OpEd is going offline for a while. The editorial team are traveling the world to find new experiences and, hopefully, new writers. Sign-up for the mailing list above and your inbox will be adorned with the next issue around November 2008. In the meantime, dally over his month’s offerings of poetry, prose, politics and streams of thought, all offering the make believe and the all too real.

On the chart they come and go
Powerpoints of Michelangelo

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow notes that stick to the screens
And the nudging ping of email machines
There will be time, there will be time.
To prep your deck, prep your face
For face to face, for meet and greet
There will be time to murder and create
Proposals, requirements, fly in business plans
Pats on back and pumps of hands;
Time for you and time for me
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the cooler calls for chats Re: TV.

At the reception, girls come and go
Talking of Michael and Angelo

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I care?” and “Do I care?”
The outlook is full and free time is rare
RSI dictates ergonomic chair
(They will say: “He has no can do.”)
But can do has lost its command of you
You who did for a year or two
Before The Street saw you through
Do I dare
Disturb the universe
For a minute there was a time
Impulsive words with no reverse.

Bulleted campaigns, I’ve known them all, known them all
Presented them evenings, mornings, afternoons
A life of measured milestones and plastic coffee spoons
I know projects dying with a dying fall
Executive edicts from a farther room
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase
And when I am formulated, org’d on a chart
When I’m a dotted line projected on a wall
Then how should I depart
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways
And how should I presume?

The afternoon into evening deadline is near
She works with smooth, ring-less fingers
Thoughts of dalliance malingers
Stock room rendezvous incites lust and fear
Should I, later, expose my vices
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, fantasized and prayed
Though she may lay taut across a conference table
I am no prophet, it is more than I am able.
I have seen my mortgage, marriage and career flicker
I have seen the corporate footman hold my check and snicker
and, in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it after all?
Thirty year career and this is it
Knee deep in memorandum corporate bullshit
Would it have been worthwhile
To have bitten the feeding hand with a smile?
To have squeezed that universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”
There’s more out there, you’ve been misled
You should say, this is not life at all
That is not it, at all

Grow old and grow bold
Wear the bottom of your trousers rolled
Place your integrity out of reach
Wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach
Go find the mermaids singing each to each.

With great respect this mash-up was brought to you by T.S. Eliot and his poem ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock‘.

More weeks went by. He made no progress whatsoever on his proposal. Didn’t even think about it.

When time came to return to the elders, he hurriedly threw something together thinking it would suffice.

He made his way out of the forest, past the fountain in the village square and to the elders who were waiting for him.

When he was finished, the elders basically kicked him out for insulting them with such a half-assed proposition and for wasting their time.

On his way back into the forest, he stopped at the village in the square.

He put up a sign warning that at such and such a time on such and such a day a great dragon would emerge from the fountain and destroy the entire village.

He retreated into the forest and there he stayed for weeks and weeks.

Meanwhile, word spread around all over the land about the dragon who, by then, most everyone was expecting to emerge from the fountain at such and such a time on such and such a day and destroy the entire village.

The student began to regret what he had done.

He procrastinated until the very last day - the day the dragon was due to emerge from the fountain.

He made his way out of the forest but as he approached the village, he found it difficult to get to the square as there were so many people surrounding the village with more and more arriving in a steady stream.

Instantly a fever came over him. Gripped by it, sweating, breathing heavily, he ran madly towards the fountain.

He fought his way through the crowd, up to the foot of the fountain where he stood up and, shouting for attention over the din of the crowd, admitted his guilt and begged for forgiveness.

At that very moment, in a moment of silence as the crowd hushed and gave him their complete attention, a great and powerful dragon emerged from the fountain and destroyed the entire village.

bleating sounds of action skidding mud on routine’s spotless floors

scuffed shoes

dally is not fast or slow

holes in knees

dallying is present tense not past or future

wind under kites dally them upwards

punctuation, capitalization, these do not dally. they are their own requirements responsible for creating also their own economies

those economies are deemed irresponsible, incorrect and incompetent even, if not strictly followed

room for wiggle is minimal the closer into the traditional it mingles

mention of the word alludes to meandering and useless work

staring up towards flight of birds as they fly through is tolerated though briefly only as transit authority for instance most likely will not wait long for me to come around should i slip off the back of my mind into the arc see it hear it wings displace space

solace is the dally, arguably a true freedom - going inside to get out is beautiful and meaningful and unexplainable

meditation is a dally

interesting to think about family and friends who do and don’t

meditate OR dally

smoking is dallying

back to the in between moment, cleaning of one’s glasses

is it instinct to interrupt another’s dallying?

dally is a ritual. one makes lasting bonds

who dallies? who does not dally? how would we pose questions without question marks ?- these thoughts are dallies

dallying can lead to nothing but being late and also other side effects

pretense of dallying is subject to wardrobe

wardrobe works either against or in favor of the dally-er

lazy and vacant dallying that further contributes to pre-existing delinquencies gives all active and sentient dallying a bad name.

