Dispatches from the Empire

There is a peculiar desire to think profound thoughts on holidays. Christmas marks the emotional passage of a year, whereas new years is merely the changing of some numbers, so it's tempting to leave behind something of weight and heft. A list, a retrospective.

I have nothing like that to offer.

Merely: This is a strange and wonderful time to be alive, is it not?

I have long believed the relative wealth of an area correlates directly to the amount of no-flavor sparkling water available in their gas stations.

There must be a word, probably German or Yiddish, for the feeling of your curiosity spooling up…

I feel adventure a-comin’.

Three things I’ve been enjoying:

  1. The Larry Sanders Show
  2. The music of Florence Price
  3. The reference desk at my local library. Ask a question about, say, local history…then stand back. Phone books, plat maps, soil surveys, yearbooks, geographic studies…you name it, they know where to find it. You know you’re on to something special when you get a reference librarian to say, “Well now I’m curious.”

There’s no better feeling than leaving, of pointing yourself in a direction and heading off…

I feel it acutely in the morning, right when I wake up. My dreams are pleasant and vivid and in them, I’m still me, just a slightly different version of myself. But I wake with the feeling that this person in my dreams is closer to the real me than the one I inhabit throughout the day.

The only things you can leave behind are questions.

Humans first landed on the moon 54 years ago today.

Anything is beautiful if you decide it is.

There’s a phrase that’s been rattling around my head for the last several months.

“I love you, but you are not serious people.”

Some narrative context.

These words feel like an indictment, both of me personally and of the country in which I live. We Americans are no longer serious people.

Our brains have been so thoroughly hijacked by capitalism. Our attention spans have corroded. We no longer believe in anything but money — everything has a price. Morality, integrity, civic duty… those ideals are antique and ornamental.

I want to have hope for us. I often wonder what my grandfather — the one that fought in World War II — felt about our country. I want for just a moment to feel what he felt. He seemed to believe in us.

Whoever told you the world makes sense?

Does my ingenium hibernate when I am content, or is that a myth writers tell themselves to perpetuate their self-loathing?