Alecto's Ophelia

On the politics of politics

I don't know if it's age or time but with each presidential election the issues seem to become more blurred and the screaming louder. I would indicate the direction in which I dress (and for the love of god would somebody Puleeese pick up on that reference we could all USE a little humor these days) but regardless of the revelation I'm bound to take fire one way or another. So why bother? Just so I can add to the screaming? Pass.

OK, having written all that it's only fair to fess up and admit to being just as polarized as the majority. I am as freaked out over Sarah Palin as anybody on the right might be freaked out over Barack Obama and I can give you leventy-leven reasons why too. And at least leventy-ten of them would be fact checked and validated but that's hardly relevant because the idea of voting against versus for something is truly terrifying. In my decidedly humble, if a bit snark like, opinion. But that's the truth of it.

I personally have been voting against benchmarks my entire adult life. And that's not bragging, it's a confession. Of sorts. Yes, I do vote the party ticket even though I don't actually fit most of my party's ideals. Hell, I don't fit any party's ideals. My point being, I vote against the things I find most offensive. Anti-abortion laws, inclusion of church and state and censorship. Those are my big hairy boogies and I choose based on those issues even though the scary party in question may be more supportive of a large number of smaller and possibly less hairy boogies.

My point being that doesn't leave much room for a clear and positive agenda, does it? Might explain all the shouting.

I do not watch political events. I do not listen to political events. I don't watch state of the union addresses unless we've been blown up and or are going to war. I'll read just about anything but I will not actually watch or listen to the circus. Can't do it, makes my belly knot up and my eyes go crossed. Last night oldest daughter needed to watch one of those debatable news type shows that come on after the little kiddies have gone to bed. She needed to watch this for her American Government class and I wanted no part of it. She went off to watch on her own but came back ten minutes later because there was just this yelling and screaming and something about lipstick and pigs.

..................

So I sat down and watched the rest of it with her in an attempt to make some sense of the conversation.

...................

Horrifically painful. We watched four apparently well educated and intelligent people, two men and two women ostensibly one of each from one of each, behave like nine year olds with roid rage. Seriously.

So now I know just exactly why Sarah Palin is the queen of all evil and why Barack is a terrorist but I have no idea at all what either party actually sees in their candidates. None. OK, that's not true. I googled 'Why do Republicans like Sarah Palin' today because, like Amy, I do want to know because I do not understand and I don't want to hear words like maverick and change either unless you can get darned specific about what kind of change and how being a maverick will support that clearly defined change (because I'm a maverick and I can sure as shit make a mess of things when I get to being a bull in a china shop).  Anyway, the first site to pop up was the gay republican site and here's what I gleaned from two pages of text. Sarah Palin has awesome Audry Hepburn like hair and she backed a bill on same sex partner insurance. That's it folks.

So seriously. What is it? Or are we all so polarized by our own fears (me too) that we can only see through a red haze of rage? Have we become a nation of raving lunatics who feel so strongly about so many polarized beliefs that we are all, myself included, making complete asses of ourselves? And is Putin really licking his chops?

I am braver than I used to be, and quite possibly the root of all evil

And older too.

Crowd behavior is funny. I wrote a piece awhile back on commuter traffic, the unspoken rules and regulations of any particular stretch of frequently traveled road and the punishment meted out for rule infringement.  Trains are the same way and it only took me this long to work it out.

The trains are getting crowded again ('again' you say? Yes, again. It was bad and then it got better because so many of us feel entitled to park our BMWs on I95 and crawl slowly into whatever city we happen to call a workplace). This is a good sign; means less cars on the road in theory.

We feel we are entitled to space and have developed a series of subtle and not so subtle maneuvers designed to insure that space. These maneuvers are hardly new but for awhile things were so bad that the bad manners went away out of desperation. And then we parked our cars on the freeway and the bad manners came back. There once was a guy (probably more than one guy) who devoted an entire blog to documenting passenger atrocities on the Metro North line. You can find him here if you're so inclined, although he hasn't posted since January 18, 2006, which saddens me because he wrote some great stuff.

