One Hundred and Fifty Eight

Lately I’ve been waking up during the night, often two or three times. 

I look at the clock, wondering why the alarm didn’t go off, because I feel as though I’ve slept all night.  But I always find I've slept only a couple of hours.

I feel as though I’ve slept all night because my dreams leave me exhausted.

I used to remember my dreams in detail.  And they were detailed.  They were elaborate spectacles and I watched them as a spectator, aware they were dreams.  I learned about myself from watching them.  Now I remember nothing of my dreams after I wake.  I wouldn’t know I’d been dreaming if I didn’t have the feeling that something momentous had been happening, and suddenly it stopped.  A great cacophony suddenly stopped, leaving nothing but the silence of my bedroom.

It was as though I'd been dreaming I was in a forest, and heard the sound of a distant battle.  It grew louder and louder as I walked towards it until, finally, I climbed a hill and saw the soldiers below me, fighting; and they, seeing me, stopped fighting and looked at me.  Did they think I was their general?

It was as though I'd been dreaming I was in an insane asylum, and heard its inmates wailing.  The sound grew louder and louder as I walked towards it until, finally, I opened a door and saw them; and they, seeing me, stopped wailing and looked at me.  Did they think I was their doctor?

It was as though I’d dreamed I was in hell.

I am in hell.  We all are.  I used to think I could help them.  But now I know I can help no one.  So I no longer remember my dreams.

One Hundred and Fifty Seven

Google commemorated Marlene Dietrich’s birthday today with a Google Doodle of her dressed in white tie and tails. Her ‘legacy’, claimed one of the accompanying comments, was her “willingness to challenge gender norms”. Another comment described her as bisexual, which is less obtuse than those who call her a lesbian, but still wrong. 

Dietrich wasn’t attracted to men or women. She was an actress, and therefore a narcissist. She created an androgynous persona to attract an audience composed of both men and women because she knew they both felt trapped in their conventional gender roles, and wanted to see them challenged. Like Narcissus, she was attracted to an image of herself that she created and saw reflected in the eyes of her audience, male and female.

She was an actress who enjoyed the company of men like John Wayne and Ernest Hemingway, who performed their sexual personæ as skillfully as she did hers. One comment in support of the view that she was lesbian quoted her as saying “Sex is much better with a woman, but then one can’t live with a woman”; but what she meant by it isn't as obvious to me as it is to others. Was she speaking as a woman, or as the androgynous persona she had created? Either would find sex with a woman better than sex with a man because ours is a patriarchal society in which women must learn to please men, but men aren’t expected to know what pleases women.

A woman might find sex with another woman better than sex with a man for the same reason that a man might find sex with another man better than sex with a woman. It’s forbidden, which makes it attractive. It’s forbidden because it’s attractive. 

Most men don’t really like women, and most women don’t really like men, because most people are conformists; and people who conform to conventional roles, and expect others to do the same, are boring. Most people are such conformists that the only nonconformity they can imagine is sexual; which is why they’re obsessed with sex.

One Hundred and Fifty Six

They say they believe they'll live forever.  That would be terrible if it were true; but they say all the wrongs we suffer in this life will be made right in the next, and all the wrongs we do to others in this life will be forgiven in the next.  I’m sure they want to believe it, but I don’t see how they can.

I think I can live with the truth.  At least I try.  But they don’t think they can.    

One Hundred and Fifty Five

I woke this morning with the words of Major Amberson echoing in my head.  They're actually the Major’s words as spoken by Orson Welles in his film of The Magnificent Ambersons, which so impressed me when I was a child that I read the novel on which it was based.

As he nears the end of his life, the Major becomes uncharacteristically philosophical.  He asks himself what happens to us when we die, and reasons that our souls return to wherever they came from.  The sun is the source of all life on earth, therefore our souls return to the sun.

I knew Tarkington’s novel won the Pulitzer Prize, but I found it inferior to the film.  The Major’s words sounded magnificent when spoken by Welles, but looked banal on the page.  This was perhaps the first time I became aware that a second-rate novel can inspire a great film.   

