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The only New Start some want is the one that begins in January.

December 20, 2010

Certain leading Republicans, such as Lindsay Graham, have now announced a suddenly unbending hostility to the New Start treaty between the U.S. and Russia.  The treaty would resume on-site inspections of nuclear missile sites (lapsed last year) and pare down nuclear missile heads and launchers; the provisions are aimed at  keeping track of these weapons, attempting to avoid their loss or transfer to third parties (i.e. terrorists.)

Some complain of certain verification provisions. (This could be a legitimate issue for longterm treaty naysayers.)   But the newer complaints focus on non-binding language in the treaty’s preamble.

The weapons the Republicans seem truly worried about are their own political salvos:  Hey, I thought we torpedoed this President.

And btw since when didn’t you realize a nation with gay soldiers practically deserves to face nuclear weapons?)

And p.s. how dare Obama take credit for tax cuts?

Filibustering majority positions is a-okay, but making congressmen work into December?  Through their full terms of service?!

Nuclear proliferation be damned!

(One wants to remind them that Russia can almost be seen from Alaska.  Better think again.)

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Conversation Piece

December 15, 2010

More poetry!  Or draft poetry!  Whatever you want to call it.  I think it’s a little difficult to consider a poem finished on the day it’s first written.  (The initial draft of this was actually written on the subway yesterday, but still to say it’s “finished” may be a bit premature.)

The Conversation

He, who has not always been
kind, but wants to be,
told me of a dream.

“I was crying,” he said,
“as I looked at you,”
and that it had to do, he thought,
with something painful that
I had once refused to disclose,
he’d forgotten what.

I knew the conversation,
but also could not remember
exactly what I’d not said–there is so much
I would not tell him–only
that it was suddenly more painful than ever
it might have been
in the reflection of that girl,
the girl in his dream, enough so that
when he looked at me, I felt small
cracks at the backs
of my eyes and, for a moment,
could not speak again.
“Well?” he asked, and I said,
“anything else?”

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Obama – Moving On (Rather Than “Move On. …”)

December 8, 2010

 

Obama, bruised but not broken

Further to yesterday’s post re not being able to read the newspapers over the last few days due to a feeling of sick stomach, sick heart.

I finally was able to listen to Obama’s press conference on the tax cut issue.  I really recommend it (here’s the link) as it assuaged some of the sickness.  He’s pragmatic; he’s empathetic; he’s biting the bullet in a manner that avoids egotism and sanctimony (pretty unusual in politics).   He has a long-term perspective.

The fact is that the current tax deal is the just about the only practical response to November election.  The Republicans won.  If Obama pretends that they haven’t won, he is just prolonging the same losing election battle.  Instead he is moving forward, changing the terms of the debate to questions of budget cuts, problem solving, rather than hysteria of tax issues.

I feel a little worried here about the image I’m presenting personally.  I’m not against the wealthy!  Some of my best friends are wealthy!  I am simply concerned about (i) the long term health of the economy; (ii) schools!  roads!  the environment!  any social services.  And also, I admit, I am also worried about the dangers of living in a society in which the divisions of wealth are so stark and extreme.

Apparently, there is a rumbling of mumbling among liberal democrats about a primary challenge to Obama.  The mumblers misunderstand the intense conservatism and fear of the American people (and also, perhaps, the passivity, when it comes to voting, of some more liberal Americans.)   Secondly, it seems to me that it’s the Democrats in Congress who’ve failed here more than Obama; they allowed all the misstatements over the last year; they’ve failed to stand up for anything clear; they’ve ducked and ducked and ducked.  Now they’re stuck.

But he’s not.

 

(P.S. after posting this, realized one point that Obama seems conscious of.  People say they want change, but what drives them, and the economy, crazy is prolonged uncertainty.   He’s creating a stable, if not preferred platform, from which to keep working.)

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Behind Bars at Airport?

December 6, 2010

Drawing at Airport

Very late in life I am learning of the pleasures of airport bars.

The music tends to be a bit loud, and this time of year has incongruous Christmas connections, the little drummer boy’s “rumtumtum”, for example, humming with the thick vibration of some kind of electric bass.

But there you are.

The food’s not great, but the plane is delayed.

That line doesn’t really rhyme unless you have been in an airport bar for some time.

Which rhymes better (but doesn’t exactly scan.)