On the other hand I do understand the natural inclination to have that lovely three feet of personal space but I'm not so willing to be rude to get it. I will, however, be rude as hell to get a seat (within reason, of course, always within reason. Um, my reason).

Here are the most obvious:

1. Sitting in a 2 seater on the outside leaving the inside seat empty.
2. Sitting in a 2 seater with your bag on the empty seat.
3. Sitting in both seats of a 2 seater (requires talent and balance but can be done, I've seen it).
4. Sitting on the outside of a 3 seater.
5. Sitting in a 4 seater with your feet on the seat across.
6. Sitting in a 4 seater on the inside seat with your feet across diagonally to the outside seat across.
7. Sitting in the middle of a 3 seater with bags on either side (the most heinous of all acts to date).
8. Sitting in the middle of a 3 seater passed out with your head between your legs (NOBODY is going to sit next to that)
9. Sitting anywhere and spewing vomit.
10. Dousing oneself in rancid perfume (just plain smelling bad would be preferable).

I could go on but 10 will suffice.

Little Alecto would not have approached any of those situations. Little Alecto would have chosen the outside of a 3 seater or just one of a 2 seater or just stood for however long it took to get to her destination (by the way, Little Alecto NEVER had any such qualms about the NYC subways, not sure what that's all about). Little Alecto would have been far more concerned with offending the offensive to even consider.

Little Alecto grew up. Or something.

I take great joy in selecting a seat. Isn't that awful? I work very hard to select a seat from the greediest SOB on the car I happen to step into. This morning was almost funny. Nomans and I took the train in together (at some point I'll probably get around to explaining that) and he, being the romantic that he is, wanted to sit together. Funny, I think, really, you can't do that on this train. The best you can hope for is two outer seat 2s one in front and one in back. I head for a pair of those and he points to a line backer in a suit sitting on the outside of a 3 seater with his 'stuff' on the middle seat. I walk up to him and say "I'll be needing those two seats." I should probably have said "We'll be needing those two seats" but I'm not sure he would have noticed or been willing to respond. He lifted his considerable and muscular bulk from the seat to let me in leaving his 'stuff' on the middle seat. "No" I said, "we'll be needing both of those.

He was nearly apoplectic. I stared him down. Probably Nomans was doing the same behind me; I didn't bother looking. He removed his 'stuff' and we sat down. He sulked through two more stops until he got off. I wished he'd been stuck with us for hours.

This evening I got on the Danbury line in Stamford heading for home and the train was more crowded than usual and there was a man guilty of performing sin #7 which I had yet to encounter, though I'd heard plenty about the audacity that leads weaselly little people to take the lion's share of the space while old ladies and pregnant people pass out between cars. OK, I exaggerate. But still.

I should mention that there were empty seats behind him.

I have no mercy.

I stood at the edge of the seat (he wouldn't look at me, that's how this works) and said without an excuse me or by your leave, "I need one of those seats". My tone clearly indicated that I was not moving.

He looked up, gathered his things and moved to the window seat leaving his 'stuff' securely filling the middle seat. I stuffed my backpack between my legs and pulled out my book (I'm re-reading _Still Life With Woodpecker_ at the moment) and proceeded to ignore him.

Once into South Norwalk the train empties greatly and there were many seats completely empty around us.

I did not move.

Small, unhappy grunts emanated from the window seat to my right but I would not meet his eye or turn my head or acknowledge that there was anyone on this train but me.

I read my book. I laughed out loud (who doesn't when reading TR?). I stayed there until thirty seconds from my stop and giggled all the way to the door.

I am 44. I ought to know better but I'd rather not. I'm having way too much fun. Next week I tackle the middle seats.

