Gut Shot

The shirtless man who stumbled into the bar clutching his side and yelling, "I’ve been shot." His hand dropped away from his wound to reveal a splash of red that looked like a carnation pinned to his skin.

Forecast

The drought dragged on for years, and the people kept anxious eyes on the heavens.

“Oh to live under a cloud,” the priests said, but the fathomless blue of clear skies persisted.

Finally, roiling clouds gathered over the near dead earth and the ground received the downpour. Puffs of dust arose as, not raindrops but, spiders struck the terrain. They clogged the streets and swirled down the gutters into the sewers, and within days all yearned for winter when crabs would lie in brittle drifts against the sides of empty houses.

An Inconclusive Rant Regarding Christmas, Work, and Dread

As much as I looked forward to having 4 days off of work this Christmas Season, I am now facing down a Santa-sized portion of Sunday Dread when I consider returning to work tomorrow. Oh sure, the holiday was pleasant enough, which isn't to say it went off without a hitch. In my family it is derigueur to have at least one blow-out, one out-sized flare of anger and hurt feelings that then sours my outlook like a lingering hangover. It is as if some malevolent elf, astray from his dungeon at the North Pole, inflicts chaos into my silent night. Still, though, we did, I think, come to some unspoken accord and, the egg-shells notwithstanding, managed to move around each other with a minimum of friction and dollops of graciousness.

So what, you might wonder, is so bad about returning to work? I can only say that the lurking quality of the endeavor replete with a circus's worth of elephants-in-the room (a distinct breed from African and Indian elephants; larger ears, fragile egos, and mawkish sensibilities) provides a weighty atmosphere suitable for the composition of dirges and the promotion of pharmacological interventions. Such is the back drop in the "helping professions" in which I labor...

Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark

Historically, Denmark has stood apart from the rash and reckless herd. It was Danish royalty who, during the Nazi persecution of Jews in Denmark donned the yellow Star of David in solidarity with the victims. How sad that now during the Climate Summit taking place in Copenhagen the Danish police have been granted the power of summary arrests and are exercising that power to suppress demonstrations critical of the manipulations by the world's wealthy nations to preserve profits over the welfare of people; how sad that Denmark has sided with a cynical conception of the Summit, one that elevates corporate profit as "law and order" against the preservation of the planet as "anarchy and activism."

To those of us in the U.S., long accustomed to such false framing of events, we might not even register the sadness of what the Danish Police are pursuing in the summary arrests of demonstrators. We accept without a flicker of doubt the assignment of the word "terrorist" to students in California who bravely and boldly seized University buildings protesting the state's economic blackmail threatening their education; and too many of us still believe as Joe Bageant recently wrote that "most terrorists just happen to live where all of the world's oil is." We live, as the title of Chris Hedges' recent book has it in an "Empire of Illusion", or as Henry Miller had it years ago, in "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare."

Long accustomed to the betrayal of our own ideals we may well scratch our heads in disbelief at the effrontery of those rabble-rousers gathered in Denmark who are trying to have their voices heard over and above the indifferent chatter of statesman.

Our abilities to deflect the costs of our rapacious appetites with the fog of consumerism and its resulting indifference to reality only demonstrates that , in the words of William Butler Yeats,

We had fed the heart on fantasy,

The heart's grown brutal from the fare.

And in Denmark, a cell door clangs shut on the conscience of the world.

Sick

“To my progressive friends, I would remind you that for decades the driving force behind reform has been to end insurance company abuses and make coverage affordable to those without it,” he said. “The public option is only a means to that end—and we should remain open to other ideas that accomplish that goal.”

President Obama

Oh really, Mr. President? How very telling and explanatory when one stops to consider the current morass of the health reform debate.

President Obama’s characterization of the entire impulse of health care reform as an attempt to merely end insurance company abuses and make coverage affordable preserves the primacy of insurance companies and sees as central the profit motive of those companies…just don’t make the cost too dear, please. It helps explain why single-payer gets scant attention, dismissed as being too disruptive to those already insured. What? This doesn’t square with the President’s own claims about the driving force of the debate. How would a system that would drive down the costs of the insurance companies making insurance overall more affordable be, at the same time, disruptive? This is to say nothing of providing universal coverage.

As far the ideal of universal coverage, I’d like to remind President Obama that it is this ideal—not narrow business interests, not a tweaking of insurance company procedures and practices—that has been the driving force of the health-care reform debate. Furthermore, it is in pursuit of universal health care coverage where the character and morals of our country that Senator Kennedy spoke of reside.

Sunday Scribblings: Keys

Pushed to the back of kitchen drawers, abandoned to empty purpose, are the keys to missing locks.

Perhaps in a stranger’s kitchen a wide-eyed youth discovers a cache' of shiny locks,

And stalking the world, liberated from myth, the mischief of the gods to which keys remain the signifier.

Sunday Scribblings

An excerpt from a co-workers monologue with a post-script of brief commentary

…maybe I shouldn’t have gotten that flu-shot, cause I’m allergic to eggs It asks if you’re allergic to eggs…do you have any aspirin? I have a headache, probably an allergic reaction What are you going to do this weekend I’m going out of town, well if I feel okay Do you feel okay What’s the matter Can I get more aspirin from you Someday I’ll buy you a whole new bottle oh, I owe you seventy-cents don’t I or is it a dollar There were only five people here this morning...

By day's end I feel as if I've been beaten about the head by tiny rubber mallets. AHHHHHHHHHHH