Pity the Trump

The time is all we've lost/ I'll try it! Jonathan Edwards

I cannot say what the other drifters in Philadelphia's LOTR think of me, with the possible exception of Black Adder, a young man who doesn't suit as a primary target, but I no longer have a healthy social intelligence, let alone social extensions I value, and value me in return. I had a flicker of interest in the Asian computer geek, but haven't batted an eyelash, nor intend too, as I know nothing, inclusive of his age, sexual orientation; he is kind, however, and comprehends my fervor when I see him. I have a relationship to kimmy, at least in mourning for Vinnie, a relationship to broadcast schedules, to Trader Joe's as a brand, to the self-absorption of the seventies, singing Jonathan's post Woodstock angry ballad as loudly as I could in my alienated urban world of happy blacks and more diffident Pakistani's.

All I have left is memories of fraudulent emotional investment, and on bad days, the cut of my former manager's voice in my head, with her come off it attitude because a poem of longing for a man I never caught had a double entendre on the word "come," which suited her convenience to go off on me. "Hands With Cerebral Palsy" was never a literal experience between Tassoni and I, never an assertion of a caress to his face, only the stanzas of a broken heart. In this context, I've assiduously avoided too much dissection of the flaming Trump phenomena; never liked him, saw him as carnivalesque, his rise indicative indeed of the warnings prophesied in Network and Max Headroom, but the establishment has so gone off its rocker I'm leaning toward not giving my vote to Harambe, the saintly victim of human primacy. "Sunshine" was a pop fizz out of the turbulent 60's, but despite the resonance of the chords Edwards strikes, it cops a plea, and in that vein fails its liberal zeal.

Tyler suggested I apologize to Trudy Richardson

And who is Tyler? A name tag of a Trader Joe's associate, with smooth and easy youthful toffee complexion. But I am beyond apology, with the corporate office, with HUD. You've viewed this all before, but not that I complimented Tyler on being a nice young man. What am I then? A pretentious bigot, or merely alienated? Both? For the sake of even handedness, white Presbyterian managers were little better than their minority counterparts, and the beat goes on, shellshocked, my decency tainted beyond recovery. I can fit the woman I am now like a sleeve over her past in her junior year, crashing then, looking out of the window of university apartment alone, no more nursing students, no more Lee from the South suffering from Hodgkin's lymphoma. I only have the barest trace memory of what happened to Lee, and could not understand at the time why she did not withdraw from school, given how stricken she was. She did withdraw and I received a summary end conversation of her fate but cannot quite recall it, though her devoted sweetheart Bob stays with me, why, I don't know. Geek. Beatles hair, owl rim glasses, engineer, Jerry had been fired and I crashed, and transferring in no way unraveled that, but beneath the surface, for all my wasted and now ashen investment in the Old Cricket, the turbulence was something else. Self-hatred, a deeper knowledge that I would not succeed, wouldn't be happy, wouldn't live for a husband, wouldn't ever conquer my slovenly peasant genetic make up, regardless of what Irish wizardry I thought I'd bought into, but on thinking about it, beneath the surface of my spastic body positively longing for hard and dangerous sex, I was never really liberal, just an exterminator held in abeyance.

One thing that never plagued me back then, however, despite the riff of domestic violence with my vamping mother, was battle fatigue, and other than my breaking heart for my cats, this is what I own now. Emotional exhaustion, a commonality with my father, from a well spring of different sources. Pass a certain point, whatever that point is, nothing quite ever repairs it, even a sales clerk with the admonishment not to beat myself up, not that I've been entirely inert today, but my education? My intelligence? Pointless at this point, resources exhausted. Move on to what exactly? 

Cherry 3000

"Tone it down a little." Jack Neale, a man who wanted native American wish fulfillment.

Miss Jack. He injected humor into my strident injury. Good man, but best left where it was, pressed in a rain slicker on the stow away coat hanger. I do not want a relationship with another wheelchair user, and the odds of finding an ambulatory male who finds my mettle engaging? I met one, in fact, just recently. My libido surged back to life, grateful, but playing the game involves hassle not worth the price of admission whether or not he can sustain an erection. He is potty trained, lively, and not an imbecile. So sorely tempted. Damn it all to hell.

Men. If even half of you took the time to understand assertion and accommodation, and that winning a mind like mine is its own reward. Men.

John Kerry is a life sized prosthetic, and this reflects the nearly intangible difference between China and the United States. The most marginalized American sat a foot away from one of the wealthiest and privileged blue bloods and engaged him in national policy even while in the present tense she is turning insurgent on a service offered on one of our most powerful corporate models.

Kerry probably busts his face playing hockey to frustrate his own sensibility of being mannequin deadwood. He is also one of the last of his species, and his disappearance from the political landscape is cause for concern, equivalent to Trader Joe's being a rare case of a California franchise success. This is not ideology. It is the elder statesman, and pragmatic inclusionary business model always improving on efficiency. The nature of grocery retail is such that Joe's cannot hire wheelchair users at their retail outlets, but they conspired with regional bakeries to create maple walnut blondies.

I will be there to nominate Joe's as an insurgent candidate on the floor of the convention in 2016. Why can't we remember that we know how to get things right, and be sensible? Infrastructure and mobility, aspiration. Important parts of the recipe.