Now that I'm nearing the end of my own life, my thoughts seem to me as banal as the Major’s.

It’s obvious why the sun was our first god.  He rules the sky, and fertilizes mother earth with rain.  But before the gods there were goddesses.  And before them both, the void.

Egyptologists are puzzled by the fact that Nut was goddess of the sky and Geb, her brother/husband, god of the earth.  But Nut was goddess of the night sky.  The black void overhead was her body, and the stars that filled it were the souls of the dead.  Osiris climbed up a ladder to re-enter his mother’s body and become king of the dead.

The Book of Nut is the earliest known text on astrology and astronomy.  What we separate into religion and science is the study of the night from which we all woke and to which we all return.

One Hundred and Fifty Four

We had our Christmas party yesterday evening.

It wasn’t actually a party.  The last time I worked at the company, Don rented a suite at a local hotel every year and we’d have a real party.  Bob and his wife brought their instruments and played while we all danced and sang Christmas carols.  After I retired, the company lost so many employees that Don stopped holding annual Christmas parties.  Yesterday’s party was just dinner at a restaurant, and only for the employees, not their families.  Not even Don’s wife was there.

Sitting at the table, I became aware of how much the company’s group dynamic has changed because of Nick.

Most of the employees who are gone now had been around Bob’s age, and the new hires are all Nick’s age.  He and the women sat at my end of the table, giggling together, while I sat silent.

I asked myself if I was jealous, but decided that isn't the case.  It’s true I used to be the focus of the group, but only in a negative sense, as the eye is the focus of the hurricane.  Petty quarrels swirled around me, but I refused to be drawn into them.  I thought of myself as the only real adult in the room.  Nick has made himself the focus of the group by being the most childish adult in the room.

He babbles constantly about his favorite comic book heroes, video games, and the pranks he and his 'buddies' play on each other.  He doesn’t do this with the other men in the office.  His audience is the women, who laugh indulgently as they probably do at the antics of their children (The women are all married, with small children).

I might find Nick as amusing as the women do if I didn’t have to work with him.  But even Bob, who never says a critical word about anyone, told me Nick is ‘erratic’ and ‘disorganized’.

One Hundred and Fifty Three

Cogito, ergo sum and sum, ergo cogito.  If I must be a while longer, I must think a while longer.

Scientists now say the question is why there’s something rather than nothing.  It’s an unanswerable question because the distinction is a false one.

What they (we?) call nothing is not an empty void.  It only appears empty to us, just as light appears without color to us until we shine it through a prism.  An apt metaphor because light, with or without color, appears only to us.  Without eyes to see them and ears to hear them, what we call things are only waves moving on the surface of the void, which contains all things just as white light contains all colors.

We imagine the void is empty because it seems so different from us.  But we came from the void, and will return to it.  We are no more than episodes in its history.  For the void does have a history.  It exists in time, just as we do.  It exists because we do, and vice versa.

Once we make a distinction between something and nothing, it’s easy to make a distinction between living and nonliving things.  One error leads to another until finally we create civilisation.

Our earliest philosophers said we are spirits caged in matter.  Death frees us. It would be closer to the truth to say spirit (or life) is a disease of matter.  Once infected, matter begins to decay.

We are parasites, feeding on a world we pretend is lifeless matter in order to avoid judging and condemning ourselves for what we do to it.  We invented gods to forgive us what we do because we can't forgive ourselves.

There is indeed a god-shaped hole in our lives, and nothing can fill it.  Nothing has filled it.

God was a name for what we didn't understand.  The void is a name for what we refuse to understand.

 . 

Life like ours is probably rare, a mutation unique to this planet.  Here it proliferates like a cancer because misery loves company.

Life seems to me tragic, but the lives of other animals most of all because they don’t invent the illusion we call civilisation to avoid seeing what they do.  Other animals do terrible things, but not as terrible as the things we do because they don’t pretend they do them in the service of some greater good, as we do.    

One Hundred and Fifty Two

I wasn’t going to write again.  I was going to lie down, go to sleep and never wake up.  Then Don called and asked me to come back to work. 

