Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. It is early. Savannah Guthrie is pregnant. She should host Meet the Press. He has a coffee and some cereal. He talks to a friend. They share righteous anger about the world. He sees an empty cigar case by the bus stop and thinks simultaneously of the cigar he often smokes with a brandy or a whiskey or some other unremembered liquor on New Years Eve and bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in the oval office and how that charming lecherous man ruined many parts of that young woman’s life and yet still she appears strong and funny and wise because terrible things happen but even through them life is never wholly ruined just reshaped and tattered round it’s once pristine edges. A man leaves an envelope on the bus. He may have just got out of jail and the letter may be important. He calls after the man and gives him his letter. The man says thank you as he leaves the bus. It is a good feeling to be thanked by a stranger for a small kindness. He sits on the train and sees and old man with a wrist brace. He gets into an elevator with a man who is wearing moccasins threequarter length shorts and a fedora. He judges him and finds him wanting whilst also being envious of his confidence to be sartorially ridiculous. He had that once but now he has lost that. He goes to the baseball. It is hot. It is humid. Seats are sat in. Then it starts to rain and so begins the second level of hell. Food is purchased and then the shambling damned are watched with pity as they walk round and round in circles forever and no decision is made but that these people will continue to buy food and drink and ponchos and increase the profit of the stadium for another day because the rain keeps on coming down and forever passes by and a gap appears in the mass and it is entered but then it swallows them and they are trapped no with the damned shuffling forever wishing they had never left their comfortable spot by the pillar but now they are part of the behemoth limbed ocean of humanity that sludges by weeping and gnashing without food without water without beer without poncho and still the rain falls and still no decision is made and then the decide themselves and assert their ability to choose and spear their way out of the crowd and escape and barrel towards the exit thrusting creatures aside and carving them asunder as they finally escape into the balm of the rain and yet they find themselves abandoned by transport and still hopeless and lost and then a shining beacon of hope arrives on a chariot and they get in the chariot and go home and sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. It is 4am. He turns the television on and watches the Nelson Mandela memorial service in the stadium in South Africa and he watches as Bill Clinton glad hands and Hillary Clinton hugs and kisses and Barack Obama and Raul Castro shake hands and he thinks he hears nearby in Washington the sound of Republicans exploding and anti-Communists melting and Joe McCarthy clawing at his coffin desperately trying to come to the surface to wreak bloody meat-tearing havoc. Then he sorts out some photographs and then he has a coffee and then he eats some cereal and then he listens to Obama’s resounding speech which is full of wonderful phrases and delightful ideas but unfortunately bears no relation to the real world but what does that matter in this day and age where lofty rhetoric is more important than ground level progress. Then he walks through the snow and takes lots of photographs of the snow and then he misses the bus but he cannot run ineffectually or efectually because of the slush and the slip sliding snow and then he waits for the bus and gets on the bus He learns words in Spanish and words in Mandarin and then he gets on the train and he falls asleep and he wakes up and arrives at work and a friend arrives from Palestine and he talks with him for a while and then he has a coffee and then he eats a cookie and one of his bosses is leaving and another boss will take his place and he eats some food and he eats an avocado and he plans the holidays and he worries about his budget and he talks on a web camera and he laughs and he jokes. Then there is the selfie that rings out throughout the world and Obama is smiling but then everyone is smiling but then one frame captures Michelle Obama not smiling so everyone assumes she is unhappy but it probably just caught a moment when she was giving her face a rest from smiling because the arena seemed to be full of joy and life. Then he feels exhausted and has a little nap his head resting on the table in front of him then he does some more work and then he trudges home which takes a long long time and it is cold and yet the air is incredibly clean and pure and finally he returns home to pizza and love and left over breakfast coffee and then he sleeps.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. His shoulders are sore this morning. He swam 10 lengths of a small swimming pool on Sunday and choked his way through half of them but, fueled by pride, he struggled on so that the lifeguard did not think that he was a poor swimmer. He was fooling no one. He could not find his ipod this morning. He is glad that this is the kind of thing that he has to contend with as major obstacles to his day and not guns and bombs and slaughter. He reads the end of The Grapes of Wrath. He thinks that the book is incredible. He also read the beginning and the middle of The Grapes of Wrath.

A boss was over from London. One of the many bosses. He seems the clearest so far and all does not seem doom and gloom. He will still prepare myself for the worst. The German Foreign Minister came into work. He was pleasant and had a large serious entourage. There was a lot of German Smiling. He is not sure what German smiling means but it seems to define a particular kind of smiling for him so he calls it German smilnig. He learned more things and he read about rationalism on the train home. It was hot today. The air was hot syrup.  He drank a glass of red wine. He had some chicken. He tried to watch Rachel Maddow but she was not on form tonight – too much whining about Republicans acting like Republicans. Lawrence O’Donnell was also a touch off. He had a segment where he pretended to report on the Bill Clinton/Gennifer Flowers scandal of the 90s. It was a segment that was five minutes too long. It was tedious. He goes to sleep.