the republicans have been robbed!

Part of me wants to say “Hip Hip Hooray for Rob Portman!” The republican senator from Ohio came out yesterday in support of same-sex marriage – which is gutsy in a party that generally thinks homosexuals are deviants, the earth is seven thousand years old, and all you need are bootstraps to be as fat and happy as Wall Street CEOs.

It seems Rob’s son came out to him and that is what changed his mind. This is all still laudable, but when you are unable to have empathy for any sort of person until there is one of those sorts of people in your own family you might be lacking a sufficient amount of empathy. I’m not even sure empathy is what we feel for our own children considering the absolute closeness we feel with them. The sadness and joy we feel when our own children feel sadness and joy seems closer to some sort of Vulcan mind meld than something called empathy.

Either way, I’ll go with “Hip Hip Hooray!” And add, “Welcome to the enlightenment, the 21^st century, and common human decency!”

Hagiography

I can’t say how much I love how Edward St. Aubyn skewers the holy, high and mighty, landed, nam-ed, people of his Patrick Melrose novels. But I also feel a similar anger toward his own prodigious talent. Like, well, fuck you, Eddie, with all you got through whatever genetic re-redistribution that led to your own genius! You are the heir to whatever it is you do. You skewer them with the same unabashed cruelty and poetry that they do others. Yes, you are infinitely better and more able, while they skewer, you fillet. And I Iove you for it. But I hate you, too. That cruelty doesn’t come from nowhere.

And that’s the point, I guess. I love you again.

i’ll never let you down

The Fall

Seasonal Affective Disorder, sad, smile
A rather clinical name for frozen blood, acid stomach, twitchy body and rickety mind.
Autumn Blues
Crank it up!
Another few bars
to get me through
another sleepless night
to hang/over again
another day
and another night
to sleep
less
flip switch growl cry
what? who?
anxiety
everything dies
leaves fall
light goes south
madness. rains.
frozen north
freezing
slowly
F. Scott said, “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”
He’s right,
but death hurts
first.

loser

I’m a loser. I really am. And not in a really bad way, but I’m not cool, or daring, or particularly outgoing. Not that I ever was, but I think age solidifies our personal qualities. So my loser-ness is increasing.

I don’t go out much. I don’t really care to. I don’t particularly care to see music performed or movies in a cinema. Brian Eno could come through town but if it looked like rain, I might skip it. Okay, not Brian Eno, but anyone else. It might be too loud or too crowded. Parking might suck. I’m cool just listening to the radio.

Travel really doesn’t interest me. I know I should be hang-gliding en la montanas de Brazil right now, but I really don’t want to. I don’t like heights, Brazil is a long way away. Air travel sucks, who knows what kind of shitty hotel I’d end up in?

I like well-prepared, high end, locavore cuisine, but not if it inconveniences me to get it. The amazing new restaurant? It’s miles away. The joy of cooking? Not any more. Too much work. I crack a can of this or that and eat standing up in the kitchen.

I don’t watch much television and I rarely see any movies so I’m absolutely unable to keep up with any pop culture conversation whatsoever. And that’s not some, I just sit around and read great novels, I don’t. A bit of this and a bit of that.

Maybe this just makes me a homebody, and not a loser, but sometimes if feels really loserly.

My friend thinks I’m boring. My family mocks me.

I pity my wife.

I’m a loser.