No Excuses

for not writing since godknowswhen, so I'm not making any.  Suffice it to say the Id will be released.  What's on my mind? Here goes:

For starters, while I do not mind drinking alone (actually I prefer it) I do mind laughing alone which is why, at day's end, instead of watching comedies to signify the end of yet another mega-productive Day in the Life of Blocked Short Story Writer, I watch dramas.  I am a creature of routine -- same peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day, same TV series every day.  Lately I've been tearing through the police procedurals set in the British Isles -- Rebus (the Ian Rankin creation), Inspector Lewis, even some show set in Glasgow that wasn't all that good (like B-grade Law & Order) but I was proud of myself for comprehending most of the dialogue without having to resort to subtitles or close captioning.  (British and Irish English is a foreign language.)  After a few viewings I stopped to ask why I prefer them to the American shows.  Finally realized that hands-down the acting is better.  Even small roles are deliciously played, tutorials in the use of facial expression that American actors are scared to study.  I'm convinced that theater (here) attracts a whole lot of people who have faces that Hollywood would love.  They get into it for the gaze, and some of them become actors in the process.  England (and by extension, Ireland) I think the motivation is different.  Don't quite know what it is, but it seems different.

I mean, there are some phenomenally homely folks on camera in England.  If I were a kid I'd think that the English people have long faces, lantern jaws, and toothpick slashes for mouths.  (The women must save a fortune on lipstick.)  And who could blame me for coming to that conclusion?  It's fascinating.  There they are acting with gusto, tearing up the screen as if they had as much right to be there as Scarlett Johansson or James Franco (who, I have to admit, I find tiresomely pretentious.  Kind of like John Mayer without the songwriting chops).  That movie he did, 27 Hours? [nota bene:  it's 127 Hours, which is probably 126.5 too long]  Why didn't he just saw off his head and get it over with?)


And the English get to swear on camera!  How refreshing that you can call another character "a perfect little shit" instead of having to call him a perfect little twit.


And speaking of Perfect Twits!  Poor Romney.  He's starting to remind me of the Stephen Root character in NewsRadio, Jimmy James.  Lately there's been a lot of bloggage about why Mitt(ens) is making such a bollocks of it all.  (See I told ya I've been watching a lot of British TV.)  And while it's interesting reading, I think it goes too far.  I mean I'm as guilty as the next person for performing armchair psychoanalysis, but really?  Asperger's Syndrome?  Bi-polar disorder?  I've known people with Asperger's Syndrome and you, sir, are no Idiot Savant!  I mean really now.


Mitt Romney is, by virtue of being born into wealth and leading his own company, used to being in command and in charge.  Can't do that in the white-hot heart of a nuclear reactor called the modern American Presidential race.  You can't control it; it controls you.


Mitt Romney is old school Republican and a Mormon square to boot.  You don't talk about sex, the money you make, your feelings nor the nakedness of your personal ambition in public.  You.  Just.  Don't.  I draw a straight line from the triumph of confessional daytime TV (Oprah and Jerry Springer to name pre-eminent examples) to 24/7 cable coverage to blogging to Twitter et alia and personal rectitude goes out the window as a virtue, much less a practice.  In fact, it's become a liability.  The more the press asks of "Mitt" as opposed to "Mr. Romney" the more flummoxed and flustered he (his wife, and his staff will become).  Call it death by a 1,000 personal questions.

Joe. Paterno. Is. Dead. Again.

Part of the work of my maturity is to not rationalize the behavior of others who share my same name, or ethnicity or even my bed.  It isn't easy.  The impulse to cover the tracks of someone else's shit is deeply embedded, particularly if you identify with and could be mistaken for the perpetrator.  I watched the other black Americans I knew respond to Clarence Thomas' confirmation hearings.  They felt a collective shame about a man none of them knew, few of them would have liked, yet nevertheless felt his transgressions were their own.  Closer to home is how we all struggle when it is family  -- our siblings, children, spouses.  The tension between self-exculpation and loyalty to the transgressor is often unbearable and irreconcilable.

