16 August 2020
[Above photo: Black-backed jackals on the Skeleton Coast of Namibia, one of the most arid areas on the planet. Some animals there don’t pee, they just expell pellets of urea, etc.]
“Oh, mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lambs ydivy, a kidel ydivy too, wouldn’t you?” “NO!” we’d shout. Repeat. I recall puzzling over the meaning of this as a young child. Even when I understood it as: “Mares eat oats, and does eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy, A kid will eat ivy, too, wouldn’t you?” it still made no sense. One of those silly, “novelty” songs, trying to lighten the mood, I suppose, as our young died on the battlefields in Africa, Europe, and Asia and Jews and others in the camps. It was written in 1943 by 3 men (Three grown men wrote that!?). The Merry Macs were the second group to record it and theirs hit #1 in the US in 1944. It was recorded by many performers over the years, including the Andrews Sisters (whose version I remember). The “Mule Train” of an earlier era. I have no idea why this came into my mind this week. It recalls the riddle of the Sphinx: Am I regressing back to childhood, as I approach 80? I am obsessed with not getting old—and guess how far that gets me! I look ancient in the constant photos my students like to take.
While she wasn’t an effective primary campaigner, struggling to settle on a consistent message, and while she was, in hindsight, way too fierce a DA at a time when some of the public wanted that, Kamala Harris is an inspiring person. I think when she is elected and doesn’t have to worry about pleasing her constituents to the same degree, she will feel free to demonstrate her fine character and intelligence more clearly. The dramatic contrast between her and both Trump and Pence is so compelling. She is a real live person, an animated woman, and isn’t afraid to express her broad range of emotions. Trump and Pence are so monochromatic, the first a massively dishonest and insecure hater/divider and the second so tightly wound I wouldn’t be surprised if he was exposed as a bot. A Biden-Harris victory will be like resurfacing after 4 years at the bottom of the sea, amidst the slimy eels and toothy sharks. Hard to breathe down there.
I’ve just finished reading Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety. It was hard to put down. Like coming upon a muddy, marshy area when you are hiking in the woods. Going to the head of it you lift up a rock and there is the spring source: pure, cold, clear water burbling up. His honesty about the range of human emotions and our capacity to tolerate foibles in those we love was inspiring. Reading the biographical notes at the end of the Kindle Edition made his voyage upward and his capacity as a truth-teller all the more amazing. Since the action is set in the world of writing and teaching, I thought about Stephen Arkin who just died. The best story-teller I’ve known, I suspect he was an amazing teacher at SF State University, where he led the English Department for many years.
I’ve read, and intentionally not read, David Brooks in the NY Times for some years. I used to be infuriated with his smug conservatism and avoid him altogether. He has evolved, according both to my reading of him and to himself. He wrote the following on 14 August: “The veneer of civilization is thin and if you simply start breaking things you get nihilism, not progress.” It’s why the most effective revolutionary leaders are not the best suited to run the shop after they win. Manela excepted. Everyone has a different skill set.
I recall an amazing film I saw as a senior in college. Eric Erikson had asked Margaret Mead to come to lecture one day. She showed a film which demonstrated the fragility of civilization. A hunter-gatherer tribe somewhere in East Africa was removed from their ancestral lands—-oil or minerals to be collected, I imagine—and resettled as an agrarian group on a bit of arid earth. The film showed the inside of a hut, with a starving, skeletal man sitting on the dirt. His wife came into the hut, concealing a root she had found and was nibbling on it clandestinely, trying not to show it to him. The group previously had crafts and rich traditions of working cooperatively that had served them for millenia. Within a few years, it all fell apart. Mothers nursed their babies for 3 years and then the latter had to forage for themselves. Nothing was crafted. No communal will or spirit. It was, suddenly, desperately, everyone for themselves. The collapse of a culture.
It was chilling to view. It also seems consistent with Mafia Don’s view of the world. He certainly has worked to seed a dystopian society, a projection of his inner world, during his reign. It found fertile soil and has germinated.
If Biden is elected, and there is a good chance it seems, we can look at a bullet dodged. I do worry about what desperate surprises DT has in store. What war to start, what bomb to drop, what dramatic lies to spin. “Biden hates God”. Oh, please. “Harris is part of Pizzagate.” The film about the wonderful guy who owns the named pizza parlor dispels any concern, except for the time the heavily armed man entered, demanding to see the dungeon in the basement. Flour, mozzarella cheese. No defiled children. There is an entire book written about GHW Bush and cronies involved in a satanic-pedophile ring centered in Omaha, Nebraska. It is a familiar meme. We cannot disprove the existence of god or the possible validity of any conspiracy theory. Best to keep our eyes and ears open; if you hear hoofbeats, chances are strong that it is a horse, not a zebra or a kudu…. or a unicorn. Be sensible.
I can guarantee there are no itsy bitsy spiders in our waterspouts. Down comes the rain, in torrents. I’m about to mount my elliptical for 40 minutes and then head uptown for poker and supper with friends. Are there Grab* boats?
*Grab is the Uber or Lyft service in Myanmar.
A Psychiatrist in Myanmar 