Transcendental Blues

In the darkest hour of the longest night
If it was in my power I'd step into the light
Candles on the alter, penny in your shoe
Walk upon the water --- transcendental blues

- Steve Earle - Transcendental Blues

I've been listening to one of my Big Furry Guys (Mr. Earle, the king of the Big Furry Guys, for whom I took my very pregnant body - I was actually due that day - to see with Emmylou and Nancy G in the nosebleed seats at the old Palace Theater in Stamford, prior to any kind of renovation, and have never forgotten it) all day, on and off, interspersed with David Gray and Natalie Merchant and now I've moved onto Mark Knopfler's All the Roadrunning singing Beyond My Wildest Dreams.  It's been that kind of Sunday, my favorite kind, in which much was created, baked and consumed and much laid aside for the coming week.

I don't think the world is going to end as we know it in my lifetime.  I'm not even sure it will occur in my children's lives.  I think it will continue to occur gradually until we are lulled into such complacency that we have entirely forgotten ourselves and can so be consumed by a greater and perhaps more worthy beast. I'm not even sure I mind all that much. I don't really know. I do mind starving to death. I do mind poisoning myself. I do mind being asleep. I do very, very much mind that some of my friends are feeling it today. I also mind that I can't quite wrap my mind around the people I don't know, who aren't my friends, who also suffer terribly. I mind a lot of things. I can process a bit of it.

I read an article yesterday about the human race splitting into two separate species in the next 100,000 years. And we were meant to be alarmed. How can any of us truly be alarmed by something 100,000 years in the future?  We aren't wired to process information that isn't immediate. The article discussed the future of The Beautiful and Bright and the Ugly Caretakers. Huh. As if this isn't happening all around us all the time?  And as if the Hapsburgs weren't any indication of what occurs when the gene pool implodes on itself. Huh. And I remember the film Gattica that was released in a time when I stored literally gallons of breast milk in the freezer and sniffed fragrant (I can't really refer to infants as dirty under any circumstances) infant clothing in the privacy of my office to bring on the let down reflex that would catapult my last girl's meals gushing from my corporate breasts into sterilized receptacles and put on ice for another day. I did this twice a day every day and I cried every time I did it because all I really wanted was to be at home in my rocking chair with my last girl at my breast. The day I stopped crying was the day my milk dried up.  I made it six months and for any of you who nursed your children that's a serious feat, to continue to produce while separated from your infant 10 - 16 hours per day.  It broke my heart and I never did get over it.  I just moved on and found other ways to merge the me who is on fire in the world and the me who needs to pull my children in as close as I can get them. It is all about the need to be.

She is nearly seven. I can still feel her in my breasts; they constrict and ache when she cries with a particular tone or is away too long.  My oldest will turn 21 in two weeks. I have not seen him in two months nor had an intimate conversation in over six months. My breasts still ache for him too. I have not forgotten but I have let go. It is very hard and I try not to think too much or I would come apart and fly off into the ether and then what good would I be to anybody? But you know what, I love you, Mikie, I love you so much I can't catch my breath some days. And I believe in you. I believe that you will find your way and in doing so find your way home, where ever home happens to become.  I believe that deep inside, you know how much I love you too. I cut my arm off and my heart out because it was the only thing I could think to do. And I love you. Always.

So, having revealed all that, maybe Sundays will make a little more sense. Maybe I'll stop being the confusing enigma that is not one thing nor the other and pisses off just about everyone but me at one point or another.

I go to work every day because that is me.  That is me being who I am on fire, every single day. My friend The Consultant asks periodically, Alecto, do you like your job?  He asks this because he thinks my business partners are lunatics.  He's right, they are.  And I tell him every time, Consultant of Mine, I love my job and I do my damn best to tolerate them that has the need of me.  A large part of who I am is defined by the creativity that causes these databases to whir and chirp and push out their own product all day long.