Don thought he was doing me a favor, so it would have been rude of me to refuse.  But that’s not why I came back.

I tried to kill myself after she died, and was preparing to try again when Don called and offered me a job.  And then the next time I was preparing to kill myself, he called again.  I know it’s only a coincidence, but it’s uncanny.

The company is dying, so it’s a comfortable place for me to be.  Almost everyone I worked with eight years ago is gone now, and the few who remain know it has no future, so it’s quiet as a funeral.  The only sounds are when Bob or I tell each other a joke, and we both chuckle.     

One Hundred and Fifty One

Everyone wants to know the truth, and no one wants to know the truth. This is a paradox to those who imagine they must want one or the other, but not both. It’s always both.

Whatever we imagine the truth to be, it’s always different. Sometimes it’s better than what we imagine, and sometimes worse; but it’s never what we want because we don’t know ourselves well enough to know what we want.

What people want most, and fear most, is to know the truth. Knowing they're not what they imagine themselves to be, they decide it’s better not to know the truth.

One Hundred and Fifty

Everyone wants to live, and everyone wants to die.  This is a paradox to those who imagine they must want one or the other, but not both.  It’s always both.

Everyone wants a good death, one that completes a good life.  But most people live meaningless lives that aren’t completed, but merely ended, by equally meaningless deaths.    

Everyone wants to live not because their lives are good, but because they’re meaningless.  They know life is change, so they hope their lives will change for the better.  But as they grow old, they lose hope.

Some then kill themselves, but most don’t.  They choose not to kill themselves—which is not the same as choosing to live—because they no longer care whether they live or die.  

One Hundred and Forty Nine

I seldom remember my dreams now.  I know they’re not good only because I always wake feeling depressed.  This morning I remembered why.

Last night I dreamed I was back in school.  It was graduation day, and all the other students were celebrating. 

Everyone was dancing except me.  I made my way between the dancers, walking slowly towards the door of the principal’s office.  I had a question to ask her, but I was sure I already knew the answer,

She told me my degree was worthless.  I already knew that, so hearing it confirmed didn’t surprise me.  But it did fill me with pity for my fellow students, who were celebrating because they didn’t yet know what I had always known.

The immediate cause of this dream was a television documentary I watched last night about the privatization of the public schools. 

It featured a waitress who said she’d paid her way through a privatized school by waiting tables, only to learn on graduation day that the school wasn’t accredited, so her degree was worthless.  I remembered wondering how she could not have known this.  Didn’t she investigate the school before applying?       

Then I remembered thinking it didn't matter because all schools are worthless. 

I attended what was considered a good school (although the teachers complained to me that it wasn’t what it used to be; the destruction of the schools - of everything we used to call civilisation - has been going on for a long time), but no school prepares us for life; not the life I should have lived, the life we all should live. 

Teachers prepare us to live in this society by telling us to forget what every child knows, and believe - or rather suspend our disbelief - in our society's myths. They do this not out of malice or jealousy, because they want us to fail as they did, but because they know living in this society without the illusion of hope is unbearable.

One Hundred and Forty Eight

Winter is coming. There was ice on the windshield this morning. Soon snow will fall, and someone will claim that proves global warming is a hoax. It’s how we deal with emergencies.

When an emergency strikes, people usually help its victims restore things to what they consider normal. But when emergencies become the norm, people look after themselves and try not to see anyone else.

They tell themselves the emergency is only temporary, not the norm, just as they tell themselves war is only temporary and peace is the norm.

Emergency is the norm for most people most of the time, but we refuse to see it, and tell ourselves that winter snow proves global warming is a hoax.

One Hundred and Forty Seven

Philosophers have always sought to understand the world.   The point, said Marx, is to change it.  But each time we try to change it, the results aren’t what we expected.  That’s probably one of the reasons why we imagined the world is a being like us, alive as we are, with a mind and a will of its own.  But it’s obviously more powerful than we are, so instead of opposing it we tried to tame it as we tame wild animals and make them serve us, as our masters tame us and make us serve them.  We flatter this being, and pretend we love it, and eventually persuade ourselves not only that it’s true, but it loves us in return.

