Idyll

I came from poverty. So in this day and age — even after personally making the grade ­— I can’t fathom, can’t understand how so many people can sit in their car and idle their engine for so long, as if gasoline costs nothing, as if noise wasn’t a societal issue, as if exhaust wasn’t a shared burden.

What are they doing? Playing games? Listening to podcasts? Eating lunch alone? Enjoying the air conditioning? Having a private phone call? Watching a movie on the infotainment system?

It’s been a bit extra since the pandemic started, and it never went away. I can’t grok it. I mean, on a cerebral level, sure, I know why people do it. But is there no urgency in conservation? Of the environment? Of money? Money!

Individually, my contribution to the global greenhouse is tiny, but collectively we weigh heavy. I find myself turning my engine off in the drive-thru because I hate gas stations that much.

Doesn’t anyone else understand their part in this?

Turn off the engine. Roll down the windows and join the world. Or go inside to your couch and big screen and surround sound. Anything else. Please.

Analyria

It’s funny to me, in my advanced age, how I would write so much poetry in my younger days, yet I never actually read any poetry. I still find myself unwilling and – if we’re being gracious – functionally unable to read poetry. 

It’s physically uncomfortable. Once I see verse on the page, my mind shifts into a “this is serious art, and you need to pay attention to the pictures they’re drawing.” I go into the endeavor the hard way and bail out.

But the poetry of my twenties? That was just me playing with word shapes and conceptual reverberations. Finding the rhythm in ideas. Trying to express things with big-brain patterns. Shortcutting prosaic sequences with orthogonal parallel images. Artistic masturbation, really.

I’m subscribed to some literary journals, and I feel sheepish when I flip past someone’s poem. I know it’s supposed to be good, or it never would have made the editorial selection. But in reading, I can’t find a handhold to climb its stanzas. I flail against the rocks, nails chipping, dust falling into my face. I drop the chalk bag, unclip from the belay, and go home. I tried, friend. Really, I tried.

Donnertraüme

Flashing between regret and resolve regarding taking German III. This is the kind of semester where the kid gloves come off. The class is mostly auf Deutsch, and coming into that 3 hours a week over crappy Zoom audio is a struggle. I have to think on my feet and just get into the dance. Die Professorin says it’s a safe place, and I believe her, but everyone else is on the dance floor. I’m trying.

The laptop I bought for the class isn’t really needed, since we won’t be using the school’s Test Proctoring browser; I can use anything that can record from webcam and headset. Regret that part, but at least the laptop’s nice, within certain bounds. Better than the old one.

Homework is definitely harder. Had our first quiz last week, too. Haven’t looked up my grades from my recent work yet. I’m afraid. Jetzt habe ich viel Angst.

So viel Angst.

Pluck

When, in a society, you have developed the methods to turn a profit when the market goes up, and you have developed the methods to earn a profit when the market goes down, then you can fully expect that the market will not remain stable for long. Eventually someone will pluck the string.

Then, in those oscillations, they will accrue profits at the expense of the universe. Molecular friction. It all turns into heat. We all lose energy during the return to the stable state.

Keep this in mind when the market gets destabilized by sudden policy changes. Tariffs? Someone’s profiting. And it’s not us.