many root causes have led to loss of curiosity and this is definitely one of them - the scandalization of dallying

young, fresh minds at play

leads to path of discovery

bridge over to intuition

bridge away from judgement

path to unassuming and growing perspective

dally is some thought code starting wobbly balls rolling every direction

dally’s wobble is not to catch but only for the chase - not cornered or stalled

if dally were a game it would have no score and no set start or ending point. it is out of time

dallying at the speed of light, when the only force acting on it comes from a gravitational field, combined with Newton’s second law and the gravitational law of special relativity yields the same acceleration as it would at rest

dallying transcends rigid formulas

resets sensibility

an exercise not a fact, dallying

dally is a friendly word. like thirsty

if no one dallied, the capability will eventually be worked out in the context of evolution, like a useless tail or an unused muscle

consequences that may pose are large

whoever says what mind is the most productive mind is speaking from the one that best meets current basic requirements, perhaps, nothing more

Vincent Van Gogh was Dutch and a painter. This is not much of a surprise, the Dutch are good at supplying the bright world with gloomy painters. His early works were very much in the vain of the heavy-set and serious low-landers that must have dominate his opinion of art in the mid-nineteenth century. But later, after a dally with the French, he took those same themes and applied liberal dashes of multi-colored expressionism to produce the instantly recognizable and completely uninspiring poster prints that adorn the world’s waiting rooms. It is one of life’s paradoxes that whilst waiting to have a tooth extracted or nervously deliberating the outcome of a biopsy, we should be forced the stare at the artwork of a man who cut off his own ear and soon after shot himself – to death!

What is amazing about Van G. is his output. He was only painting for about 14 years and managed to produce some 900 paintings, a few thousand drawings and enough correspondence over a limited number of friends to probably bore them all senseless. He was the 19th century equivalent of a micro-blogger:

10:35 – Feeling depressed
10:37 – Cut off ear
10:39 – Ouch

During his short tenure as an artist that nobody would buy, he dallied with many styles and a few women. More successful in the former than the latter but it’s the dallying that is his weakness. They say “it takes one to know one” and although my credentials as an art critic are somewhat dubious, my bona-fides as a dallier (read: hack) of styles are rock solid. I never felt that he settled into a style long enough to really master it, he was influenced by (read: stole) styles and compositions from other painters. His paintings are iconic and instantly recognizable and, quite frankly, not as good as their multi-million dollar price tag would suggest. This, unfortunately becomes painfully obvious on one particular wall of the gallery where V.G.’s work hangs next to those of his friends and contemporaries. In comparison, poor Vincent pales; the works of Gauguin, for example, showing more depth in style, technique and intent. And therein lies the real thrust of this article: is great really great or is great just the familiar and famous?

The V.G. museum, even 90 minutes before closing on a Sunday afternoon, was packed with tourists. People from all over the world had come to see these great works in their natural habitat. There was a palpable sense of a combined expectation of seeing the genuine article, million of dollars of oil paint and canvas, for real. A true wonder of the world. Respectful barging to get closer to Sunflowers, baited breath and then it was over. Shuffle on to the next but not so famous work.

The popular saturation of any piece of art is surely it’s demise. Sunflowers, for example, looks no better in the canvas than it does on the print being sold by the hawkers outside the museum. At least, that’s the perception. Of course, the original is better but our collective conscience of what that particular painting actually looks like is based on the exposure we’ve had of it in waiting rooms and office lobbies across the world. The reproduction is the painting. So, when we gaze upon the original, our brain makes a cerebral connection to the stored image we’ve been gazing at our whole life and throws that up on the ocular screen instead. This same effect happens in other areas of our life. For example, going to see your favorite rock band in a large venue cannot reproduce the intimacy of the sonic experience that a small club or the record can. This disappointment and manic justification of the ticket price leads us to just replay the famous and favorite songs in our head whilst we watch the performers mime to our inner recording. This is why listening to a band’s new material in a large venue is painful and boring – we have no reference point of the familiar.

In the case of V.G., I, and I suspect a number of my fellow tourists, left the museum and instantly forgot what we saw. The original work just wasn’t good enough, or better than, the image that is nicely filed away in my cranial indexing system. And, just because it is in my cranial indexing system doesn’t mean it’s good either. I also have re-runs of That 70’s Show and the collected works of the progressive rock band Marilion filed away there too. Neither make me proud.

Testing, testing.  One, two, three.

I am speaking into my brand-new mini digital voice recorder.  It’s a nano-technology wonder and comes highly recommended by Dr. Evans R. McCovery himself.  I know this because I read about it over the shoulder of an attractive fellow commuter on the number seven train last week.  She’s a cute red-headed girl who wears circa-1997 Lisa Loeb glasses, just-below-the-knees business skirts, mini “earbud” speakers, and a small butterfly tattoo.

(Note to self: I must think of a way to open a conversation with her.  Perhaps I’ll mention that I dabble a bit in lepidopterology—­as did Nabokov, I’ll casually throw in—and tell her that the butterfly on her ankle is a remarkably accurate representation of a small beautiful Asian species called the “Plum Judy.”  I’ll let her know that I would love to have the opportunity to identify any other butterfly tattoos she may have.)