I have Sundays because I need to be here as well. I need it all. Some days I think it might kill me and other days, like today, I think I have mastered the alchemy of what has become my life. Here is cheese bread and pumpkin pie plus the leftovers because I always end up with too much. I have moved on to using spelt instead of wheat and I'm still not sure what I really think of it.  It's a bit drier but it rises better, although you can't tell here by the bread because there are two pounds of cheese in these loaves.  They are asiago and goat gouda, both local and both packed with protein. Cletus and I both have food issues. We need to get the most possible bang for our calories to remain healthy. We need to get so used to this kind of gathering and eating that we no longer have the idea of a food issue. The pie comes from a little sugar pumpkin and he didn't take much to cook up and pie at all. He is, however, taking forever to cook because there is so much of him.

Here is the inside of my refrigerator.  Talk about intimate! On the lower shelf are four meals for the coming week. There are duck breasts marinating in a red wine, garlic, shallot, ginger concoction that will be finished in a plum glaze in less than 20 minutes when it's time to cook them.  There are chicken thighs and legs in a chipotle marinade (yes, I make all my own), a flank steak in balsamic and garlic, and finally veal chops in a white wine and lemon reduction with fingerling potatoes, yellow squash and plum tomatoes. This will get us through the week. Remember, Alecto DOES NOT cook on Fridays. There is a cream of tomato soup on the stove with a red wine infusion to go with the cheese bread and the spelt sour dough (I nurture the starter four days a week,  refrigerate two and wake up and utilize one). I'll let you know how I feel about the spelt in another week or so.

NoMans is making pickles. NoMans has been going through some cathartic stuff this week relating to his childhood and what did and did not happen and the fact that, as the youngest of four, his parents and siblings might just have gotten tired and it might not have been all about him after all.  One of the things I love most about him is that this cathartic stuff shows up in pickle making. He takes his ache and makes something beautiful out of it and he feels good in the process. I'll tell you though, I laughed my ass off when he figured out the pickling process was an actual process as opposed to an event and will take 5 - 6 weeks to complete in this climate. And also, I wished for CG's mother's punch bowl but the other yellow bowl will do just fine.

And finally, if you look up above those frou frou cherry veneer cabinets you will see to the left of my new butcher block, an actual wooden bread bowl.  I let go last week in Vermont. I bought the hand milled bowl and then had a long chat with a baker (who talked me into playing with spelt and made the most incredible sour dough raisin bread I've ever tasted and had the coolest mother f'ing long white beard I've ever seen) about the need to generate yeast in the kitchen and the fact that it would, simply, feel better.  He wasn't kidding.  It felt incredible.  It felt alive. My grandchildren, if they are so inclined, can use it. It doesn't mean I don't love the old yellow bowl. I do love the old yellow bowl and it is still mine.

And lastly, here is my beautiful first girl, my reason for being, my reason for breathing life into anything I can get my hands on. She might not be unschooled but she's remarkably creative and free. Her hair changes color weekly and she consumes books at an alarming rate. She paints and draws things I can barely process, she sings in two choirs, has been immersed in Latin for the last two years (chick seems to dig it, go figure)and is wearing her Thing One Disney T in the warm fuzzy memory of turning sixteen in the park of dreams with her best friend, her sister and her two step-brothers. She sits under one of my goofy wool blankets (I knit like a hyperactive fiend) and keeps her macbook close at all times. She too listens to The Big Furry Guy and smiles her secret smile. 

I cried when I wrote this tonight. And it was good. Thanks for listening.

- kisses and good night - Alecto

Road Rage - How Justice Was Metted Out in the Route 7 Corridor

There is a science to driving in traffic; rules, regulations and social mores developed and clearly understood by the ever-widening organized aggregate called 'that wave of people I drive to work with every day'. Some examples of these rules might be

• don't come to a complete stop at that three-way on Cedar, just look right and go if you can, otherwise we get backed up to that last stop and then all hell breaks loose.
• look left at the three-way at the end of Cedar, if you can see cars, turn right and go around, this appears to meter the flow.
• stay in the right lane starting 3 lights back (or when you start to see congestion) if you are going to make the right turn to Super 7. we all hereby agree that we will not use the funnel method at the last light.
• if the line to get on 95 South is past the hospital, go to the next exit, turn right, turn right, go straight and get on one exit south.  This appears to meter things.
• if you do get in line to enter 95 South from Super 7 make sure you merge in the funnel method a the end.  Do not go driving up the shoulder or someone will chase your ass down and put you on time out.