It's said that if you want to know something, follow your curiosity.  As much as I told myself that I had fiction to write, math to study or bills to pay, on Thursday I kept returning to news about the Report of the Special Investigative Counsel Regarding the Actions of The Pennsylvania State University Related to the Child Sexual Abuse Committed by Gerald A. Sandusky, which will forever be know simply as the Freeh Report, and the associated revelations and analyses that came pouring out and continue to pour out of the media.  Again, I cannot stop, so much so that despite reading excellent analyses and the report's Executive Summary I insist on reading the primary source -- the 267 page report.

I don't know what more I can learn that I haven't so far, or that I can't extrapolate.  Perhaps it is a complicated act of atonement, or moral education akin to watching Shoah, or viewing the PBS series, The Civil War.  I don't know.  Just as success has many fathers, shame has many cousins -- denial and avoidance, rationalization, defensive rage, retributive justice and reform to name a few -- and every one of us who have followed this story have felt shame.

It's what I recall as I read some of the anguished commentary from people defending Joe Paterno and by extension, the university and ultimately themselves.  They are beyond fact; as will the Paterno family be for the rest of their natural lives.  (Mark my words:  within a year's time Jay Paterno will publish an as told to book exonerating his father.)  It doesn't make it any less infuriating to read, but I understand it.  One of my perennial favorites is the lame excuse that "JoePA was an old man and wasn't familiar with man on boy rape."  Even if Joe Paterno hadn't gone to mass in 50 years, I'm sure he had a passing familiarity with the Catholic Church's pedophilia scandal and as a grandfather I'm sure he had some personal feelings about all of it even if he never made any public statements about it.  (Why, after all, would he be asked about that?).  But not to have an inkling of that particular brand of depravity? Even Paterno's contemporary, my sweet Texas born, Baptist stepmother, who is such a lady through and through that she wouldn't shout goddamnit if you dropped a refrigerator on her foot, knows what time it is when it comes to child abuse.  If she knows, Paterno knew but it is a fool's errand to argue with those who have everything to psychically lose by facing the truth.  It remains for the rest of us to make sense of what has happened.  Whether we want to, or not.

Saturday Poetry: And Don't We Sound Like A Broken Record?

I keep a copy of letters I've written

A backwards looking journal:

2004, 2003, and so on.

I read them when I'm needy

or lost.

Instead of offering solace

they admonish me

flashlighting my self-preoccupation.

And don't, they whisper,

don't we sound like

a broken record?

The song, the same old song again:

I'm unhappy.

Unhappy about not writing.

Writing is kicking my ass.

A minute longer I'm going to be depressed.

Then there's:  I love D. to death.

But I'm having problems with her while

I'm tired.

I'm broke.

And fat and tattered.

But not yet counted among the bitter

I type.

Not yet, not yet.

A Possum Walks into the Kitchen ....

... and scared the hell out of me when I walked  from my backyard office into the house late last night.  It used to be that the pipes would freeze, then burst when I was home alone, now I have to contend with critters.  The possum was young, not aggressive, and I honestly don't know which of us was the more startled.  What went through my mind was what goes through all cowards' minds:  call the police?, sleep in my office?, set the house on fire?  wake up my neighbor, Eric? blame Husband No. 1?


I came to my senses.  We've had the luxury of leaving the back door open to let cooler air in because the house always had people in it, people that any self-respecting creature could smell.  What is different now is that there are only 2 of us living here, and sometimes only one, and what I took for granted in terms of security and access has to change.  Lucky for me it was a possum this time.  While it cowered in the next room I poured Cocoa Puffs (leftover from my niece's residency) on a plate and placed them just outside the door.  Then I ran back to my office.  Cowering, I watched while the possum came back to the kitchen and stepped onto the deck.  I chastised myself for not placing the cereal further away, but It was outside.  As soon as It got further from the door I raced back to the house making stupid Natural-Predator-of-Possum noises, lunged into the house and proceeded to walk through it with my broom turning on every light in every room. Assured that I was alone (with the exception of a few thousand flies) I went outside, making sure to close the door (good-bye cool air) and whistling past the graveyard all the way back to my office.

Despite having grown up in Iowa, I am so not a country girl.  Undomesticated creatures walking into my house is a big deal and will always be a big deal.  When I lived in New York, I had to worry about human predators.  Those I'm used to; they I understand.  But possums?  New Haven I love you, but give me Park Avenuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh .....