"People are Strange"

Alice looked through the Looking Glass ... Jim Morrison commented through the Doors .... Poets, I suppose, bring our attention to the unique moment. Much of the time, the sheer lunacy of quotidian life passes us by ... life is busy and messy and takes our focus away from that lunacy ... Poets bring us back to the moment. Vacation interrupts that quiet and hidden-by-being-patterned life by a process of making less obvious the diversionary nature of our everyday worklife and it would appear to do so no less, as the years pass.

I'm on a week's vacation. M, GuntherDog, my two 1974 Raleigh bikes (an International and a SuperCourse Mk ii) and me. Not a lot to do, really. The kids and grandkids will make it down but we'll do more overlapping than covacationing, this year. Finding times that fully coincide becomes difficult ... maybe, it would be easier if I retired. And Milt and Ruth, though retired, have become cat people and need to be home with a sick cat. Hey, I brought my sick cat with me (Sorry, M ... jest being my usual jesting Self (see, below.)

Vacation? The problem with the Air Conditioner will figure itself out and M's 24 (Deo volente) hour flu will pass. I don't run any longer due to my unreliable coronary sinus node but am able to bike ... and love it. There is something about looking at the World while sitting on an ancient Brook's saddle. And I'm really quite good at sitting on my duff at the beach. I have brought along just one book that I'll bevreviewing with a friend for a journal that likes my curious style of writing and did reread a piece by William Vollman from an old Harper's that has been lying around for years.

When we (M, I and the kids) first vacationed in this backwater town on the DelMarVa penninsula 35 years ago, we came without technology. No TV, no phones except in booths along the road, and no internet. There was no internet. The war in VietNam was just over, at least for the Americans. International terrorism was not really International. And without electronic ignition, there was still opportunity for a guy to get under the hood of a car on a rainy day and file down the pitted ignition points inside of what now are museum quality distributor caps. M had Big Hair and I had at least enough to cover my head's nakedness; I could even see my toes without leaning forward. 35 years is as long as you might imagine. Hell! The kids who were 3,12 and 13 are now all pretty much middle-aged or older ... and ... M and my stable of relatives have greatly diminished in number, as we moved to the front pew, ourselves.

But this vacation, I'm annoyed by something else. The News that is dominated by tragedyand violence is getting to me.. Damn the Pollyannaish 50's but a hearty fuck you to the cynical Teen-years of this new Century. Right now, the 24-7 news cycle is focused on the story of two prison escapees ... dangerous men who've been found guilty in our legal system for murder. I get the need for warning the public but everytime I turn on the News, I get what the kids call Too Much Information. Frankly, I find myself hoping these guys cross over into Canada where Sgt. Preston of the Royal Mounties and (Mush!) King would find them, likely, in a single 30 minute episode. Meantime, hundreds of armed police types are combing the woods ... now, here ... Now, there .... each time there is a sighting ... DNA ...

Then, just about an equal amount of time is spent in the aftermath of still another crazy's killing of innocents, this time a church-full of Bible-studiers who, because of their different color, the crazy in his paranoia thought were a danger. Another poor fucking-crazy kid! A mere 300,000,000 guns in the USA, a hair of the exceptionalistic attitude in the US of ....,  and we seem to have a problem? No shit, as we used to say. So. Carolina, in themeantime, has decided to take a flag down from over its Capitol Building ... a flag that meant to many -- but by no means all -- that the South will Rise, Again, and White Folk will take control back from the marauders ... Blacks, Hispanics, Jews ... How do I tell one of my grandkids whose Mom is Black-Italian-Japanese Brazilian and whose Dad is Russian-Hungarian Jewish that she is seen as a disposable thing by maybe 25% of the world. Kudos to Gov. Haley, indeed, for taking the flagdown and hopes that she goes further still in protecting voting access to all in her state.

Then, with whatever time is left on Cable NEws, Talking Heads go on and on trying to decide whether President Obama's use of the word "nigger" in the context of emphasizing that the polite omission of no word can ever take the place of heart-felt respect, caring and beneficent protecting. As if a hate-filled bigot can feel vindicated if they avoid these words "that sound so nasty" (from HAIR, the Musical). To the contrary, I applaud my President's head-on confrontation with the silliness of imagining that a magical change of words is all that's necessary to cleanse our nation from hatefulness. I remember speaking, some not so many years ago, to a school district ... 4-500 folk in the audience, including the one African American who invited me ... it was, that is, a very White school district. In my talk on diversity, I commented that I had no beef with all the so-called nasty words ... and then I listed them. There was an audible gasp in the audience, though not from the Black lady who invited me.

Some teachers got together to discuss howthey wouldn't be having me over for lunch!

So, I'm annoyed. Big Fucking deal. Think I'll go for a bike ride ... I'm on vacation.