Reflections on These Past Eight Day

Illustration from www.davidpgushee.com

For the record, I voted for who I felt was the most qualified candidate, the one who would be best for my life and our country.

Which doesn't really tell you anything about who I voted for, because everyone who voted did that as well.

That's what I keep coming back to these past eight days. Everyone did what they thought was the right thing, what was best for them.

Because of that, I can't expect anyone who voted one way to change their decision simply because it would be better for me. The opposite is also true. I suspect that's true of us all.

We'll never know the outcome of the other timeline or which one would have been better. In a truly strange way, I hope the other side is right because I don't want to see what happens if they're wrong.

I've managed to (mostly) stay away from social media. 2016 taught me that no amount of rational argument or righteous anger will change the result or anyone's mind. We came to a fork in the road and this is the path we're now on. There's no going back.

I worry about my modest nest egg, my marriage, my health, the state of our nation, society and the world. I try to comfort myself by remembering that--aside from tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, and some truly regrettable Supreme Court picks--the Trump 1.0 administration was a near-daily parade of embarrassing gaffes and minor scandals, most related to monetizing the presidency.

Except, of course, for covid and its mismanaged response.

During Thanksgiving of 2016 J___ and I had L____ A____ and her kids over for dinner. They were all worried about what was to come. In an effort to give them some perspective and comfort, I shared that I'd lived through the '80s, and Reagan, and AIDS. "I won't really worry," I told them, "until people are actually dying every day." 

On the one hand, I take heart in the old saying that "the way you do one thing is the way you do everything." Barring another worldwide pandemic or similar catastrophe, perhaps this second Trump presidency will be just as bumbling and mendacious as the first, with few long-lasting ramifications.

On the other hand, I'm also aware that the sequel is almost always worse than the original, and we could be in for a(nother) literal world of hurt, one so awful that we'll yearn for the relative simplicity and ease of those previous four years.

Slightly more than one-third of us are happy and looking forward to the future. Slightly less than a third aren't and fretting about what it may bring. If things had been slightly different, everything would be different. But this would probably be the same: I'd still be trying to understand why that other side feels the way they do.

And then there's the other third who, for whatever reason, couldn't or didn't bother to even take a position on what kind of future they thought would be best for themselves.

They're the ones I understand least of all.

"The 'Coffee' Table"

2022; written by Cristina Borobia and Caye Casas; directed by Caye Casas

After hearing from various sources that The Coffee Table was an unusual and unmissable watch, I decided to give it a try. And while I was watching it I had some thoughts.

1. That's not a coffee table.

2. There's no such thing as unbreakable glass. Tempered glass, yes, and that would have definitely been a better choice than the kind that so easily breaks into deadly shards.

3. Who needs five screws and only has four? I've assembled a lot of furniture from Ikea, and they're usually pretty symmetrical.

4. And who expects the sales person to hand-deliver the missing screw within a few minutes?

5. She's a bitch. He's an asshole. These two had no business having children.

6. Who tries to hide their sliced-up baby in its crib? No one will ever find it there!

7. You don't have ANY cleaning supplies? These people are pigs.

8. This movie thinks we're as stupid as the people in it.

9. Why, yes. Yes I am painting the baby's room blood red.

10. Don't blame the Swedes. Or the Chinese.

11. You don't clean up blood from a carpet with a mop.

12. He's an asshole. She's a bitch. And so is that neighbor girl.

13. How did he fix that dripping? I guess it doesn't matter. I guess none of this does.

14. That's not a chicken. It's Big Bird, you dummy.

15. You're going to wake the baby!

16. That's not a suicide message. Not with the door open. That's just a cry for help.

17. Spoiler: The baby's head is under the armchair?!

18. Didn't take much to make that vegan throw up.

19. Contrary to the salesman's promises, this table did not change their lives for the better. It did not fill their home with happiness.

20. Jesus should have let Maria pick out the coffee table too.

Dream Theater: Holocaust Girl

"Tereska" by David Seymour, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

What is strangest is that I was not myself, but a young girl, perhaps only eight or nine years old.

At first there were only rumors, that people were being rounded up and put into train cars, bound for no one knew where. Then the news, that neighbors and families had indeed disappeared, leaving behind their clothes and furniture and homes. And finally, the certainty that whoever was doing this was getting closer. 

Soon they would find me. When they did, everything I knew would come to an end and something else would begin. Something terrible.