Sty

I come, belatedly, to Charles Krauthammer's simple and eloquent words.  Belatedly, of course.  My destiny has outpaced me, and I am left floundering.  Simple and eloquent, of course.  More frequently than not, they are paired.  Complexity can be eloquent, and simplicity can be coarse.  But: "The Father of Waters again rolls unvexed to the sea."

Krauthammer is always simple, clear, direct, the most logical of the opinion-writers.  For Zimmerman, justice? -- punishment?  "All we have is the human kind whose only standard in a civilized society is this: A jury has spoken."

You will know by now my opinion.  There is no justice.  Punishment, certainly.  Redress, occasionally ... perhaps half the time?  Injustice, well, always.  Because there is no justice.  That's logic.  I no longer consider myself wise -- it was a long fall with a hard landing.  But I suppose that wisdom is finding, crafting, extracting somehow a sense of joy even in such a world as this.  The most and best that we can expect from life is embedded, like a beetle in amber, within the judgment of others.  The jury continues to speak, dictating our circumstances -- wisdom abides in the choosing of our response.

So Obama got himself reelected.  Some French philosopher said, "Every nation has the government it deserves."  Sounds pretty smart.  And it's right, mostly.  Tweak it a little and it is right: Every nation deserves the government it affirms.  The Cambodians did not deserve the Khmer Rouge.  People don't deserve that.  Nations, perhaps, do.  Why was Cambodia so Third World, that such a thing could happen?  Why did they not have their own wise leader or traditions to establish strong and sane institutions?  Ach.  There it is.  Justice, and no justice.  Failure brings disproportionate punishment.

As for Obamerica, I now think of it not as the Prodigal Son, who left the dignity of his father's household to be a wastrel and then live with pigs.  I think of America as the pigs.  The pig returneth to its vomit.  Perhaps once the Lord was our Shepherd.  Now we have a swineherd.

I didn't eat this week.  A juice fast, kale and chard and dandelion leaf and suchlike.  Blech.  Five days.  Does not seem to have helped.  But I will persevere.  I don't have any extra weight to lose, so I don't want to lose weight.  Haven't been this, um, lean since distant days when I was in deep grief.  Meantime there are bad days, and days that are not quite so bad.  What's that you say?  I should go to the doctor?  But ... I don't know any doctors.  And, uh, I don't want to be spending my very limited resources on inevitable expensive tests that are inevitably unhelpful.  For example, I still do not have AIDS or syphilis or chlamydia, etc.  Not helpful information.  I knew that already.  And, um, I am mentally and spiritually ill, and there's something in me that wants to degrade and destroy myself, and embraces constant pain as a deserved punishment.

Out of such contradictions were the worlds created.

July 3 my son was born.  August 3 I asked my wife to marry me.  September 3 I became Christian.  October 3 I got my divorce decree.  November 3 my son was conceived.  We strive to find order in chaos, and purpose in what is random.  We impose it.  (Pardon my sententiousness.  It's what I do.  But I can't resist: "We impose it.")  Like God imposes life upon ourselves, impresses it into the clay of our nature.  Impressive, such an imposition.

Thank you.  Thank you very much.


J