To change the world, we must know the world; and to know the world is to know it's not a being like us, alive as we are; and we don't know it well enough to know what the results will be if we try to change it, any more than we know ourselves well enough to know what we want it to be.

It’s changing all the time, of course; but in accordance with its own laws, not ours. 

It’s alive, of course, but not as we are. It’s a body of which we are the cells. Tat tvam asi. But what does a body know of its cells, and what do cells know of their body?

We are more than we seem, part of something greater than ourselves; but I can no longer take comfort in knowing that because I know we’re destroying the world, and therefore ourselves.       

One Hundred and Forty Six

Now I have a job again, and money coming in.  Not enough to live comfortably, but enough to hope that I may save some money if no emergency arises.  But it's a false hope, as hope always is.  Emergencies always arise.

Don thought he was doing me a favor when he asked me to come back to work, so it would have been rude of me to refuse.  But I knew it was a mistake.  I was more dead than alive, and rousing myself from the grave has been exhausting.

Don still says I can save the company, but no one can do that.  I realized that eight years ago.  I realized long ago that people want to be saved, but only on their own terms.  Don wouldn’t listen to my business plan eight years ago.  He now admits I was right, but it’s too late.  There’s nothing I can do now. 

Each day I sit at my desk and think about standing up and walking out.  I‘m not the captain of this sinking ship.        

One Hundted an Forty Five

Mike was in a coma for weeks, and wasn’t expected to live; but now he’s regained consciousness. His father asked me to come back and work part time until he recovers.

I've no intention of coming back full time, even though I need money desperately. I can no longer find satisfaction in doing well work that shouldn't be done.

Most of the people I worked with eight years ago have left the company. The ones who remember me tell the new hires I’m a genius who’ll save the company, but I can see why they’re skeptical. They began using Goldmine after I retired, and I was having difficulty understanding it. I was sure this proved I was becoming senile; but after reading the instruction manual online I realized I’m having difficulty understanding it because they don’t understand it themselves, and explained it to me badly.

People have always tried to explain to me what they don’t understand themselves.

One Hundred and Forty Four

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.  It’s irrational to have faith in something when all the evidence we have suggests it's not true; but we’re limited beings, so we can never have enough evidence to know with certainty that anything is true.  At some point we must decide we know enough to act, and hope that what we don’t know doesn’t contradict what we do know.

People used to have faith in religion because it was rational. It gave order and meaning to their lives, and all the evidence they had supported it.  When scientists found evidence that seemed to contradict religion, priests redefined irrational faith as a virtue superior to reason.  Some accepted this, but the more rational made science their new religion.  

Their faith in science was just as irrational as their faith in religion because they didn’t understand it any more than they understood religion.  They merely trusted that scientists knew the truth as naïvely as they once trusted priests.  But instead of making our lives better, scientists brought us to the brink of destruction.  So these people lost faith in scientists just as they did in priests; but they still had faith in the truths they claimed to know, so they read the sacred books of science just as they had those of religion, and made their own interpretations.   

This would have been laudable if they had understood that they’re different methods of searching for truth; but they assumed that if one was true, the other must be false.

Everything that can be said is true in some sense, otherwise it couldn't be said; and everything that can be said is false in some sense because we can never know enough to say with certainty what's true.  We can only say what seems true to us at this moment. 

One Hundred and Forty Three

I’m reading Clive Ponting’s A Green History of the World. He’s no prose stylist, but he’s mastered the material and presents it well. 

It’s been accepted for some time that the Neolithic Revolution was the major event in our social history, but most historians no longer automatically describe it as a fortubate event. More and more agree with Jared Diamond that it was our major mistake. Ponting doesn’t say that explicitly, but he does compare the lives of hunter/gatherers with those of agriculturalists, and it’s clear hunter/gatherers were better off. Finally historians are beginning to accept what I knew when I was twelve, from reading Engels’ Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

Ponting also incorporates the work of James Scott, who said in Against the Grain that the major event in our history took place earlier, when hunter/gatherers mastered fire and used it to clear the forests and drive herds of animals.

