Bit by bit, I am no longer the news hound I once was. True, the doings of Donald Trump and his mirror Benjamin Netanyau can light my grinding disapprobation fuse, but literally, I now seem to skip over the news in order to reach a comfort zone that is somewhere between the Augustinian "born between piss and shit" and the admired graffito, "Man without God is like a fish without a bicycle."
My own fictions leave me cozy. The fictions and facts of others unrelentingly fail to stir the pot. I am reduced, I guess, to navel-gazing. But there is something to be said for navel-gazing -- at least it's mine and it is something I feel comfortable laying claim to.
My own fictions. The outrages dim. The warm bath water that is my own swirls and eddies and I am at home with bits and pieces of stories left incomplete. Others tend to their own business without a blush. I blush because I was once very gung-ho about about the social injustices and clusterfucks.
Tales and sketches can begin anywhere and I like the anywhere's far better. I'm just more interested, even in the face of question, "who died and left you interesting?" I am turning into Donald Trump, I suppose, but I am too lazy and uncomfortable to put a stop to it. A corrupt election here, a car bomb there, an argument about exiting from the European Union, and, as always, another war.
I like being comfortable and perhaps am simply too old for anything else. It just feels good in some visceral way that 'hard' news does not.
How do you make steel? What is steel made of?
What is the creature in the briny, briny deeps that is more humongous that the giant sea squid? I heard about it on TV. True or not ... there always will be a bigger, a more ferocious, and a more dangerous what-ever-it-is. When a person dies, do the fingernails continue to grow, as a high school test paper once asked me and to which I still don't know the answer, though it seems unlikely.
In the Springfield Armory Museum 20 miles south of here, there is a water-powered lathe someone invented to churn out rifle stocks during the Civil War ... imagine that ... all those angles and cuts and it's all run by water.
Fact and fiction -- my belly button.
I will skim the news ... perhaps.
Or perhaps no longer.
My own fictions leave me cozy. The fictions and facts of others unrelentingly fail to stir the pot. I am reduced, I guess, to navel-gazing. But there is something to be said for navel-gazing -- at least it's mine and it is something I feel comfortable laying claim to.
My own fictions. The outrages dim. The warm bath water that is my own swirls and eddies and I am at home with bits and pieces of stories left incomplete. Others tend to their own business without a blush. I blush because I was once very gung-ho about about the social injustices and clusterfucks.
Tales and sketches can begin anywhere and I like the anywhere's far better. I'm just more interested, even in the face of question, "who died and left you interesting?" I am turning into Donald Trump, I suppose, but I am too lazy and uncomfortable to put a stop to it. A corrupt election here, a car bomb there, an argument about exiting from the European Union, and, as always, another war.
I like being comfortable and perhaps am simply too old for anything else. It just feels good in some visceral way that 'hard' news does not.
How do you make steel? What is steel made of?
What is the creature in the briny, briny deeps that is more humongous that the giant sea squid? I heard about it on TV. True or not ... there always will be a bigger, a more ferocious, and a more dangerous what-ever-it-is. When a person dies, do the fingernails continue to grow, as a high school test paper once asked me and to which I still don't know the answer, though it seems unlikely.
In the Springfield Armory Museum 20 miles south of here, there is a water-powered lathe someone invented to churn out rifle stocks during the Civil War ... imagine that ... all those angles and cuts and it's all run by water.
Fact and fiction -- my belly button.
I will skim the news ... perhaps.
Or perhaps no longer.
Forget the news, real news, fake news.
ReplyDeleteWho cares about new species of whales.
This is the time to take advantage of our white privilege discounts. I haven’t been able to find any. Have you?