Let me see now.  I’ve gone a bit off the rails already here.  The book that Katya—I believe that’s her name—was reading is One Step Ahead of the Competition: Eight Highly Effective Habits of Incredibly Driven and Upwardly-Focused Young Professionals.  I caught a little bit of the chapter entitled “Don’t Dilly-Dally: Making Every Moment Count.”  In it, Dr. McCovery recommends using this voice-recording device at the end of each day to create a kind of log of time wasted and time well-spent: a narrative of our thoughts and actions that will reveal where we are letting precious time slip away from us.  I think I could use some help in this area, and that I do tend to let my mind wander on occasion.  So I’ve resolved to give this a try.  It is very important, McCovery says, to create space for reflection at the end of our busy days where we can be especially attentive to the time and energy-thieving lack of focus that so often consumes us.  To rein-in our wasteful thought processes it is first necessary to identify them.  As he says, “An unfocused intellectual curiosity is no virtue, and a single-minded drive to achieve The Good Life is no vice.”

So, it’s 11:50 PM on February 12th, 2008.  Day one of the new, incredibly focused me.

(Speaking the date into this thing, I can’t help but imagine myself as Captain Kirk: “Captain’s log, stardate 5630.7.  The day started like any other.  The sounds of Scotty and Chekov vomiting all over the officer’s lavatory after a night spent drinking and quarreling; Spock berating a junior member of the crew for mispronouncing his last name; a bosomy officer or two slipping out of my quarters by way of the secret transporter I keep hidden behind a Runarian wibijibbi plant …”)

Okay, whoa there again!  Back to focus now.  Day one: I’ve just brushed my teeth, removed my socks, crawled beneath the warm covers on my bed.  Ahh, the sleep of the just!  Well, not just yet, of course, I’m set to recount my day into this nifty little electronic “life coach.”  As McCovery recommends, I’m imagining myself reciting the events of my day to an audience, and explaining them in a fair amount of detail.  I’m excited about this.

Lessee, I was up just before six o’clock.  Peed like a racehorse.  I remember picking up a “daddy long-legs” spider that I found crouching in the bathtub, throwing it in the toilet, and then hosing it down pretty good.  Chased it all around the bowl with a strong stream and knocked off a leg or two before drowning the pitiful arachnid in the depths of the frothy yellow sea.  Avaunt ye, bilge rat—to John Crapper’s locker, I say!  Anyway … enough of the scatological here.  I’m not sure that even McCovery would recommend that I recount each and every movement of my bowel or bladder.  From here on out, I’ll silently pass over my personal physical functions.

There now, where was I?  Ah, yes.  Breakfast.  Very important meal, they say.  I wonder what McCovery eats?  Probably three egg whites and a cup of wheat germ.   Me?  I poured a bowl of some generic “40% Bran Flakes” cereal (and 60% what, one wonders?) and some skim milk.  I added raisins.  A store brand again: “SuperCheap Brand Plump Raisins.”  Plump, my ass!  Scrawny little dried up bat turds is how I’d describe them.  (Note to self: spring for Sunkist or Dole next time.)  Loaded my Mister Coffee with the last of a 39-ounce can of Folger’s finest and ten cups of brownish tap water.  Pressed the “brew” button.  Sat down to my now soggy bowl of cereal.  (Note to self: Start coffee THEN pour cereal tomorrow.)  Ate.

After breakfast, I checked my email.  Deleted fifteen or sixteen spam messages that made various interesting but somewhat hard-to-believe promises on their subject lines.  Composed and fired off a short “no thank you” message to the South American entrepreneur who offered to share with me the secret of “untellable weath and self’s esteem.”  The only personal email I received was a warning passed along by my aunt.  According to it, I should avoid patronizing “Mr. Gleamy” self-service car washes because, it seems, the chain is owned by a cartel of Islamic terrorists who are using its profits to train operatives at culinary schools in the American Southwest.  It is feared that these operatives are learning to incorporate subtle poisons into popular pork-based foods—hotdogs, for one—that will, over time, lower American IQs and promote homosexuality among our clergy.  Valuable information to be sure, but I don’t own a car.

No business-related email.  I did check a couple of my various MySpace and Facebook accounts (several of which, by the way, are work-related.)  No pressing business to attend to there, but I did sneak in a couple of games of Scrabble while logged in.  Maybe it was three games.  Yes, three or maybe four.  At any rate, I missed my regular 7:15 morning train again (gee thanks, Scrabulous!) and had to catch the 9:40 instead.

