We have a day of moderate bustle ahead of us, Kathleen and I. We’ve got to connect with the freight boat at noon, to despatch Will’s bicycle to the Bay Shore terminal, where we’ll pick it up tomorrow. (The rule against bicycles on the regular ferry is absolute.) We have another box to send from the post office. And we have to tidy up the house and pack our bags. Then, the last walk on the beach, and dinner at Magowan’s. I hope to be up and out early tomorrow. It’s not that I’m keen to leave, not at all. But I’m treating today as our last day here, and tomorrow as our first day home. My first day, that is.

***

After lunch, yesterday, we took a walk through Seaview, the community just beyond the other end of Ocean Beach, and Kathleen picked up a Times on the way. When we got back to the house, she read the first two sections and decided that she needed a nap. I had been reading the three back sections (Home, Styles, and Arts), and now I read the first two. Then I pulled over the extra-large tote bag full of newspapers that piled up during the month. During the month, I never bought a paper myself. Nor could I bear to read one. It was like television: coming back after a few days away, all you can see is the formula. So I would gather up the sections that drifted around the house over the weekends and stuff them into the tote bag. (Kathleen ususally went to buy a paper every morning that she was here, as well.) When I was finished with yesterday’s Times, I had a decision to make. Would I throw the old newspapers into the rubbish without reading them?

I glanced through the lot. I cut out an article on genetic swtiching, to read later. I read the piece about actor’s B D Wong’s new home, with the sad story, tucked into the chitchat about décor, of the death of a son and the fatal strain that it put on the relationship with his then partner. (Kathleen and I saw M Butterfly twice on Broadway.) The interenational and political news seemed a bit clueless, because it was, of course, unaware of recent events in Libya, Egypt, and Yemen. (What’s appalling about the American response is that the violence of the reformation of Western Christianity has been entirely forgotten, as if we were not its heirs. But it is in the nature of heirs to obliviate the rude sources of their wealth.) The presidential campaign looked stranger than ever — it has lost the fundamental symmetry of traditional campaigns. Even when they attack the other’s positions, the candidates are not fighting the same kind of fight. Obama is appealing to reason, and Romney is appealing to something else — everything else, perhaps. Obama has to fight; Romney comes pre-sold, like a messiah-in-a-box, all shiny beneath the cellophane wrapping. Much more valuable if you don’t open it!  

Here’s something that I think has changed. Formerly, Americans could be whipped frantic by allegations of alien agents within our midst. This is ancient history, not just American, although in the Salem witch trials we see how little time was required to reproduce Old-World anxieties upon our own hopeful shores. Most recently, the Cold War was funded by a visceral (and very ignorant) fear of Communists, who could be anybody, when in fact the actual enemies were the Russians. But things are different now. Fear has been replaced by resentment. Americans aren’t afraid of infiltrators. They’re frankly willing to recognize that the people whom they resent and dislike are also Americans. They just don’t want to have anything to do with them. It’s not civil war, but the opposite: civil withdrawal. 

When it was over, the reading of the papers, I felt defeated. The smartest people in the country have no idea where we’re going, and no very clear notion of where we ought to be going. Jobs! Equality! Health care! But the nuts don’t fit the bolts. I saw a headline, which was not news to me, that most of the jobs that are being created these days are low-paying jobs. How do you tackle a problem like this? Training! is the answer. But training for what? How can there be growth in good jobs in a business climate that promotes productivity at the expense of employment? The answers aren’t there, because no one is asking the right questions.

That’s what I’d like to see: an election of questions. What do you think the right questions are?

***

I’ll be back on Monday. Bon weekend â tous!  

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Friday, September 14th, 2012 at 9:39 am.