DEJA VHUT? (OH NO, NOT AGAIN?)

La-di-da, no one coming...I proceed on.

Air molecules dissolve, airbags explode, car spins 180 and shudders to a stop. I can't move, seconds pass, out of the corner of my eye I see someone driving in slow motion, staring into the window, making a call. A few beats later I hear, "Oh, I was wrong... she's a lot older than I told you!"

Thanks alot, bitch, just what I needed to hear! This is my first thought after I start thinking again. My brain is working. What a relief!

The only thing I can feel is pain shooting through my back, right where I fell 2 years ago, in Joshua Tree. It's deja vu all over again. Oh no! Not again!

The truck rammed me on the driver's side. For some reason this kind of accident is called a T-bone, as if it's somehow connected to a cow, but how? No cows here.

But I wouldn't mind if there were more cows and less cars. Life would be easier. Life would not be this urban nightmare. Yes, more cows, less cars and while we're at it, how about no cars! No cars, no cell phones, no computers, no cops, except the ones directing the cows. 

 

But back to my immediate situation. Someone's cutting away the airbags and reaching inside to pull me out of the car and into an ambulance.

On the way to the hospital, I experience a case of deja vu; wasn't I just here a second ago on my way to the ER in Palm Springs? Where am I? I should call someone, wait a second, I don't have my phone. Oh NO!

Once at the hospital, I'm wheeled into a room, nurses come and go, something's pumped into my veins. I wait. After more waiting, a young boy wheels me to another room, a room that looks strangely familiar.

Are we at the airport?

Inside the black hole, a warm flow of dye curses through my body and I panic!

The robot is right, 30 seconds later and it's over. I'm wheeled back to my room.

I call a friend, who brings food and, remarkably, my phone from the shop. The doctor reads me his report in a somber tone (perhaps he's falling asleep as he talks, an overextended resident) and I'm finally released. I'm anxious to get home. I insist my friend drive slowly, take all the side streets, avoid the freeway, go ten blocks out of her way, and before it's morning, I'm home!

***

Talking to a friend a few days later, I tell her everything's okay, but I'm damaged. A fracture in my lower lumbar and cotton balls floating in my brain. I'm back in bed, not able to walk further than the bathroom, and trying to put a sentence together is....is... what... searching searching....right word where, ah there...impossible. I'm not suppose to think, not suppose to read on a screen, not suppose to tax my brain. 

"Well, that's a good thing for the next few years, don't you think?" my friend says. 

I laugh. It's the first laugh since the accident. We both find hilarious the idea of being slightly brain damaged as a useful strategy for getting through the Trump years. Maybe there's a silver lining after all.

THE END.

This accident happened 7 weeks ago. I complained a lot during my recovery, mostly about how long it was taking to get better; most days it felt like I was going backwards. I'd attempt some activity, like walking to the mailbox, and end up back in bed for two days. But today, recovery is almost in reach, walking, thinking, almost normal again. I still wonder why that jerk had to race through a light that had already turned red, but that's LA. Could I really live where there are no cars, no cell phones, no computers, no cops....I don't think so, but the thought is tempting, especially the idea of skipping through daisies in a field of cows. Throw in a few wild foxes and I think I'd be happy. But what is happiness in the age of Trump, an existential question I hope to explore in 2018.

Here's wishing you, dear reader, a Happy New Year and a very good year. Let's get out there in 2018, knock on some doors, make a few hundred calls, talk to strangers, and bring those mother fuckers in Congress down. That's all i can say from this end of the nightmare, but still alive to say it.

Donkey's Inferno

A Short Fable for Children

The thing about these Asses was, despite their swollen ankles, they galloped along so fast that before you could protest one of their antics—like opening up public lands to Uranium mining— they'd landed another doozy and pulled you by your hair to Hell.

They told so many lies, they couldn't keep track of them. They purposely caused your head to swivel (whiplash, not covered by insurance) and, like the Cuyahoga River, there was a chance of bursting into flames spontaneously. Soon it became the country's no. 1 danger!

Like what happened to me this morning. 

I showered for my allotted two minutes, but then couldn't leave—thinking about all the lies, so many of them, falling out of those smug Jackasses' asses.

But back to our fable.

Especially egregious was the bloated Jackass named Trump, (but let's not discount his tag along buddies). They lied so deliciously, young children began to believe them.

For instance, some of the lies: 

Nature is ugly

Losing your healthcare is Freedom

If liberals like it, than it's wrong, therefore.... Wrong is right!

So Children, a warning: You're being sold a bundle of lies by the whole fucking lot of them.

But Club Hell, where TrumpMcConnellRyanSessions are members, is restricted (like certain clubs of my childhood), so...

If you're brown black native indigenous yellow red blue gay transgendered binary Bahai Jewish Muslim Atheist Mongolian vegetarian student scientist citizen journalist
or...

just a lover of books,

You won't be allowed in Hell. Turns out it's an all exclusive club for lyin' Jackasses. Good news, Children! And even though this is a long ago fable (from three days ago), that's the truth!

(Bigger donkey than the Devil)

THE END

DONNY

If there's one thing we can be certain of in this uncertain world it's that Trump will NEVER take responsibility for any of his actions. Thus far in his reign, "responsibility" has never fluttered forth from his lips (come to think of it, I can't think of any 6 syllable word he's uttered; tre-men-dous has only 3). I find this surprisingly reassuring: it will always be the Mexicans or the Muslims or the Democrats—of course the Dems are to blame for the demise of Ryan's disastrous health care remake, of course!—it will never be him or any of his white party. Which got me thinking....

In love with love

Over the holidays I saw the new Jim Jarmusch film, Paterson; it was splendid, more than splendid, it was about poetry and the urge to write and the urge and the need to create. Critics panned it of course, too slow, they said. Too slight.
But for me it was a revelation.

So I thought I would try my hand at a poem. I wrote poetry when I was in my twenties, very bad, very slight. But I sat down the last day of this year, with the rain coming down, and mulled over the words that would go into my poem, like Adam Driver does in Paterson. Mulling is part of writing poetry, I believe, different than writing an essay or a work of fiction. Those take different skills, but I quite like mulling, and I quite liked how Adam Driver did it in the movie, so I'm giving myself permission to copy his method, at least for this first attempt.  


In love with love

Life is so precious
so fragile
so finite....
Yet love is infinite.
Or at least it seems when you’re walking in the rain and a small black towhee sits above you singing.
It gets you kicking up your heels and thinking that love will last forever, that you will always love, love will go on and on and on.
But then you grow disillusioned.
You grow out of love. You face the end of love alone.

But what of this: You’re young and full of life and infinitely in love with life. You’re in love with love. You touch everyone with your love. You are the wind and the salt sea. But then you face your death alone. You fly away singing. Where do you go? Where does that infinite love go? How does the universe contain that finite being full of infinite love that touched so many?

Maybe I’m thinking of all this because it’s raining, because it’s cold and gray, because my family is scattered. Because love is both infinite...and finite. Because the one who loved love and the multitudes who loved him back has died. And where did that love go?

I think I got his eyes