A fairly uneventful ride in on the train.  One advantage of missing the 7:15 is that I’m not distracted by Katya-the-cute.  On several occasions, I’ve succumbed to the temptation to stay on the train two stops past my own, follow her off of it, and walk behind her for two blocks on the way back to my building.  This adds several minutes to my train ride and twelve blocks to my walk.  So the net result of getting started an hour-and-twenty-five minutes late is that I arrive probably less than an hour later at my office than I would have after following Katya.  Now I’m getting somewhere here!  This is what McCovery is on about!  I’ll have to jot that down tomorrow.  On the face of it, four or five games of Scrabble seems to cost me almost 90 minutes of productive time, but upon closer inspection it turns out to be less than an hour (maybe only 45 minutes!).  I’m practically adding 45 minutes to my day.  Nice!

Back to the train then.  Anything useful there?  Well, I had my satchel with me.  I don’t carry a briefcase, just an oversized man-purse with enough room for a few loose papers, some pens, the Arts section from the New York Times, sometimes a novel or a book of poetry, maybe some word lists (it helps to have studied these when matched up in Scrabulous with some snot-nosed brat from Yale who’s probably using an anagrammer to cheat; some computer-aided savant who can’t seem to spell anything other than lol, gluck, wtf? and L8tr in the chat room, but when playing the game, can somehow transform a rack full of vowels into OOGONIA for sixty-six points).  Anyway, I was listing the contents of my satchel with a purpose in mind.  (Think McCovery, man!)  Yes, I did have some papers from the office in there and I fully intended to take a look at these during my commute.  With no Katya onboard as a distraction, I figured I’d take a bite out of my late start.  That was my intention, and I had actually pulled the most important of the papers out of my bag and started to dip into it when I noticed someone had left the Times crossword puzzle lying near my seat.  A Tuesday puzzle is just about right for my commute, so I figured I’d run through it quickly just to relax for a moment before really getting down to business.

(This is another brief detour, I know, but I can’t help but quickly recall one frustration with today’s puzzle.  Once again Woody Guthrie’s lame-ass son Arlo is the answer to five across: “Singer Guthrie.”  If I had a nickel for every time I’ve written A-R-L-O as an answer to this clue, I’d buy his sorry “best of” collection, drive up to Massachusetts, and flush it down the toilet of Alice’s Restaurant.  I must say, I am a bit of a Woody Guthrie fanatic.  I’ve got more than two hundred of his 45s, LPs, 8-track tapes, cassettes, and CDs, and I’ve meticulously ripped MP3s of every single recording.  I store duplicate copies of these in a safe deposit box at my bank.  From now on, whenever I see this clue, I’m gonna write W-O-O-D-Y in the four squares—I’ll squeeze it in—and if that then makes the answer to five down “Thin Man dog” W-S-T-A instead of A-S-T-A, well then so be it!)

Whew.  I’ve gotta take a break.

[click]

Wow.  I’ve just listened to my narrative up to this point.  I’m going to have to move along with this.  One A.M. approaches, and I haven’t managed yet to make my way to the office.  I’ll have to tighten this up.  Stay focused and not allow myself to go off on tangents.  Think McCovery, man!

So, I left off as I was leaving the train.  Tossing the completed crossword puzzle into a trash can, I strode purposefully toward my office.  I work in an older mid-town building that might have been called a skyscraper sixty years ago.  Now, it’s a squat and ugly sixteen-story blight that doesn’t scrape the sky so much as it carves out a fetid pocket of air in the shadow of its looming neighbors.  But it’s a building with a history.  In fact, I’ve toyed with the idea of writing its history, or maybe a guide to its lavatories (I’ve visited more than fifty of them, including a dozen labeled “Ladies”).  But of course, none of this is to the point of this exercise (McCovery!).

I’m an all-purpose talent agent.  Literary agent mostly, but I handle musicians, comedians, a couple of jugglers, a woman and her piano-playing cat, and a cross-dressing “performance artist” who specializes in serving divorce papers while dressed as Judy Garland.  He composes and recites haikus written specifically for each situation.  He’s the only one of my clients to get steady work.

So this morning, I arrived in my office at just past eleven o’clock.

Okay, I’m going to have to back up here just a bit.  I know that I’ve resolved to move along more quickly here—my brief asides and notes-to-self are threatening the usefulness of this exercise—but an honest recounting of time spent is required here.  I must acknowledge that after emerging from the subway, I didn’t take the most direct route to my office.  You see, for some time now I’ve been using my cell phone to photograph pigeons.  I’ll admit to an intense fascination with butterflies (I’ve mentioned my lepidopterology), but I’m no birdwatcher (I just can’t find the time).  Pigeons, though, have caught my fancy.  Most people see them as nothing more than drab gray flying rats.  Head-bobbing, dive-bombing vermin with a penchant for painting statues and soiling expensive suits.  But this couldn’t be further from the truth.  These resourceful birds are quite fascinating and, in the right light, quite subtly colorful.

[click]

Alright.  I was tempted just then to start over by erasing everything I’ve recorded on this thing.  But I’m too far along for that.  At least I was able to stop myself from going on-and-on about pigeons and the cell phone photos I take and post online.  It should suffice here to report that I spent the best part of a half-hour going out of my way to get a few quick snapshots of pigeons.  No harm in that, but considering that I was running quite late already, it probably wasn’t the best use of my time.  I did get an interesting shot of a mostly white pigeon with just a thin necklace of chocolate brown.  Nice—but enough said about that.

