A Brief Encounter

 I ran into a very friendly fellow American this morning as I was coming out of the Daily Baguette Cafe. He came out as I was pausing to smoke a cigarette and struck up a conversation. He was from California, he told me, but came originally from Minnesota and has been here in Bali 3 years. I thought of saying Oh, Minnesota, the home of Tim Walz. I'm glad I didn't though, because he immediately started out on a rant about how terrible America is now. Even the food is fake, he said, and everyone is so woke. It's all you hear about. Woke culture. And he can't stand it anymore. 

To be honest, I don't know what woke means. Yes I see it all the time on Facebook and so on, but I can't really put my finger on any specific meaning other than perhaps it has, among those who are opposed to it, something to do with a dislike of and an intpolerance for homosexuality and trans people and liberal ideas, and so on. Anyway, I sure didn't want to talk about it. I can understand if people don't like woke culture, whatever woke happens to mean to them, but I don't understand how it does any harm to them or how it seems a threat to the extent that they would have been driven out of the country altogether. Very strange. I've been away for a long time now, and I am reminded again that I'm better off for it.

Now I'm a Believer

 Well, I have to admit that I have been positively surprised by the Harris campaign. As I mentioned here previously, I felt that Biden could have won the election fairly easily, but it appears now that Harris may win even more decisively than Biden would have, so it's all good. She is, after all, basically committed to carrying out Biden's vision for the future. And what we need ultimately in this election is a resounding victory in hopes of finally stamping out the poison that MAGA has injected into American politics--a resounding victory not only on the presidential level but on a congressional level as well so that we may secure a democratic House and Senate and actually get some things done in this country. 

Of course there are still nearly 100 days left before the election and the Republicans are desperately searching for anything they can cling to. This, so far, turns out to be insults, racist and misogynistic slurs, fake outrage over fake issues, and the like. Frankly, I think most people are finally tired and turned off by crap like this. Yes, there are some who will doggedly cling to Trump's dark vision of grievance, paranoia and fear, but hopefully many more are seeing the light of optimism and joy that the Harris team is bringing to the Democratic ticket.

The Smile

 The young woman had come prepared. As she climbed onto her motorbike, I noted that there was something attached to her chest, and that what was attached to her chest was a baby. It was tucked into a sort of backpack arrangement, head and arms sticking out as if from the shell of a tortoise. It was a small baby, maybe 4 months old. I don't know, I've forgotten what 4 months is like, or 2 months, or 6 months. This was a girl, I think. Yes, I'm sure. Pretty sure. And she did that thing that all babies do. She engaged me with her eyes, staring at me as if I were the most strange and wonderful creature in the world. Blue eyes. Wisps of blonde hair like angel hair at Christmas time. And then she smiled, as babies do, and she raised her little hand and curled her fingers in and out. Hello. And then we also smile again, don't we. How can we help it? What else can we do? And in the next moment, the child is whisked away, bound for another and another world of whirling colors and wonderful new creatures. And a brief prayer passes from my soul to my tongue and I lift a finger and touch it to the dryness of my lips. 

May God watch over this little one in the sea of trouble between here and home.

Skippy Dies

 People will believe anything, if it's what they want to hear.

--Paul Murray, The Mark and the Void

I intended to write something earlier than now about a novel I had just recently finished reading, but then all of this election bullshit found its way into my head and interrupted me for a moment. 

Although the quote above is from Paul Murray's novel The Mark and the Void, what I wanted to talk about was Skippy Dies.

I approached Skippy Dies in much the same way I had approached Murray's novel The Bee Sting, which is to say with a certain unreasonable prejudice. Well, what prejudice is reasonable? one might ask. In short, I did not like the title (which however--spoiler alert--turned out to be perfect). Nor did I feel interested in the brief description of the story found on the internet--the various goings-on at an Irish Catholic school for boys. It just didn't seem to be something that would touch me. 

Nonetheless, having come away from The Bee Sting astounded at this writers narrative and stylistic excellence, I decided to give Skippy Dies a shot. And boy am I glad I did. 

Like The Bee Sting, Skippy Dies is quite long, some 600 plus pages. But it is the kind of long that you don't want to end. You find yourself living there, in that school, and among those boys. More than that, you find yourself living back in your own adolescence, among all the very similar boys you knew, as well as the you that you knew. How Murray has managed to retain such an intimate acquaintance with what it is to be that age, I do not know. He has remembered here all of the things that most of us forget, and perhaps intentionally so. He remembers the careless disregard on the surface, the facade, and the naive, unreasoning, invulnerable hopes that lie beneath, striving toward the moment they are finally broken by that compromised, corrupted world of despair we call adulthood.

Skippy Dies is both laugh out loud funny and painfully bitter--which might be described as Murray's signature style. Forewarned is forearmed. This book will both fill your heart and break it.

No Country for Old Men

 No Country for Old Men. That's the headline in America today. And it's one of the reasons I don't live there anymore. 

One wonders what the Democrats will do now to further undercut their chances at winning the election. Fight over which new candidate they really want? Continue to distract the press from the base imbecile being run by the other party?

Look, I personally like Harris, but to be honest I don't believe she can attract independent and swing voters. She is way too liberal. I'm serious, folks. No joke. I mean, come on man 😅

Well, we still have prayer. And we better get on our knees straightaway.

The Oath

 I woke this morning to a reply to a comment I had made on a man's Facebook post. In the original post he wrote that no one had shown that the 2020 election was not stolen from Trump. I helpfully replied that 60 courts, overseen by judges from both parties, had rejected the Trump administration's claims of election fraud, and I attached a couple of factual informative links for him to peruse. To this the man immediately responded that this was a lie. There were not 60 courts. There were not any courts. This had merely been repeated so often that people took it to be true 😅

So that is typical of the tenor of political discourse nowadays. Believe what you like, reject what you don't like. Simple as that. It is not an isolated sort of response. It is common. 

And it appears to me, folks, that it does not matter which candidate the Democratic party runs, for if he or she wins the election, the MAGA response will be simply to say that No they didn't. And it will be uglier then than January 6th. People think that we can beat MAGA simply by winning an election. We can't. It will only radicalize them further. It will only be the latest call to insurrection. Because MAGA is not fueled by policy. It is not fueled by patriotism or belief in democracy. It is fueled by plain hatred--of black people, of brown people, of Mexican people, of liberal people, of homosexual people, of trans people, of immigrants (excepting those from Norway). It is not a political response and has nothing to do with government, per se. It is a cultural response, a paranoid and fearful revulsion at the changing character of America. It is an all-consuming, non-negotiable oath to intolerance. "Christian" nationalism? Give me a break. It is heresy most foul.

Deplorable

 Well I'll be damned if I've ever seen a party try so hard to lose a presidential election. Week after week the Democratic elites dither around about who they might want their candidate to be, rejecting the vote of the populace that has already approved Joe Biden. It is sad and, well, dare I say it...deplorable. I swear to God the whole thing is going to turn me into a conspiracy theorist. Is some kind of shady dark money behind a plot to throw the election? Anyway, if the Dems do lose, they will richly deserve it, for they have well and truly mobilized against themselves.