Running for Your Life: Interstate Imagination

There’s open water and thousands of black birds on the ground, and from the distance, even in my specs, hard to tell, but thinking crows not Canada geese, on the Jersey Turnpike, so far from God, and from the tropical birdhouse in Central Park, and the Key West butterfly house, catch your breath as you enter, here the scrub trees and what must be two feet of snow, two weeks ago on the road to Washington, DC, nothing but roadside sludge, color of strained sewage, tractor-trailer drivers at my height on this Bolt Bus, giant flat-sceen TV windows, why Post columnist Linda Stasi rants against “Jersey Shore,” a knife in the back of her Italian-American heritage, and horrors!, some of the characters playing the reality-TV stars on their way to Italy aren’t even Italian-American, set aside the fact that viewers respond to the show precisely because they recognize the culture’s unwillingness to value education and travel and to experience non-American appetites as full and rich and meaningful, as opposed to being threatened and intimidated by those with different ideas on, say, breakfast food or what side of the road to drive on, or how learning to say merci beaucoup, or a bientot, or s’il vous plait, before flying to Paris for a holiday isn’t unAmerican but rather enriches the American life, perhaps if such behavior were to catch on even to the point that “Jersey Shore” does not reflect the values of our dumbed-down culture and thus wouldn’t play in quite the same way, we wouldn’t be able to feel superior to Snooki and The Sitch in the same way that we do with American Idol, and don’t tell me this show (JS) blazes the fifteen minutes of fame trail, that’s so Andy Warhol, now dumb and numb enough and you’re in ten years of fame easy; I mean “Idol” is 10 years old next year. So rant, yes Linda! http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/boob_arians_invade_Ku6992bF0q7oN7r0zrpRrN . Ranting is good, better than bottling up your disgust, your rage at what accounts for mainstream TV culture in the American Imperium, consider John Milton, his “inward vicious rule,” to wit, in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649), “If men within themselves would be governed by reason and not generally give up their understanding to a double tyranny of custom from without and blind affections within, they would discern better what it is to favor and uphold the tyrant of a nation. But being slaves within doors, no wonder that they strive so much to have the public state conformably governed to the inward vicious rule by which they govern themselves,” and thankfully, we’re just about there .¤.¤. off the Jersey Turnpike, bring it on Philly and Delware (with the “.” – see RFYL: A Congressional Run).

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Overheard on the DC-New York Bolt Bus: “Last time the bus took seven hours. Seven! It was terrible. Next time, I swear, I’m going to bring a book.”

At the office: “I hit a pothole on the way to work. I called the city right away.”

At the United States Botanic Garden, K pauses, looking at the light rust hue of an orchid petal and I say, yes, K, that shade is exactly the color for the fireplace wall in her new apartment. She smiles because she was thinking the same thing. We had not talked about the wall color for hours.

My good friend and dog whisperer, A, advises that I should bring a neem oil remedy for Thurb, to treat his ear which is prone to infections. Wikipedia says it’s used in organic farming, as it repels mealy bugs, beet armyworms, aphids, cabbage worms, thrips, whiteflies, mites, fungus gnats, beetles, moth larvae, mushroom flies, leafminers, caterpillars, locust, nematodes and the Japanese beetle. K and I had not heard of it until the botanic garden and see pictures of South Asian farmers harvesting fruits and seeds from the neem tree (an evergreen) for use in Ayurvedic medicine, good for acne, fever, leprosy, malaria, eye disease, and tuberculosis.

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“Your World Has Been Adjusted.” With fedora. Noir poster. “Your Fate Has Been Adjusted.” Fearful-looking girl with “Black Swan” eyes. March 2011. It’s guerrilla warfare. No, advertising. Who am I kidding? Same thing. I count my lucky stars, blessed by near-daily runs when afterward I make these notes in near-empty subway cars on my way to work. My time, not company time, shoulder-to-shoulder at 8 a.m., but midday and I can always find a seat.

Posters at my near-suddenly hip subway station, ten years ago nowhere but now a hipster-destination, blog-hot and in-the-know tourist, pitching to be the Next Thing, not the Great Thing, in 2011 when industry is measured in trading differentials among currencies, interest rate derivatives, never cap and trade in carbon credits – can’t piss off the Koch brothers http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2014150814_kochbrothers07.html –  the very idea of Great is lost, imagine the monument pedestal for Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, say, a weave of math models, equations for collaterized debt obligations, a high diver through a barrier when best to get out of the trade, against the pedestal for another New York City tycoon, Cornelius Vanderbilt, a tapestry of steamships, trains and the mail must go through; Great is a fantasy, consider the poor concussed hockey star Sidney Crosby, the so-called Next One, against the untouchable Gretzky, the Great One, and philosopher king Bruce Boudreau (http://dc.sbnation.com/washington-capitals/2010/12/16/1879632/bruce-boudreau-speech-cursed-rant-capitals-penguins-hbo-24-7), if you dare.

“Your Fate Has Been Adjusted.” Hah! And how. Maybe the movie will strike a nerve. Most likely, though, too much of one. Forget the playing field and that it should be level. That that is the business of government. Circus, of course, is the business of government. Everyone with their own clown. I don’t like his politics but today – not tomorrow because such is the speed of public affairs that these words vanish as soon as they’re put down, indeed, as Adam Gopnik writes in this week’s New Yorker, “What we live in is not the age of the extended mind but the age of the inverted self. The things that have usually lived in the darker recesses or mad corners of our mind – sexual obsessions and conspiracy theories, paranoid fixations and fetishes – are now out there: you click once and you can read about the Kennedy autopsy or the Nazi salute or hog-tied Swedish flight attendants” – it’s former Sen. Alan Simpson from Wyoming who told CNN’s “State of the Union” last Sunday, “I’m waiting for the politician to get up and say, there's only one way to do this, you dig into the big four, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and defense. Anybody giving you anything different than that, you want to walk out the door, stick your finger down your throat, and give them the green weenie.”

Next: Running for Your Life: Doppelgangers