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.
