A Drive to Sacramento

I drove to Sacramento to support Clean Money election reform. But that's not the story I want to tell right now.

Riding with me was a man who's been going blind with a hereditary condition since he was six. As a kid, he failed to register the fact that he was supposed to lead a limited life, and went running headlong on country trails with his friends, occasionally slamming into tree branches or later--to his surprise--an actual mature tree. As an adult, he played the game well enough to get a driver's license, and when night blindness crept up on him he would pull over and sleep in his car. He rode a bicycle all over America, and went snow camping solo so he could snow-shoe into the back country.

"There is nothing," he said, "like being in your tent during a blizzard. It's tremendously exciting." Gabe did whitewater kayaking until he slammed into enough objects that he knew it was time to quit. He backpacked all over the Sierra both alone and with his ladylove, and developed a sense of the trail that serves him even today.

Gabe learned early on (he was six when he knew he would eventually go blind) that the only way to avoid becoming helplessly dependent was to charge through life without fear. His headlong approach has resulted in many lacerations, a broken nose, a split scalp, and a somersault over a high sierra boulder and subsequent tumble down a mountainside.

He worked as an auto mechanic and electrician and was so good that supervisors looked the other way when he needed to get help distinguishing the colors of different wires.

Along the way he made bad marriages, got drunk a lot and then got sober for good.

Gabe no longer drives or kayaks. He still strides around his town, preferring to walk late at night whenkthe streets are deserted, so he can walk down the middle of the street.

Doesn't he get disoriented?

"There's a seam in the middle of most streets. Besides, most streets are slightly higher in the middle than on the sides." The sidewalks, he said, are full of obstacles: garbage cans, mailboxes, lampposts, cars. Inevitably, walking the sidewalk, you run into things.

He still runs into things a lot.

His days are filled with political activism--he's passionate about electoral reform--and caring for his grandson Cody.

"I didn't really want grandchildren," he said. And then fell in love with Cody.

Cody's mother is out of the picture and Cody's dad has to work. So Gabe took up the role of caring for him, educating him and turning him into "one of life's winners." Cody is five years old.

(Names have been changed to protect the guilty.)

Grumblings

Once again it's a damp, chilly evening after a day of rain. I'd be sitting by a cozy fire except that I'm down to a few sticks of kindling and one giant log. Maintaining the proper ratio of small-medium-large fuel must be a challenging task for those who rely on wood heat.

I ponder the future of this great nation. We seem to be approaching dictatorship without a care in the world. Bush has announced he will ignore the 4th amendment because he needs to "protect" us from terrorism. The American are incensed at the idea of giving up the civil liberties that make our nation unique--unless you couple "terrorism" with the need to give them up--then they're all for it.

They have watched a little of the Alito confirmation hearings--or they've seen clips of it on the evening news--and, gee whiz, he seems like a nice, reasonable guy and the Democrats sound so ill-tempered and carping. His law clerks all like him, and for most people--including even most Democrats in the Senate--that is really all that matters.

Who cares if he thinks the president is above the law? That in the three equal branches of government, Alito thinks the president is more than equal? That he thinks--in fact suggested to Bush--that the president has every right to "interpret" a bill to his liking as he signs it into law. Bush has already done so, announcing that he alone will decide what's torture and what's not.

My conservative friend, how would you feel if Hillary Clinton had such power?

What do you think of a person who, by his own admission, will say anything to get a job? Who, by his own admission, disagrees with the "one man, one vote" principle of the Constitution? Who always sides with the powerful against folks like you and me?

But that's okay, because, you see, Judge Alito is really polite. He politely refuses to discuss the issues that those nosy Democrats raise, showing he is superior to them. The people who saw the sound bites have been encouraged (by the Republicans) to shake their heads sadly at the impertinance of these Democrats; as a result, the Democrats have been shamed into deciding not to make a fuss about the Alito nomination.

Some months ago, the Democrats and Republicans made an agreement: the Republicans wouldn't vote to get rid of the filibuster (the "nuclear option") and, in exchange, the Democrats wouldn't filibuster, except in a real emergency, at which time the Republicans would invoke the nuclear option. This agreement, which allowed a corporate flunky to be seated on the district court, was hailed as a victory for the Democrats. Ever since then, the Democrats have been saving the filibuster for some distant future nomination that will surely be even more outrageous than the present one.

Hello? With Alito in office, there is no future for Democrats. You just made yourself redundant.

Heavy

I've been feeling heavy. Not in the avoirdupois sense--in fact, my appetite has all but deserted me. But the unbearable heaviness of being. More in touch with old sorrow and the agonizing limitations of my life. Emotional colors run to the darker, earthier tones, the shadow side of feeling. Yet I feel the raw tenderness of my life--how blessed I am to have Steve, to have children who care for me, to have family and community.

There are people who have none of that! They live in cramped spiritual homes with no one to reach out to, no one to care who they are and if they live or die. Maybe they live in no homes at all or are only tenuously attached to a rudimentary home. I think of Katherine. So full of hope, so close to disaster. How does she manage to thread the needle between fulfillment and loss? Here is a person who lives like the lilies of the field, subject to wind and frost.

I have the warmth and glow of a wood fire. Late tonight my dearest will return and drop into my dreams to keep me warm when the fire dies. In every way, I am blessed.

The coming invasion of Iran, a Canadian perspective

Speaking as a Canadian who is fond of judicious language...

In other celebrations, welcome to a day in honor of Martin Luther King, whose legacy today is a street named after him in every ghetto in America.

Sit down...

Sit down to meditate and the words come flooding forth, great profound paragraphs of startling metaphors and unique insight, touched with the kind of humor that reveals a deep truth, etc. etc.

Sit down to write and all the words go back in their hidey-holes and refuse to come out.

Sleep

I don't get sick very often. And when I do, it's usually a case of plowing through a few days of annoying sniffles, sneezes and coughs. I keep moving so as to prevent the mucus from pooling in my brain.

Tuesday was different.

For the first time I can remember, I cared only to sleep. Dear Steve was with me all day, plying me with tea, soup, offers to go get anything I could possibly imagine wanting. Of course, all I wanted to do was go back to sleep. I was miserably sick, but strangely contented.

You see, sleep and I are normally uneasy allies. I need sleep but would just as soon not take the time. I give up consciousness grudgingly, and my sleep is troubled by dreams about the things I've left undone during my chaotic waking hours. Vague guilt puts an end to my slumbers at daybreak. Taking any sort of nap messes up my whole day, and I wake up in a state of sheer horror that lasts about 20 seconds.

On Tuesday, all that changed. I slept all day. Oh, I'd get up, go to the bathroom, pick up an easy murder mystery to read for the five minutes before I fell back into blissful sleep. Having Steve there, urging me to just sleep, was so comforting. It gave me some insight into his relationship to sleep, which is much closer to what I was experiencing on Tuesday. It was completely guiltless.

Wednesday morning I had to go do some office work for Chuck. Because his bookkeeping situation was in flux, there was quite a bit for me to get up to speed on. By this time I was running a temperature and my whole body was sore to the touch. I threw in the towel after an hour and a half and came back home to my bed and more blissful unconsciousness.

At about 2:00 p.m. I woke up. Finished the mystery. Got up and wandered around the house, coughing. Surveyed the dirty dishes, filthy floors and piles of unfinished paper work. Sighed. Fixed some coffee.

Yes, the era of bliss was over. I was getting better.