Never quite arriving at the subject

Here is the front of a card that one of my students made for me (thx Annie!) — the canvas is paper, the letters are handwritten in pencil, and there are stickers on it:

Dear diary,

Think of an automobile. The father of a family is in the driver’s seat. The mother is absent; nobody knows what happened to her; so the passenger seat is empty. Yet there are a number of children in the back seat, 327.2 million to be exact; and each of these kids has their own toy steering-wheel, which features a horn button in the middle that makes a squeaky noise, and, to the right of its dashboard-base, a plastic lever that slides up and down (I’m guessing this represents the gear shift). Now the father who is driving the car has told all these children that their steering-wheels are connected to the vehicle and thus they’re genuinely controlling it.

The scenario above reminds me of the U.S. electoral system. United Statesians are assured that they are voting for their representatives, and that they therefore have a say in how the country is governed.

We citizens are proud of our “Founding Fathers”, because we tell ourselves that they invented a fool-proof system: it cannot go bad, for there are checks and balances, etc. Term limits apply to anyone who gets elected; this prohibits even the possibility of corruption. But the instruction manual is a complex and delicate configuration of many ideas. For there are also positions like Supreme Court Judges, whose members are neither voted upon directly, nor subject to term limitations; but they’re rather nominated by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and appointed to serve for life. Also we have clandestine elements, agencies of intelligence, whose members are likewise not directly voted on; and their terms of service often span multiple presidencies. Nobody, in fact, knows exactly how one becomes an Intel Officer.

But none of this should matter to any reader who does not live in, or at least near, the twenty-first century. And my problem is that I have little to no readership; therefore I write for death; which is to say, anyone who reads me is guaranteed to be living in the far future, thus I will be long dead by the time my dreams reach them; or it could be that I never am granted an audience at all: in that case, I’m simply writing to make time pass until I pass — either way, I write for death, whether it’s the time after my own death, or the time until my own death. Death, for me, is like the gong that dings upon the egg timer, which our class’s teacher has set to denote the end of the duration allotted to take her test. Here I’m imagining myself as a student in a classroom, failing an exam.

So, as I’ve repeatedly admitted in past entries, I somehow came down with the disease called “mad about politics”. This is especially dire, in my case, because, as a writer who can only afford to care for subjects that are LASTING, a preoccupation with the power-plays of the present is a guaranteed energy-suck. It’s as if I have a leak in my canoe. But, like all addicts, I rationalize and justify my continued usage: I tell myself, James Joyce wrote constantly about Parnell; and Andrew Marvell did not shy away from writing of Cromwell; and of course Whitman eulogizes Lincoln; so why shouldn’t I allow myself to mention Bernie Sanders? But I’m always uneasy about it — I’m acutely aware of the temptation to bore the future with petty details that apply only to my own eon; for I think: either the type of revolution that Sanders calls for will or won’t occur. If the former, then the future shall say “I have zero interest in how paradise got its start; Why mull over the historical details of the struggle to achieve this state of human harmony, when one could this instant be basking in its whatness?” On the other hand, if Sanders’ revolution fails to manifest, then the future reader will face her own version of Sanders’ struggle, with its own wretched political conundrums and discord: in fact, she has sought out my text here precisely so as to escape, if only for a moment, the horrors of futurity; yet here I am, saying something like: “O debt-slave, here’s proof that the very same torments were rife as far back as the bad year 2020.” So the trick, for me, is to try to generalize or universalize or surrealize my local hangups so that they please even those who are displeased by them.

This strikes me as almost impossible to do; which is, I assume, why so few creative artists write about politics. But it’s this very impossibility that attracts me to the task: I’d rather fail at something impossible than succeed at something doable. So now I wonder: Can I vent my political vexations poetically enough to avoid putting to sleep the unborn? — In his essay on Coleridge (from Appreciations), Walter Pater sez:

“Good political poetry—political poetry that shall be permanently moving—can, perhaps, only be written on motives which, for those they concern, have ceased to be open questions, and are really beyond argument…”

OK, so does this mean that I must wait until...

Actually, I’m just gonna ignore Pater’s assertion above. I don’t know how to wrestle with it, in this current context. I’m glad that I added it as a quotation, and I think he’s right; but I wanna let myself dabble in irresponsibility…

I’ll repeat the aforementioned question more specifically: How can I paint the recent Iowa caucus fiasco (which is what’s on my nerves at the moment) in a way that will seem palatable to a New American, when it’s unbearable even to an old United Statesian?

The answer is: Drop it. I myself, I promise you (here I’m speaking to myself as another, even calling myself “you”: isn’t that weird?), I say, I promise you, O self, that we will not even remember what we were trying to articulate in this entry, when, years hence, we read it again in a state of bemusement. We ourself will then remark aloud: “What the heck was the Iowa caucus? Holy moly, I must have been high on suds back then, to care about something so obviously blank. Instead of continuing to live for many more decades and realizing health and success and riches, I should have just taken a long walk off a short cliff.” Therefore, instead of pinning down and labeling all the details of this recent event on the corkboard, I should extract and abstract and sum up the gist of the thing. Recognize the simplest possible truth of the matter. What is that?

The core of this issue, which makes my blood boil so attractively, is that the regular people of this country still do not have power, and there seems to be no remedy to this problem that would not require us to lose our lives in attaining it.

Nice summary; I think this plan is working. Now what should we do, in light of the above? Well, we have choices. We can either accept the crumbs of the present arrangement, and pass this world on to our successors; or we can make the decision to become cannon fodder, for the sake of future hope.

Yet even that latter move would not ensure progress. It could change everything for the better; but it also could fail. Who knows what truly causes progress! And even if protesting does manage to bring about harmony, isn’t discord always just around the corner? The only way to make harmony permanent is to shoot it and stuff it. Embalm it. Preserve it in amber. Lower it down, dip it into the steaming vat: freeze it in carbonite. Mount its head upon the wall. Take a seat, light a cigar, proudly gesture toward the trophy and exclaim: “Look at that harmony! It’s here to stay now, forever. Securely harnessed, like love by marriage.”

Professing all this makes me feel like I’m one of the demons from Paradise Lost, in the second book where they have a big, communal discussion about what to do now that we’ve been cast down from heaven. Should we learn to love hell? Or should we climb back up there and try to beat God off his throne? Maybe we should throw a wrench in that new machine that he’s rumored to be constructing.

I’m for inviting God down to see our new abode. He might enjoy it: it’s ruddy hued, which matches his taste. Also it has darkness and thunder, and lots of flames and lava — all of these things are right up his alley.

There went forth a smoke out of his nostrils, & fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it. The LORD bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness was under his feet. And he rode upon an angel-tyger, and glided: yea, he did mount upon the wings of the spirit. He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies. And lightnings flashed before him, as his thick clouds passed, hailing down stones of ice and coals of flame. The LORD also thundered in the heavens, and the Highest did shout, and the noise of his voice was the hail-stones and the fire-coals!!! (Psalm 18:8-13)

I think that if God were to come down and see me in my house, and talk with me, man to man, he’d really enjoy himself. So I don’t know why he keeps me situated here, & why he never calls. I’m more than ready to forgive him.