Just after eleven, then, I arrived at the offices of the talent agency where I ply my trade.  Ready to throw my shoulder to the wheel once again.  It’s a small firm, and each agent shares a secretary with two to five other agents depending upon the agent’s client load.  My secretary Shirleen is currently over-allocated.  I think she works with eight of us.  Not the busiest eight of the bunch, that’s for sure.  I share an office with Tom, who’s been with the firm for a long time.  Many of his clients have retired, and he doesn’t seem to have a lot to do these days.  In fact, when he’s not away for a funeral, he spends the best part of his days putting golf balls into a coffee cup and riding the elevator to and from the street where he can indulge his two-packs-a-day cigarette habit.  What a waste!

I asked Shirleen if I’d had any calls.  “Two,” she said, and handed me a single pink “While You Were Out” slip.  Cheap agency insists that we use both sides of these, and Shirleen spends several hours each week with a red ball-point pen and a straightedge writing Caller, Time called, Callback #, Message, and drawing horizontal lines on the back sides of them.  She writes messages in black ink on the front side, and blue on the back.  I’ve never understood why.  But this morning I had a message in black from one of my jugglers, “Mr. Jorum,” and a message in blue reading “Excited about new story: Nancy Drew and the Misunderstood Elephant Trainer — please call” along with the number of a phone near which Mr. Milldone would be.

Mr. Jorum could wait.  He, I knew, was calling to ask me what I had “cooking for him.”  He fancies himself an artist and has put me on notice that he’s unhappy with the birthday parties and Bar Mitzvahs that I’m booking for him.  He wants to do television (”it’s the future of juggling,” he says) and is incredulous that I haven’t managed to interest Conan O’Brien in the two live chickens and a burning candle act that he has “perfected” (but just last month a panicked hen, feathers ablaze, did very significant damage to his tenth floor apartment before plunging out of a window, where it fell—its pathetic flapping could hardly be called “flying”—onto the heavily pomaded and unfortunately flammable head of a replica watch salesman).

So I rang up Mr. Milldone, who I knew was skulking near a public phone in the lobby of some hotel, trying to avoid detection by the staff.  He wanted only to let me know that he’d emailed a new Nancy Drew short story to me.  He thought it would fit nicely with the best ten or eleven of the three dozen or so that he’s sent to me in the past few years, and didn’t I agree, and did I have any nibbles from publishers, and did I think that maybe he should have Nancy face some life-threatening disease, or perhaps just hip-replacement surgery?  He also wanted me to toss out my copy of “Nancy and the Nabobs of Negativity” as he was re-writing the story.  Apparently he feels that Nancy’s age at the time of her affair with Spiro Agnew, if he accepts the chronology of the earliest novels, would “limit future possibilities.”  Therefore, he proposes to move its events to Michigan during the 1962 gubernatorial campaign of George Romney.

I did my best to assure Mr. Milldone that I’m doing everything I can with his material.  I tried, but failed, to raise the question again of whether or not he’d be wise to abandon the idea of investing all of his energy in his adult Nancy Drew character, what with the uncertainties surrounding the copyright issue.  He’s been adamant all along that only if his “hand was forced” might he change her name to “Nancy Drugh,” and that they’d be sorry they ever made him do it.  His sleuth, he is sure, would eventually overshadow the original, and he’d make her a disgusting slut just to “get back at the grasping lot of ‘em.”

Sometimes I consider dropping Mr. Milldone from my stable of writers.  He’s sold exactly one poem during the eight years of our partnership.  He was paid $25 for a sonnet.  The first letters of its fourteen lines spelled out “Nancy Drew I heart you.”  That’s an eighteen-letter phrase, I know, but as per his explicit instructions, the first word of the eleventh line was to have been a heart symbol instead of the word “heart.”  He was devastated when his wishes weren’t honored, and he blamed me.  I didn’t hear from him again for eight months until one day he dropped a dozen new Nancy Drew stories off at my office, and he’s continued to produce one or two a month ever since.  I don’t ask him to stop because, frankly, I enjoy reading the stories.  They are frequently and unintentionally hilarious.  I have a small talent for line drawing, I like to think, and have spent considerable hours preparing illustrations for his stories.  I’ve shown some of these to Mr. Milldone (though he believes I’ve commissioned them from a graphic artist I represent), and he’s quite impressed and believes that my Nancy has captured her “austere sensuousness” quite well.  Lately, I’ve taken to including a small, almost imperceptible butterfly tattoo on her left ankle.

[click]

Back again after a soul-searching hiatus.  I listened again to what I’ve recorded.  Wow, I think I really may have two different problems here.  For one, I realize now that I’ve just about described all that I was able to accomplish before lunch today.  Namely, I deferred returning the call of one client (the juggling artiste), and I took ten minutes to describe a five-minute call that I made to a writer who has earned me exactly five dollars over the course of an eight-year relationship.  And that’s it.