All animals modify their environment, but not to the extent we do. The changes we make are so great that we can’t undo them even when we want to. We burned down the forests and depleted the soil of nutrients with monocrop agriculture (and still do); we hunted many animals to extinction (and still do). Only now, when it’s too late, do we realize these were mistakes, just as our ancestors realized too late that horticulture is less destructive than agriculture, and made the garden the image of a lost paradise in their myths.

I knew all this before reading Ponting’s book, but it helped me answer the question I always ask about our ancestors: why did they believe, or pretend to believe, in gods?

It seems to me that, though we call ourselves homo sapiens, our species is profoundly ignorant. We don’t know our own limits, therefore we don’t know ourselves. We do everything to a destructive extreme because we imagine everything we do is good, and because our powers are unlimited. When the world doesn’t react as we expect, we imagine it’s because within it there’s a being like us, only more powerful: an angry spirit that will punish us for injuring this world which is its body. All gods were originally angry, but we tamed them as slaves tame their masters, by flattering them; and eventually we learned to love them, as all slaves love their masters.  

Most people now define religion as faith in some god. They lost their faith in gods, and made science their religion, because they imagined science would give them back the unlimited, godlike power they once imagined they had. When science didn’t make them godlike, people put their faith in the nation. We’re all fascists now. I define religion as the awareness that we have limits, are parts of something greater than ourselves - but not an immortal master who rewards obedient slaves by making them immortal.                   

One hundred and Forty Two

Last night I dreamed one of my co-workers invited me to attend the wedding of his sister.

The wedding was held in his house, which was splendid. Every guest was young and beautiful, and beautifully dressed. I was still young myself in this dream, and wearing my best suit. Several of the bridesmaids flirted with me at the reception, as young women did when I was young. One of them was my friend’s other sister, and he joked that our wedding would be next.

I left the reception and wandered through the rest of the house. All the other rooms were just as splendid, as though they, too, had been prepared to receive guests.

I wandered from room to room, and eventually found myself in rooms that were obviously not part of a private house – auditoriums, conference rooms and lecture halls - all of them empty but just as splendid and waiting to receive people. But not me. This was a gated community whose residents all knew each other, married each other, and lived in houses connected to each other through passageways unknown to outsiders.

I realized I was trespassing, and should leave. The land outside was barren and desolate, but I opened the gate and stepped outside.

I saw a cat lying at my feet. It was whimpering in pain. Then I saw a bird of prey on its back, its gray feathers almost hidden in the cat’s thick gray fur. The bird’s claws were sunk into the cat’s body, and it was pecking at the cat like Prometheus' eagle.

I crouched down and carefully pried the raptor’s claws, one by one, from the cat's body. The bird flew away, and the cat crawled away to lick its wounds.

As I watched them leave, someone struck me from behind and knocked me out. When I woke, a man was standing over me.

He was a mulatto, lightskinned enough to be mistaken for a latino by someone not familiar with mulattoes, but his racial ancestry was obvious from his dreadlocks, which looked like Medusa's snakes. He, too, was wearing what was obviously his best suit. His fingernails were long and filed to points, like claws.

He demanded my wallet, and I gave it to him. He got angry when he found it was empty, and told me to take off my clothes. They at least were worth something.

I begged him not to leave me naked. He sank his long nails into me, as the bird had sunk its claws into the cat, and I passed out from the pain.

I woke up bloody and disheveled. I got up, staggered to the gate and banged on it. People came out of the house, but when they saw my condition they refused to let me in.

I watch my dreams as a spectator, even when I’m in them. The me in this dream was afraid the mulatto was going to kill me, but the me watching the dream found it funny.

One Hundred and Forty One

I'm as alone as Alexander Selkirk. 

Defoe is said to have invented Friday in order to show that the civilized Englishman invariably becomes master of any savage he meets, whatever the circumstances. That may have become the moral of Defoe’s story as he wrote it, but I think he began with Selkirk’s story, and invented Friday because he couldn’t imagine such loneliness.

