Yesterday, October 4th, was a really hard day for those who believe in Truth, and positive movement, it being the let-down-day after the much-anticipated first debate between Barack and Mitt, whose name was until Oct. 3rd, a good projection of his oafishness. But since our president let us down Big-time, and not a single lie out of Mitt's mush was pointed out or argued, or even minimally Reaganed, ("There you go again",) I think I will spend today, Oct. 5th, in bed.
Last night was also the date that my parents, Lew and Helen, got married, their wedding party in the basement of her family's Oakland home in Pittsburgh, which my Aunt Rita, the only surviving member of the Finks(no kidding, that was their name,) was not allowed to attend because it embarrassed my mother that she had a sister that young, Rita having been Grandma Gussie's change-of-life surprise. Helen was expecting that after the ceremony Lew would whisk her to the loftier environs of Squirrel Hill, where dwelt the more arrived, upmarket immigrant Jews, of which his Romanian father was one, -- the only one who could get credit in the new country, so opened an account that all the frightened and unsettled comers could charge their purchases to at Kaufman's and Gimbel's, paying back Grandpa Adolf(the perfect name for him) at what I am sure were usurious rates. A sweetie he wasn't, -- in the words of my Grandpa Moisch (a sweetie he was,) "If you have a Romanian for a friend, you don't need an enemy."
Then, to my mother's horror, after the party Lew simply whisked her upstairs to her crowded family apartment, where I was also to live when born, which I apparently was. That is maybe the only reason to be glad about the October 4th date, as the marriage did not work out Big Time, police being called at regular intervals when my father beat my mother, something she brilliantly provoked, telling him what a loser he was, usually on her back on the floor kicking in bicycling circles in the air, where his balls were shortly to be as he charged in to strangle her. It was a lively babyhood, some of which was recalled as Mitt charged in for the kill. I have rarely been so disappointed.
But that was somewhat ameliorated last night when I went to the Players' Club on Gramercy Park,where there were some delightful people arguing the eventual- let us hope-- beside the pointedness of just one debate. All present, though amiable, seemed to be suffering in different ways, to different degrees, some because they were young and just starting out in uncertain times, some because they were no longer so young, and a few because they were attached to the club, and the club-- with its John SInger Sargent portrait on the still well-maintained walls of Major Player Edwin Booth,-- is suffering because people are lax with dues, or unwilling to spend on joining.
Still it is a nice place, and they were bright and overall, kind. I will return there again on Wednesday, when Colin Powell will appear in the afternoon. I must do that especially since my lost, beloved Sandy would have considered taking the post as Washington Bureau chief of TIME Magazine, which was offered her, only if Powell had chosen to run for president, which, alas, he chose not to do, bringing less than glory to our presidency (except maybe for Bill) and posts for Sandy which turned out, eventually, to be lethal.
But I happened (?-- or are our steps all guided?) on Miguel Covarrubias' Island of Bali again. He wrote that the elders of Bali, not acknowledging that they are getting older and so physically disintegrating, are supported by supernatural powers that are so impressed they come in to bring strength and, oh well, why not, supernatural powers. So I invite them all in so I can hold my head up long enough to accomplish that which I hope to accomplish.
And that, perhaps, will be a justification for the anniversary that commemorates, on the face of it, little to be happy about. Besides me, of course.