Those are just a few, but they are the big ones and they are an amazing occurrence that helps us collectively manage the horrendous overflow that we are. Lately another rule has been developing but I'm not sure where it's going because it involves a somewhat dangerous and winding dirt road without a guard rail, above a river as a bypass to some significant backup caused by the overflow of Local 7 evacuees coming out of Redding, Ridgefield and Wilton.  We know this will stop once the construction moves from the intersection at Wilton High school to beyond the route 33 cutoff where 7 can be skirted alternatively. In the mean time, how many people will go around, causing another metering affect, and how many people will choose to spend an average of 7 minutes in line waiting to get past the new meter (which is finally developing a funnel approach to each detoured vehicle allowing the release of one hostage vehicle in line as if we have added our own stop sign.

In any event, these rules are developed out of necessity, over time and without anyone but a few collective spouses actually speaking a word of it. Think about this, the old brain kicks in the hive mentality and if we accept (without much thought I would imagine) that we are part of this large moving organism then we manage to make it a little better for everyone.  So what happens when somebody gets out of line?  I saw it this morning and still can't believe what I witnessed.

Before I launch the story of the VW Bug and the Pickup, let me say that there are always a few spoilers who won't get in line and wait their turn and for the most part we deal with them effectively by refusing to let them in until the last minute, causing multiple I'm going to be late for work because I'll have to go around heart attacks. By and large, in this part of Southern Connecticut, despite Nanny's opinion, the drivers are rational, well behaved and sane.

So this morning I'm in line waiting to get on Super 7 and the VW Bug in the left lane is getting ready to dive in front of the truck in front of me as soon as he opens up so much as an inch. Well he does open an inch.  He opens a good 2 or 3 feet and then steps on the gas to catch up.  She misses his quarter panel by a coon's hair. They are momentarily deadlocked.

He starts yelling at her, she is yelling back (this was her biggest mistake, if she'd just looked at him with that 'I'm a complete moron and I can't believe I just did that to you' look, he would probably have been diffused). I am sitting in my car giving NoMans the play by play because he is too far behind to see it. I realize at this point that he has his door open.  She guns her engine and dives in front of him as he's lost track of the line while yelling at her. I wonder if she did hit him? He chases her down the line and gets all up in her stuff. This cannot be comfortable and I am thinking I'm going to be late to work because he's going to run her into a telephone pole and then we'll all have to wait but part of me is glad for this display of public punishment because I notice not one car from the left lane made any attempt to cut over.  Suddenly they all had somewhere else to be.

At the turn she performs another faux pas and cuts up on the right, which does not make the final left onto Super 7 but continues back into the deeps of Wilton. I know what she's going to do and she doesn't let me down.  Like the terrified sneak that she is, she slips in front of a dump truck at the very last minute and makes the turn.  The Pickup truck is right behind her. I am right behind him (both of us in the correct lanes, just gunning it).  I am not about to miss any of this.

The VW Sneak leads us on a merry chase across the 3 mile connecting stretch of Super 7.  We are doing close to 90 mph before I come to my senses and let them go.  I am disappointed to have missed the rest of the show but I don't think I ought to be doing 90 in traffic, even if it is keeping up with me.  I get back in the right lane and behave myself.

I approach the line to 95 South and determine that I am in alignment with the Norwalk Hospital rule and do not have to go around. I look up and see that I am about six vehicles behind the Pickup Truck.  How did this happen? Suddenly he makes as if to pull back into the middle lane and changes his mind.  He has done this because the VW was coming up on his left and he intended to scare the bejesus out of her.  How did she get behind me? One more time.  To drive the point home. After that I have no idea what happened.  All I know is I stayed with the Pickup truck all the way to exit 9 where he got off (I get off exit 8). My guess is she decided to meter herself one exit down.  Or just go home and call it a day.