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?

Running Amok

Things change, the world moves on.

I feel like I ought to be writing something utterly profound; there's certainly been enough profundity running amok in my head lately and I find I can't write. I don't find that I have nothing to write about. Instead I took a walk over to Madcap's site and discovered that she's written something so mind numbingly intense I couldn't even respond to it; not even enough to say, 'welcome back, great post'. It was a great post. What's even more stunning is the fifth comment down. MC, I don't know if you'll delete it or not but you've got to admit that it's quite powerful in it's timing.

MC asks in the context of Elie Weisel's experience of himself during his father's death in a concentration camp (Night), "If we can't hear, are we accountable? Who blames the sleeper for his dreams?"

The anonymous fifth comment down is so full of utterly incomprehensible vitriol and hate that you'd think it's enough to bring the cosmos crashing down around us in it's pointedness and passion alone. The juxtaposition of Elie Weisel's pointed moment of horror and guilt against the backdrop of a comment suggesting ultimately that we will indeed annihilate ourselves with collective rage leaves me breathless.

I'm sorry, MC, great post and welcome back. I could not speak or write.

Things change, the world moves on?

I had NoMans put a very pointed Student Driver sign on the back of the car when he takes Cletus driving (I have removed myself from her presence so that she might learn to drive without the fear of not being enough since apparently even with my mouth shut Mommy is a formidable presence) so that people might be a little more patient and stop honking at her for driving the speed limit. Then I had him put another sign on the back of the car that reads (real big) STANDARD TRANSMISSION and then in smaller letters: Student Driver. They're still honking when she stalls at an intersection and still riding right up her backside when she stops at a stop sign that happens to be on a steep hill. The back windshield is not big enough for me to explain what a stall is and everything else that goes along with a clutch and a standard transmission.

The world, at least in these parts, has moved on and we have not moved with it.

Another reason for NoMans to do the driving. I would get out of the car at the stop sign and eat eyeballs or some other such atrocity. We've got enough of those I think.

Yad Vashem

There are no words. There are no photographs. There is no way to make the trip into Yad Vashem anything other than 2 dimensional and that in itself is wrong. I will write words and show you a picture anyway. I will show you a picture in the end. After the words. It's kind of like the Grand Canyon, you can't really photograph vertigo, now can you?

Yad Vashem wants to call itself a museum. That word is too small. It is giant and sprawling and right outside the city of Jerusalem. It is made up of many installations and one rather large building that is an installation in itself. You walk into this building at the height of the Diaspora, there is light behind you and you can see the culture that was, on the walls, on the ceilings on the floor.  Because of the crowds you are forced to move forward.  There will be no lingering in any one place. There will be no personal space. You will, at times, be crowded cheek to jowl with the hot, damp, steam of your neighbor from the Ukraine who had onions with his herring for breakfast this morning. You will smell his fear of crowds and trepidation in dark spaces.  He will smell your guilt. You will move on together because you have no choice.

As you move into the darkness you wind in and out of rooms and across the great hallway. There is no way to cut through and out and run down the great hallway to the exit because of the barriers and the chasms below. You move with the crowd as a single organism in a cattle car.  Except there's more air. When you can no longer bear the images, and for me this was early and then staunched and then later without end, and your sinus fill to the breaking point and your eyes well up and you are wondering what will happen if there isn't enough air, you are forced to notice your neighbors once again, cheek to jowl, rubbing their eyes and their noses on their sleeves or they have been here before and have Kleenex. Some sob openly, some drop to their knees and wail, some look nearly catatonic. A good many of these people are quite old. You wonder how an emergency might be handled. There are no emergencies.

At the end there is light and damp and a breeze because the doors are open to let in the air. You think that you cannot look at a single other shoe or piece of clothing or passport or photograph or story or neighbor and you try to read about the first Jewish babies born after the war and it is almost too much to bear. You stagger into the sunlight, if there is any that day and make your way to

The Children's Memorial. For me, this is Yad Vashem.  There could be no other part and this would be enough.  Except, of course, it is not, it can never be enough.

At the entrance to the memorial, which is a cave, you make your way down the path and into the darkness. The walls along the path are gouged as if clawed at by a multitude of lost souls reaching for the hope of sky, or air, or water, and falling back into the darkness. You walk into that darkness. There is, I believe, only one candle lit at a time but there are mirrors so that we have that proverbial thousand points of light going on into infinity although I don't suspect this is what George Senior had in mind. That is all except for the voices.  The voices are the names of children.  You are listening to a tape that cycles over and over.  It takes awhile to get through a cycle because there are approximately 1.2 million names being read. You want to stand and listen but you must keep moving, deeper down into the cold dark ground. In the center is the source of light.  All around you, on the ceiling, the walls, maybe even the floor, illuminated so that we might see these mother's children one more time, are the faces of the very young and very dead.

Most likely you cannot breathe. It is very hard to stay in there for more than a few minutes.  You think you must because you want to get to the end of the tape.  There is no getting to the end of the tape. You want to examine every face in that room.  You want to touch, caress, hold, save, feed, love, bring into the light every babe in that room. Except you cannot. It is too late.

And so you move forward and leave the children behind. In the dark. Forever.

On the way out you move up the path and toward the light. If you are looking at anything anymore you look at the walls and see that the gouges are in the rock on this side as well.  Except they aren't vertical anymore. They are horizontal now, like a ladder.

In the end you slide to the ground with your back to the cave wall and give yourself over to the primordial quaking that lets you know you were never separate and alone in this world.  It has always been an illusion.

Echo Off

Monday comes in fits and starts.

…

LOGIN “essbase1.domainname.com” “admin” “xxxxx”;

SLEEP “5”;

SELECT “PSG” “PSG”;

SLEEP “5”;

IMPORT 3 \\402FS01\DATA\W$\ESSBASE\PSG\PSGESSLOAD.TXT 4 “Y” 2 “00MONTH” “Y” \\402FS01\DATA\W$\ESSBASE\PSG\PSGESSLOAD.ERR;

SLEEP “5”;

RUNCALC 2 “ACT07”;

SLEEP “5”;

LOGOUT;

…

Flick, flick, click, click, whirrrrrrrrr…

…

And the engine rumbles to life and we are off with a hitch and a jerk

Speeding up reaching some kind of velocity that allows us to pass

Effortlessly over the rough spots.

…

What if life was launched each new day with a simple nine line bat file and there is no one at the wheel anymore.

…

Is that a scary or a reassuring thought?