Finding Acceptance
To the kids out there: you get to be my age, moving house is one of the hardest things you can do.
Especially when you're closing out 35 years in your owner-built home at 8,000' in the southern Rockies and trading it in for a house in a town 1500 miles away, with a yard and everything. Sure, my old desk is here at the new digs, and now I have one of those laptop thingies so anywhere can be my desk I suppose, but did I mention old?
Savvy readers have noticed the absence of fresh writings here since mid-July, when in an hardly rare outburst of braggadocio I stated that "(y)ou need a pajama-wearing guitar player pundit sometimes, I've often
found, to vigorously clench the scimitar of the obvious, and at that I
remain your humble servant." Then I took 5 months off to move and get settled, neglecting those very needs for which inflated self-importance serves me in good stead as muse and confidant. But enough about me. How about you? Did you miss me?
I have managed to work through the stages of grief in the interim. For those who hadn't yet grieved from MSNBC lovin' the escalator in May 2015 to Trumpism usurping airtime away from reportage and thoughtful analysis to the tune of millions in free advertising, from the fervor of red hatted brownshirts to the stench of Tea Party redux - if somehow, after all the shrugging off of flaw after flaw one was still able to avoid an iota of grief for one's country, Donald Trump's ascendancy allowed no such quarter as denial.
And November 9 was an angry day, not that Bernie purism and Priebus apologism hadn't already popped steam from the ear canals, but America trading in the 2nd chance it so didn't deserve after Bush, Cheney and the bubble's recession: that was assault. The depths to which they will go to see us liberals dance like ice cubes on the flat top - that really pissed me off. And I don't need a red hat, just the longest finger.
Now the electoral college has returned to the dimly lit round-tables of academia and with it goes any hope of removing Trump without handing the keys to Mike Pence and it has dragged into oblivion the postulations and alternative realities that can't now be fact, nor part of this new deal. Bargaining has been short lived.
For those of us who were 21 in '69, the last couple of months have been a repudiation of the slack we cut our fellow citizens when we said they couldn't be that stupid. Which in turn means who's stupid now? So yes, I'd say that could bring a person down, harsh a buzz, lead to 13 weeks of all day drinking. Maybe just give up entirely and learn to love video gaming. Take up Facebook and collect "likes" in some sort of twisted quid pro quo. Tweet, while resisting the urge to use exactly 140 characters every time.
Now that's pure hellscape.
Which brings us up to this morning. I didn't plan on hiatus; it just kinda happened. I've thrashed privately, exceeded the curbside glass recycling tub to where it never all gets picked up and thought about trading in cozy anonymity for the chance to go viral, like 110 million of my closest "friends."
I had gone all Rip Van Winkle during the horse race we like to call our "Candidates Showcase Showdown" and watched as everybody "came on down" and now we're stuck with the least qualified human for most jobs anywhere, let alone president, and a cadre of tentacles and Koch suckers.
Believe me. More than a few people are saying this.
But I woke up surprisingly calm.
I know my place in this. Not bomb throwing, though the appropriate spitball here and there seems inevitable. Not willful ignorance, for then I have become my enemy. Not anarchy, for a nation of laws not men is far superior.
But I do feel a fight coming on and have been given that rare, umpteenth chance.
This time I will do better at being the loyal opposition. I can accept that.