“L'enfer, c'est les autres”, said Sartre. Not because he was a misanthrope, but because however well we come to know other people, they remain strangers. A stranger could become our friend, but we fear s/he’ll become our enemy because our society teaches us we're all competitors.

“There is no such thing as society”, said Baroness Thatcher. “There are only individuals”. Wise words from a fool. But we’re all fools.

Fools aren’t fools because they never say anything wise. They’re fools because they don’t know what they’re saying, but merely repeat what they hear.

“Never say more than you know”, said Wittgenstein. But if we didn’t say more than we know, most of us would never say anything. 

We all know more than we think we do, or admit we do. Education means forgetting what all children know, because it's too terrible to live with, and pretending to believe the comforting lies adults pretend to believe.

We all know life is terrible for most people most of the time, but we pretend the occasional moment of joy makes the years of pain worth living. Life may be worth living for some, but not for most of us. Perhaps not for any of us. Even the most fortunate must be troubled by the knowledge that their happiness is made possible by the misery of others. But even if they feel no pity for others, the fortunate must fear that their victims will take revenge on them.

What we used to call society, before the baroness corrected us, is therefore built on sadomasochism. The fortunate hurt the unfortunate to confirm that however terrible the things they do, their victims can’t or won’t take revenge on them. 

Slaves don’t rebel against their masters unless and until they delude themselves into believing they'd make better masters. But so few of us are able to master ourselves that only fools imagine they could master others.

We pretend to be masters or slaves because we've all done terrible things. We'd rather be masters, guiltless because above the law; but most of us are content to be slaves, guiltless because we merely carry out our masters’ orders.

We invented gods who could forgive us for committing crimes too terrible for us to forgive ourselves. Now we know too much to believe, or suspend our disbelief, in gods, but not enough to forgive ourselves; so we punish ourselves.       

One Hundred and Forty

After she died, I tried to kill myself, and failed; so I took all the books off the shelves and cleaned them, for something to do. But I can do nothing now. I never put them back on the shelves. They’re still sitting on the floor in piles.

Once in a while I look for a book; but usually I can’t find what I’m looking for, so I pick up the first book I find and read it. Last month it was Wallerstein’s. After I finished it, I picked up Stuart & Marie Hall’s A Brief History of Science. Brief it is, but well written, by literate writers for literate readers, in a style as obsolete as Chaucer’s Middle English.  

Nothing is more obsolete than a book about the progress of human knowledge. Every age of reason and enlightenment has been a renaissance, a rediscovery of ancient knowledge lost. We keep losing our way, so for us progress always means going back to the beginning. And we always lose more than we regain.

 

I finished the Hall’s book last night. This morning I woke, as I often do, with a phrase echoing in my head. It was We are dancing on the edge of a volcano. 

Popular historians invariably use this phrase when writing about the Weimar Republic, but it’s older than Weimar. Ravel wrote it on the score of La Valse before the Great War, and he was quoting Salvandy, who used it about the July monarchy. Historians started using it about the USA a few years ago, but no longer. The parallels between Trump’s USA and Hitler’s Germany are too close. They now insist Trump is a unique phenomenon without precedent.

Peter Campbell wrote with contempt about the people who danced on the edge of the volcano between the world wars, but we've always lived on the edge of the volcano. What else should we do but dance while we can?

There may be trouble ahead
But while there's music and moonlight and love and romance
Let's face the music and dance

Dancing in the dark

‘Til the tune ends

We're dancing in the dark

And it soon ends

We’re waltzing in the wonder of why we’re here

Time hurries by, we’re here

Then we’re gone

One Hundred and Thirty Nine

Why am I still alive?

Leonard said he knows why he’s still alive.

When Cindy killed herself, Leonard said he was the only one who knew why.

Her daughter was grown and married, so Cindy’s work was done. She had no reason to stay alive.

Leonard said he wants to meet his Maker, but stays alive because his daughter needs him. Jennifer cannot or will not take care of herself.  

I used to tell myself I stay alive because I love the human race, and want to do what I can to help it. But I can do nothing. The human race is destroying itself because it doesn't love itself as I do. Now I stay alive because I’m already dead in the only way that matters.    