The second problem is that it’s now pushing 3:00 A.M.  During the ninety-minute “soul-searching hiatus” to which I just referred, I listened to what I’d recorded (basically, my day, from six A.M. to noon), then I took the elevator down to the basement of my building—where I’ve converted the small storage room allocated for my use into a rudimentary wine cellar—to pick out an inexpensive bottle of a relatively palatable Petite Syrah from California.  (I’m a bit of an oenophile; just a dilettante really.)  After properly and carefully aerating the wine, I poured a glass and put on one of my favorite Woody Guthrie bootlegs.  I settled comfortably into my favorite chair (an Oslo square ebony leather armchair that is a near-antique and in very good-to-excellent condition), and spent some time thinking about this McCovery system.  Is it for me?

[click]

I’ve poured another glass of wine, and called to leave a message for Shirleen.  I let her know that I won’t be in the office until after lunch, if then, and that she should let Miss Blandois know that I will be unable to meet with her to discuss the ideas that I have for her memoir “A Kazoo for Chloe.”

[click]

Here I am again after a necessary break.  No need to go into it, really, but let’s just say that there’s another spider doing a frantic backstroke as it careens its way through the city sewer system in the company of giant rats, expired prescription medicine, wads of counterfeit money, and whatever else has found itself swirling clockwise through a white porcelain portal in the past few minutes.

I did a little thinking, though, in that small room, and I believe that the answer is yes.  I can learn from Doctor McCovery’s expertise.  Sure, I’ve had some trouble tonight staying focused on what is important.  I’ll need to tighten up my narratives night by night.  Be concise.  Strive for brevity.  Eschew obfuscation (where have I heard that?).  I’ll get there.

I’ll lay out a plan for tomorrow here, so I can “hit the ground running” (so to speak) when I pick this up again in the morning.  My task tomorrow is to finish where I left off at noon on Stardate 5630.7, er, February 12.  Let’s see: Lunch at noon (a 12-inch Subway club sandwich on wheat bread, no cheese) … a short walk in the park (more photos of pigeons) … a short detour in hopes of running into Katya near the Thai restaurant where she often orders Pad Thai and a bottle of iced Lipton green tea (diet) …  no luck there so I checked the Duane Reade pharmacy in her building … no luck again but I was able to thumb through the latest issue of Architectural Digest (I’ve often thought that if I make a career change, I’d like to be an architect) … back to my office just before two o’clock … read Mr. Milldone’s latest Nancy Drew story—in it she has a dalliance with a circus elephant trainer and solves a mystery concerning a bearded lady with a prominent adam’s apple … sketched a couple of preliminary drawings that might be useful, including one of the bearded lady that made her look a lot like a dolled-up Governor Spitzer … politely thanked a couple of publishers for their consideration … did some research on Wikipedia … caught the 4:10 train … sat behind Katya for most of the way … got off at her stop and so had to walk two miles to my apartment building …

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Wow, that’s a good start.  Lots to cover tomorrow morning; I expect to learn a lot.  Time for me to get some rest so I’m up for it.  But first I think I’ll relax with a couple of games at Scrabulous.  I’ll limit myself to no more than two games, maybe three …

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Taiwan elected just its fourth president since martial law was lifted in the late 80’s by Chiang Lin-guo. Chiang Lin-guo’s father, Chiang Kai-sheck was a dictator of the Republic of China for much of the twentieth century and has left a very confusing legacy for China and Taiwan. The rest of the world kind of ignores the situation hoping it will go away.

The Republic of China was began in 1911 in China by Sun Yat-sen. He promoted democracy and an end to dynasties. His two protégés, Mao Ze-dong and Chiang Kai-sheck never agreed what the future of China should be like.

Chiang Kai-sheck, the self-titled the Generalissimo, was the president of China during World War II. The Japanese overran China. The infamous Nan Jing massacre took place at this time.

After World War II, Japan gave Taiwan and other lands back to The Republic of China, but a civil war broke out. Chiang Kai-sheck brought his party, the KMT and his government, The Republic of China, to Taiwan. He said that he ruled all of China, however, the mainland didn’t listen to him very well. He began martial law and was supported by the U.S. In fact, a major avenue in Taipei was named after Franklin D. Roosevelt because of the American contributions to Taiwan.

Mao Ze-dong’s People’s Republic of China began their communist rule on the mainland, naming Bei Jing as the capitol. Chairman Mao claimed that he ruled all of China, including Taiwan.

This was the beginning of the bizarre squabble that still exists to this day.

The current lame duck president of Taiwan, Chen Shui-bien, is the first non-KMT leader Taiwan has had since the Japanese left in 1945. His party, the DPP, is very forthright about Taiwanese independence. They do not claim to rule mainland, but they do claim that a nation, named Taiwan, exists and should be accepted as such by the rest of the world.

China has over a thousand missiles pointed at the Island of Taiwan that say otherwise. They say that Taiwan should not dally with this crazy idea of independence. Since Chen Shui-bien’s election and subsequent reelection, there has been much saber rattling and posturing on both sides of the Taiwan Straight.

