ALMOST EVERYTHING MOVED EXCEPT...

for my heart.
     It is frightening or surreal, I have not been able to ascertain which, how unmoved I am by what is going on.  The truth that this terrifying clown has the whole world in the palm of his stubby-fingered hand is too much a treatment for a bad TV not-quite comedy not to be tossed out the window, except that it would doubtless land on somebody, somebody being all of us.  
     My desk is an unmeasured pile of litter, all the things I was planning to organize before the leaving, not being able to sort out when I was going, not knowing for what, if anything is there, if the heat of California would be worse for me than the absence of true human contact, besides the one or two seemingly loving presences I have found in New York, apart from the doormen, whose affection you can no longer measure as genuine at Christmas.  I just experienced the closest I have come to orgasm in decades at finding my passport in the litter on my desktop.  I am so ashamed of what I have become, dull, fearful, productive of nothing.  I was never afraid of age, not realizing how quickly, suddenly, and unmarkedly it could hit you, not realizing what a Strong-y you assumed you were.  I would write about it to share and soothe all the others experiencing this shit, except I'm afraid that halfway through I would forget what I was writing, and reading it over, would wonder why. Just received a brilliant e-mail(yes, Virginia, they do come in scattered time) from a longtime brilliant (right, who am I to judge?) buddy who continues to send the long, well-thought-out e-mail, perhaps not realizing how over those are, being emotionally secure enough not to care, or even measure.  It is such a strange time to be still seeking, and either brave or stupid enough to care. Especially if you think the whole thing comes with a solution.  We'll find out.  Or not.
   I like best, of course, the idea that it is all part of a Russian plot, as that makes us less stupid than we seem, more of an Agatha Christie than unthinkable, except who really understood her anyway.  Life, she am a puzzle.  Especially when from time to time you have been happy with/in her.  Usually when you were dancing. At least in your heart.

THE WANDERING JEW

So as we enter what I hope will be a peaceful and productive next year, I am trying not to let what is happening paralyze me.  I have
such happiness when I remember how it was here, when I was young.
      We were living on East 8something Street.  There was a little news store a block away, with a gentle old man selling magazines and papers on the other side of a small shelved window.  He had an accent and a pipe in his mouth.  It felt like Don and I were his only
customers, it was so quiet.
      And then he was closing, put out of business by a builder, so he gave us two tickets from his final promo that would get us into a movie we wanted to see. I can't remember what it was, but I remember him, kind as he'd been.  Buyers boarded it up, that little not-a-lot-of candy-shop.  I went back to see it once and the space had been mounted by an apartment building like an indifferent lover.
    How different things were in The Not That Long Ago.  At least it seems not that long.  But maybe that's because you remember it better when you cherish it more.

PICKING UP PEOPLE

What still works better in New York than anyplace else is picking up people.  Better even than usual is when there are blustery winds and folks, as newscasters try to call them in their hope of trying to make all this sound connected and friendly, move into coffee shops and bump into other people, as I did today.  Two very sharp and attractive women, one with tiny scarf covering her head, the other dark hair newly washed and almost in her soup, so intense was their conversation.
     It was, that portion I caught of it at least, about Donald Trump, that name held so high in his own limited attention span, that we too lightheartedly laughed off in its earliest emergence, thinking America was too bright to let this happen.   How could it have?
    Anyway, they were lovely, and as this was their first actual meeting, abetted by my intrusion from the next small table, intense and sadly joyous, as most enlightened conversation seems to be these days.  Those of us who love our country for the right reasons are forced to observe it like the soap opera he is making this portion of history into, assuming we survive.  "Joyous", as he would put it, probably in caps, because at least people are waking up, as proven by the numbers that made it to the election and squeaked it into turning out the right way.  Or, more aptly, the moderate one.  I had a dream in which Benjamin Franklin, who believed in reincarnation, so I frequently see him as here, and wish he were, gives a sigh of relief.
     Where it will all go from here is, of course, a puzzle.  I trust none of it, and wish my friends who loved country above party were still alive and in Washington.  But close as it is to Christmas,
I don't think there is a Santa Claus, and there is a Donald Trump.
      Such a bad scenario.  If only there were a better Editor.  Maybe there is.  We shall see.  Providing we still have eyes and he hasn't sold us to another country.