One Hundred and Thirty Eight

Last month, when Leonard said he was selling his house and moving up north to live with Eric, he also told me not to come over anymore. He said his real estate agent would be bringing a lot of people to see his house, and he didn’t want me there when they arrived.

Perhaps he considers me an undesirable neighbor, or someone who people interested in buying his house might consider an undesirable neighbor.  

Leonard and I have little in common. We're friends, or what other people call friends, only because we’re both old and alone.

I’ve often wished Leonard would leave me alone; but he’s done me too many favors for me to end our relationship without good reason. I suspect he feels the same about me. But now he was moving away, so there was no need for either of us to keep pretending we’re friends.

That was a month ago. I haven’t seen Leonard since then. 

Neither have I seen any strangers enter or leave his house. But I hadn’t expected to. 

The real estate agent told Leonard his is a desirable property. But however much people may desire it, I doubt many of them can afford to buy it unless they’re willing to go into debt. And after the last financial crash, people are more reluctant to go into debt.

Yesterday morning I saw a man’s jacket hanging inside Leonard's screen door. Thinking he was bringing his clothes downstairs because he was moving out, I knocked on his door to say good-by.

To my surprise, he invited me in.

Leonard said the jacket wasn’t his. Eric left it behind yesterday, when he and Danny were visiting. Leonard hung the jacket inside the screen door so that when Eric returned for it, he could take it without having to come inside Leonard’s house.

Leonard said Eric and Danny are refurbishing their family’s old house, and since they were in the neighborhood they decided to visit Leonard. At first I thought they were refurbishing the old house because Eric and Leonard would be living there, but Leonard said Eric doesn’t want to live with him.

Eric lost his house, his job and his wife, so Leonard was sure he’d be happy to share expenses with him; especially as Leonard receives two pensions. But Eric doesn’t want to live with Leonard, not even with his two pensions.

To make matters worse, Eric and Danny are refurbishing the old house—adding a ramp for a wheelchair—because Leonard’s ex-wife, Eric’s mother, will be living there.

Leonard said he’s taken his house off the market and will live in it until he dies. I’d pity him if I were still capable of pity.

One Hundred and Thirty Seven

I went to bed early last night. I go to bed earlier and earlier every night, and stay in bed later and later every morning. Around ten o’clock last night I was awakened by a loud explosion.

At first I thought the transformer had blown again. It blows every summer, on a day when everyone’s air conditioner is turned on high. But the last few days haven’t been that hot. 

Then I heard another explosion, and another. I was still half asleep, and for a second I thought people had finally had enough. The revolution had begun. Then I realized that was absurd.

The age of revolutions is over. People no longer believe we can change things, except for the worse. But most of us never did believe it. Namque pauci libertatum pars magna iustos dominos volunt, said Sallust. No one believes our masters are just, but we all know they could be worse, and probably will be soon.

I realized then that what sounded like explosions were fireworks. I didn't know or care what they were for, but I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I read an article in the NYRB about the demonstrations against Putin.

There’s no organized opposition in Russia, no party with leaders and a program, which proves the demonstrations aren’t organized but genuine and spontaneous. That's their strength, and their weakness.

When questioned, demonstrators said they want an end to the corrupt status quo, but can’t define what they want to take its place. According to the pundits, this proves Russians don’t understand how democracy works. But Russians understand that what they’ve been told is democracy doesn’t work, just as what they were told was communism didn’t work. 

Russians are disgusted with politics itself, or what they're told is politics. Americans are equally disgusted with politics, but still allow their masters to define what politics is. This failure of imagination explains why revolutions, even when they succeed in ending the corrupt old order, fail to replace it with a new and better one.

The explosions continued, so I went online and learned that today is the one hundredth anniversary of the city's incorporation, and they're celebrating with fireworks.

There’s nothing to celebrate. The city has a well-deserved reputation for corrupt politics. It's sound and fury signifying nothing.

Again and again I resolve to pay no more attention to politics. But if not politics, then what? 

Politics is the art of living with others, one we've yet to master. We must have masters, just or unjust, if we can't or won't master ourselves.