In the meantime, China has pressured almost all other nations to stop recognizing Taiwan as a country. They have pressured the UN, WHO and WTO to not even consider allowing Taiwan entry. (The WTO did accept Taiwan, but only after they admitted China as well.) Taiwan’s economy has suffered drastically from this.

The winner of last weekend’s election was Ma Ying-jeou. Harvard educated, like G. W. Bush; A member of the KMT, like Chiang Kai-sheck; and pro-relations with mainland China.

A stunning majority of Taiwan is rejoicing with the election, believing that economic good times are just around the corner. No matter who was to win, the future is curiously cloudy between the two Chinas.

Sally grimaced, which only delayed the application of eyeliner even further. ‘Stop hassling me!’ she barked.

There was silence from the other room, pregnant with the promise of further hassle any second.

‘We’ll be late.’

There it was. He just could not help himself. Sally took a deep breath and let it out with a collection of words that she hoped would convey the inverse ratio of urgency to hassle that was quickly developing. There was more silence from the other room, slightly less pregnant. But it was only less pregnant in the sense that a woman without a test kit is less pregnant than a women with a test kit and a pee soaked hand. It was the inevitability of the silence that caused Sally to pause. Waiting.

After a good thirty seconds of pausing, Sally resumed her make-up ritual, cautiously satisfied that she would be left alone until she deigned herself ready to emerge, a butterfly from the pupa of the daily grind. Or at least a facsimile of beauty with an undercoat of resentment.

—

Gary’s eyes were reproachful, a stare of seething annoyance over the back of the couch, as she strolled casually into the living room ten minutes later. His eyes said many things but his brain was wise enough to prevent his mouth from articulating any of them. Sally smiled sweetly. ‘Shall we then?’ She made it sound as if she was the one waiting for him.

Taking a long inhale, the kind that acts as a temporary fire blanket to heated words that would only be regretted the moment they were free, Gary stood and turned off the TV, the end credits of a lame sitcom snapping sharply to black standby.

‘Why were you watching that rubbish?’ Sally asked. Inside she gently massaged the juvenile glee of her question with self-congratulation.

‘It was something to stare at while I waited for you to get ready. I never expected to see the whole show.’

Sally decided against rising to that particular bait. She had far better things to get her hooks into later. Let him settle into a gentle simmer. If she let him boil over now, all the fun she had planned would be spoiled. ‘Well, I’m sure it had no permanent effect on your IQ.’

Gary grunted. ‘Here’s hoping.’ He stood up and pulled on his jacket, heading for the front door.

‘I just need to pee,’ Sally said sweetly, turning with a theatrical sweep back towards the bathroom.

—

Gary drove in silence as Sally watched the streetlights tick by through the side window of the car. The road slid steadily along underneath them as Gary tried to ignore the icy tension floating off his wife. Or was it floating from him towards her? The net result was much the same.

He had searched the bathroom on several occasions, convinced that she must have a book or something stashed away in there. There was no possible way that a woman could spend that much time getting ready and emerge so similar to the way she had entered. Sure, she went in looking normal and emerged looking beautiful, but how could it take that long?

Perhaps she didn’t even need the distraction of a book. He was perfectly prepared to believe that she sat there doing nothing more than enjoy the irritation that she knew she was causing him. He could imagine her sitting there, periodically checking her watch to see if she had wasted enough time yet, smiling in childish joy.

How had it come to this? They had been so passionate only a few years before. Never mind. There was a convenience to things and they still had fun in their own way from time to time. Passion came in many forms and from many sources. With any luck she’d have a few drinks at tonight’s party and be rather less frosty on the way home.

There was the insistent electronic cry of a text message arriving from the pocket of Gary’s jacket on the back seat. Sally looked around, ‘Shall I get that for you?’

‘No, no,’ Gary answered, rather too quickly. He cursed himself in the dark recesses of his conscience. ‘It can wait,’ he added, as casually as possible.

Sally turned back and smiled softly at the streetlights marching by.

—

‘Darling, you look incredible!’ Sally smiled broadly at the verbal equivalent of a cream éclair with extra sugar, while Gary winced, looking around the room. Sally began returning the effervescent greeting while she flapped one hand at him, vaguely indicating a table with wine on top and beer in iceboxes below.

Gary sighed and strolled casually over towards the promise of alcoholic pain relief. Maybe he could convince Sally to drive home. Of course, that would mean that he would be drunk and she would be icier than ever. And he was bound to do something wrong that would only increase the cold front for several days, with the promise of random flurries and further cold snaps. He started on his first beer while he thought it through a couple of times. He would take Sally a glass of wine in a minute. She could wait.

Then he remembered the text message arriving in the car. He slipped his phone from his pocket and casually opened the text. The naughty little boy in him revelled when he saw that it was from her. Then his blood turned cold. He read the message again:

can’t believe u invited me 2 ur party!! ur finally introducing me to ur friends!!! so excited!!!!! c u soon!!!!!!! xx

Every exclamation mark was like an icicle of guilt dropping through his soul. Gary felt as if there was a spinning vortex where his stomach used to be. He looked over to Sally. She looked back, one eyebrow raised, one side of her mouth hitched up in a curious half-smile.

