? Or are we condemned to cumulative attrition, an oxymoron of loss and despair?

modern life

A few days ago, at Target, in Fairmount, a suburb of Syracuse, I saw a young woman, maybe in her young twenties, wheeling one of those red plastic carts, wearing a T-shirt, maybe it was a sweatshirt, which said this in script letters on her back: "TRUST NO DICK." The phrasing may have differed slightly, but that was definitely the gist of the point being expressed, however blaringly, imprudently, clearly, confidently, or coarsely. That was its core marketing message. Don't censor the messenger here. I mean, here we are in Target, not far from where I bought Simply Balanced organic black tea, plastic storage crates, and tissues; amidst toddlers in carts and senior citizens like me, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, sales associates, and babies too young to talk or read.

I am not a prude. I won't pretend I was offended by this declaration via vulgarity. In fact, I mused somewhat amusingly to myself: "Well, that's true. No self-aware man would even argue the point himself, upon honest reflection." There's a multitude of locker room sayings endorsing the same viewpoint toward male anatomy and its sway over the psyche, from the male perspective. I won't bore you with them. 

I always have questions, though, and this time they are:

-- Did the wearer of the article of clothing in question sport this out of anger or hurt?
-- Was she whimsical or serious?
-- Was it essentially anti-male or pro-female or neither or both?
-- Was anyone shocked or offended to see this level of discourse in the public square?
-- What would be the reactions and responses if the anatomical reference were switched to one of the female variety, using a crude term?
-- Does anyone care?
-- Am I an old scold for even thinking about this?

Bloggerexia Nervosa

Some nerve.

I've got some nerve talking about manners, manors, reciprocity, blog-responsive recidivism, or civility.

Given my infrequent or sporadic commenting or replying in the Blogosphere, I've got some blognerve.

Then again, the first of my 217 posts was on solipsism.

And nothing is more ephemeral than this Enterprise we are traveling on. No one really much cares for much beyond today's posts, soon to float away into the ether.

Eh?

Rich.