One of the great things about airport bars is that they make you exceedingly indulgent towards security checks, the pat-downs that people have recently complained about so bitterly.  (Perhaps they should have stopped at the airport bar first.)

PS– in this airport bar, which is truly an italian restaurant (that uses some awful bromated flour in pizza crust – there really is no pizza like Eastern Seaboard Pizza i.e. New York, New Haven)–there is a woman wearing a navy baseball cap that has a large rhinestone cross embossed above the brim.  She carries a Minnie Mouse doll.  (Florida?!)

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At Cross(Word) Purposes (With Elephant)

December 5, 2010

Crossword In Bed (With Elephant)

When discipline has worn down, the brain is charred, but you are a purposeful sort who hasn’t quite succumbed to late night (or all night) television, thank heavens for the New York Times crossword puzzle.  I’m not talking about the Sunday puzzle, which is somehow too long, quirky and shiny (the paper stock not plain newsprint) to be truly satisfying.

I’m talking about the mundane, smudged, predictably cycled offering of the daily paper–the Monday refreshingly easy, Tuesday harder but still pleasingly finishable, Wednesday involving some gimmick or joke (the kind one hates/loves to chuckle over), Thursday just possibly doable without cheating (except for this past Thursday grrrr….), the Friday a puzzle you can sometimes manage with only a few hits of the Internet, and the Saturday (forget about it.)

Dear Will Shortz, thank you for many a pleasant hour spent without, and especially, with company.    (The crossword is a great paired activity as long as the other person will let you hold the pencil every once in a while, and, eventually, stop erasing and re-writing your E’s.)

Thank you for this activity of wonderfully-seeming purposefulness.  (How good it is for our brains!)

Thank you for this terrific way of forgetting the present moment while trying to remember everything else one has ever ever learned.

BTW, who was that shipyard worker fired in 1976?

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Yanks Re-sign Jeter (Hurrah!)

December 4, 2010

Baseball elephants are happy.

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Nanowrimo Update – Thanksgiving

November 25, 2010

Nanowrimo Participant At Thanksgiving (And Pearl)

Finally, a free day (well, putting aside chopping, cooking, washing dishes, socializing and trying to get some air!)

What I truly mean is that I am getting down to the wire with my Nanowrimo novel and I should focus today on upping the old word count.

(Nanowrimo, if you are new to this notion, is National Novel Writing Month–a time when would-be novelists/masochists devote themselves to their dream activity.  Sort of.)

The problem is that I suddenly can’t summon the will.

Is it Writers’ Block crashing down? The other side of the ManicD equation?  Simple fatigue?

Is it the fact that I find myself in the middle of a family gathering, with an expectation that I will do something other than work on my computer?

Is the old September NYT crossword at my side really so fascinating?

All of the above is true.

But, oddly, the main cause of my current withdrawal is a kind of success.  As I wrote a couple of days ago, I finally discovered the connection between the disparate characters in my nanowrimo novel, a connection that has some kind of emotional “rightness” (if not, resolution.)

This connection has taken the manuscript (the potential manuscript) to a whole different level.

All of this is good (I guess), but also daunting.   Suddenly, the proposed novel does not feel so much like a what-comes-next game, a free-fall through the unconscious, but a project.  Something that could be worthwhile if I could just devote about a year or more to it.

The coincidence of Thanksgiving brings me to the only helpful response I can come up with:  isn’t the human mind amazing?  All those nooks and crannies where stories, characters,types, lurk.   I readily admit that mine are all stolen–from life, reading, the heard, experienced; only somewhere in this dreamlike process of making one’s self write madly, a mishmash has occurred, a regrouping.

I don’t know if I will have the luck or drive or year (or so) that it will take to actually write the novel that started through this rather random exercise.   It’s another huge leap of faith to think that anyone will read it!   Still, something to be thankful for.

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Nanowrimo Update: Adrift

November 22, 2010

Adrift

Another  busy work week begins and my Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) novel is seriously adrift.  Fulfilling the word count (50,000) by the end of November will likely be possible.   As any follower of this blog has probably guessed, I’m pretty good at quickly typing words.

Getting the story right, getting A story,is more difficult.

On my last update, I complained about the plot problem of arranging for  “California Girl” (who was not truly from California but has been staying in LA) to meet up with my other crew of characters traveling through Nevada.