The doorbell rang.

I said this while explaining to my Dutch coworkers how divisive the two-party political system is in America. I found myself taken aback having heard the proclamation come out of my mouth. I had never verbalized it before. I spoke it emphatically and with hostility.

Once a month I used to go out for dinner with a group of three girlfriends from work (during the time when women were meeting in groups of four due to the subconscious influence of Sex and the City). We had pretty great discussions. We talked about meaningful things and frivolous things. We made each other laugh and sometimes giggle. But over the course of one particular dinner, three of us jumped on the “what an atrocity the Iraq war is” issue. The fourth of us remained silent. When we had worn ourselves out from indignation and sorrow, she spoke up, “Actually, I support the war and I think George Bush is a good president.”

What happened next happens to many of us Democrats when faced with an outted Republican: we sort of became speechless. The three of us sitting at the table all made her confirm she wasn’t joking. We’d known this woman and her husband for years, but we’d never known their political stance. In Seattle where I lived at the time, everyone just assumes everyone else is a godless Democrat. After her confession (although I’m sure she wouldn’t call it that), it was pretty clear we had no other route but to get into a heavy political debate that would most likely end up in tears. The only civil option was to U-turn away from the topic entirely.

Not too long after this woman and her Fox News-watching husband (who was at one time my boss), made their Republican-ness known to us, they moved back to Ohio where for a reason just as inexplicable as being a republican, they felt more comfortable. It was probably a good thing too. Because I doubt that anything ever could have been very genuine among us for girls after that, and exchanging pleasant emails about the births of new babies and whatnot was very safe territory over which to converse.

I look back on that unforgettable night, and see it now as my father must have seen it. But there is a difference. My father would never for one second not have considered his stepmother a friend. And I could never have a friend that was a Republican, right?

So here’s the thing that sucks for me: that woman who was in our party of four; my Baptist cousins; my Grandma Carolyn; and a few other friends I know who definitely lean conservative (but all live on the West Coast and therefore keep it very hush-hush) are at the top of my list of the most kind, most generous, most grounded, and most lovable and loving people I know. Damn.

My friend and her husband who moved back to Ohio were always the ones that started the donation pool for the underprivileged families during the holidays. They were the type of people that no one could *not* like. They were sweet and funny. My friend’s husband could always make me laugh. And my friend had a darker side to her that gave her depth. They were wonderful, good people.

My cousins have never received me with anything other than an abundance of love and affection…the kind of unembarrassed love that overwhelms you..the love that one can only describe in my pinched little world as “proactive.” It is the kind of love that just sits there waiting for you…waiting to burst out for you like an undiscovered geyser that needs only to be touched to rocket into the air. My tree-hugging conservative friends tend to be that way because they believe in financial accountability; all of them being quite well off since birth and not wanting to part with their hard-earned or hard-inherited cash to float the unmotivated not-well-offs. All of these friends have at any given time helped me in a way I could hardly ever repay them for. And never was one cent ever pushed across a table.

So what has happened to our political climate where a debate between a Republican and a Democrat is so volatile that it could all too easily end or compromise a friendship? I don’t know any funny famous republicans. Who is the Republican equivalent of John Stewart or Al Franken? I don’t know anyone who is a republican that had democrats for parents, although I can cite many examples of the reverse.

I believe most republican norms, especially economic and societal are wrong and misguided and rooted in ideology which always gets us nowhere—especially in times of war and especially-especially in times of fabricated justifications for a manufactured war. But, when I look at myself and my fellow democrats, what must I criticize us for? Hypocrisy? Is it just too convenient to be middle or upper middle-class and be a democrat? When did it happen where educated Republicans and Democrats couldn’t have a respectful yet unmitigated debate without the risk of it deteriorating beyond something irreparable? I mean, really, where did that happen? Was it Nixon? Reagan? Bush? Dubya? All four of these guys were lousy presidents but at least two of them were smart, most likely three.

This is the first presidential election where I really grappled with the issues determining who would get my vote. I’ve never betrayed my party lines, but this is the first time I had to wait until the last minute to make up my mind who I would vote for in the primaries. And I have to say, if McCain gets elected, I won’t be sickened. He does seem to be an honest and honorable guy, maybe more so even than the suspiciously ambitious Obama (who in the end won my vote because despite the rhetoric, change is indeed exactly what we need) or the recycled spin-off that is Hillary Clinton. I want Barak Obama to be the next president of the United States. I get excited and invigorated by the idea of the American people being their own collective underdog and pulling off the upset. But I also think that McCain easing in to a victory would at the very least, allow for Republicans and Democrats to find enough common ground where we might actually be able to talk to each other again. The fact of the matter is, I *can* be friends with a Republican. I would just love to see America become the kind of place where that wouldn’t be such a hard thing to admit.