Everything was happening too slowly.   The Nevada crew was not getting to LA fast enough to have their crisis there.

The bigger issue is that I haven’t been sure of the connection between the two sets of characters  even as I’ve danced between the two stories, writing them in one manuscript, in typical Gemini indecisiveness.  (Sorry, to you decisive Geminis.)

What to do?  I couldn’t just leave California Girl eating corn dogs on Venice Beach.

After a long walk below a clear sky, it became clear to me that California Girl was just going to have to be in Nevada; and since I couldn’t think of a reason for her to run off there, she’d have to be there all along; be, in other words, “Nevada Girl” right from the start.

(At least, I thought this had become clear.  The sky is a bit cloudy today.)

In the meantime, my Nevada crew has also stalled.   I am at the point of writing endless dialogue, thoughts, internal connections–something that would be Woolfian if I did it better–even as they race to an ambulance!

Maybe it’s a good thing I have to get back to other work today.

If these characters can’t make up their mind where they are or what they are doing, let them just stew for a while!  See if I care!  (Ah….good question.)

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Pat Downs

November 19, 2010

Uncomfortable, maybe, but truly a nightmare? ( Sorry- the elephant search above is not a true "pat-down" or even "trunk-down.")

Maybe it’s because I’m a New Yorker, used to the jam of bodies on the subway system, or maybe it’s because I’m a New Yorker who was an  an eye witness to the second plane hitting the South Tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11.  Whatever the reason,  as a New Yorker, I find the consternation about increased airline security, particularly body pat-downs, at best ridiculous, at worst, maddening.

I can understand the worry about the radiation hazards of body scans, but the pat-downs–  Come on, People!

The protest over the patting seems, in part, a sign of the of the over-sexualization of the culture (which tends to fill every touch with innuendo).

Yes, I suppose it’s possible the searches can, and will be, abused.  (Already I find myself backtracking!)  But many are complaining about the concept of any physical search.  (Some of the complaints remind me of a conversation I overheard in Florida just after the ban on taking liquids overseas;  “if Americans can’t take their carry-on on airplanes, the terrorists have won!” )

In many places in the world, these types of searches are routine.  In India, visits to the Taj Majal at night as well as to many museums, and certainly any airplane flight,  involve universal pat downs  – women police officers patting down ladies behind a screen, men patting down men.

Now there’s a thought!  Maybe the answer in this country, given its more sexualized culture, would be to give passengers their choice, gender-wise, of “patter-downer.”

But the part of the controversy that makes me truly upset is the part that places convenience and avoidance of discomfort over concerns of airplane security.   The other day, thinking about this, Patrick J. Brown came to mind, Paddy Brown. (Maybe I thought of him, I realize now, because of the rhyme.).  Brown was an NYPD captain, killed on 9/11.  I did not know him, but several different friends did–one group, because he practiced yoga; another, because he was a martial artist who taught karate to the blind.  All agree that he was a truly remarkable person.  He died because he refused to leave a group of injured people on a high floor of the WTC, waiting with them in the hope of further help.

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Nanowrimo (Back on the Computer!)

November 16, 2010

Eyes still a little sore, but back on the computer (also on the elephant)

Back to typing my Nanowrimo novel on the computer rather than only writing in a notebook.  This is a tremendous relief.

A kind of obstacle had formed in my brain–that I could not go back to writing the novel on the computer until I had typed up the forty or fifty pages I had scribbled in my notebook.  But this morning, I finally got myself back to writing on the computer again, simply picking up from my handwritten portion.

Don’t get me wrong.  I very much like notebooks.  Ink has a unique flow.

Ink has a unique flow.

But typing up a very scribbled draft that you don’t have time to edit is pretty stomach-churning.  (Maybe “sickening” is a better word–”churn” has drama; robotic typing is dull dull dull.)

The problem is that an exercise like National Novel Writing Month requires stamina.  This stamina rarely comes simply from discipline.  (Otherwise, you’d probably be the kind of person who puts all their focus on their day job.)

At least a part of the stamina is maintained by faith–faith in one’s self, but, more importantly, faith that the activity is somehow fun.

The invention, the engagement, usually qualifies.  Typing words you have already written, in contrast, is like watching a video of yourself at a party at which you were more than a teeny bit over-exuberant.  (Or worse, completely spiritless.)    Either way, it’s way better the first time around.

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