Scattered

My family moved so often none of the kids is from where they were born. Even when we moved back to a place, enough time would have passed to make us strangers, even to the people we had known.

The adults had a bit of an easier time. Adulthood brings changes, but nothing like the changes of growing up.

We learned to pack up, let go and move on.

Over time, we accumulate friends that last a little longer, hanging on as correspondents. We're happy to see each other when we manage to visit. But what's the point of having friends all over the world if you can't get all over the world? It certainly seems to accentuate the fragility of life and the preciousness of our connections.

Ah yes. Our connections. Those things that now make it impossible to settle in any single place without pining for at least some aspect of another place, other people.

You might make it work if you lived almost forever and had unlimited resources. But then life wouldn't be a struggle. The shared struggle against what each of us considers the forces that need to be struggled against unites us in seriousness or in humor. You find the people who react the way you do or who react entertainingly, and you try to stick with them. You help the ones you think you should help and oppose the ones you think deserve it. Maybe you do it by making up your own mind. Maybe you do it by following orders from someone you let think for you. But the struggle is what unites us.

It's almost time to hit the road again, to leave a place where one set of struggles seems to have been pretty thoroughly lost, to return to a place where that battle may yet be won. But friends remain here to be missed. None of us can travel at will to bridge the distance at any instant the urge strikes. We have to hope we get to the next encounter, and many more.

The One that Gets Away

The unwritten novels are always more witty, gripping, brilliant, because the great passages just swim in and out of mind. The bulk is hidden in the murky depths, only hinted at by the quick shine of an eye, a fin, a patch of flank that shows the size and grace of the leviathan that never comes wholly into view.

All too often, when the monster is reeled in, it has ugly wounds, a big mouth and rapidly begins to stink.

Melville was writing about the Great White Novel: the one that always gets away and eventually kills you; the thing of awesome power that, if you ever did land, you would also destroy.

The pursuit must be undertaken, not with harpoons and lances, but with quiet boats, scuba gear, curiosity and persistence, to view the beast in successive glimpses, capturing its visage eventually while letting it roam free. The end result is the same: a bunch of words. Well connected, they will be read.

What are we waiting for?

Why are we so unwilling to elect a whole woman to be President of the United States? Time and again we elect a boob.

Wha' fo'?

Foyer is a strange word. We bathe in a bathroom, dine in a dining room, go to bed in a bedroom and live in a living room, but who foys? And how, exactly, is the foyer applied to the act of foying?

There is no act of foying, of course. Many people put a coat rack and a place for overshoes in the entryway of their houses. Indeed, the entryway is designed for such a purpose. Therefore, it's "fo' yer" coat and "fo' yer" boots.

Language is a wonderful thing. For instance, the word "pasta" derives from when it was the only food. No one remembers what it was called back then, because at mealtime they only got as far as saying, "Please pass de --". When another food was invented, pass de became the word for what we know today. The spelling was simplified.

Go ahead, ask me about something else.

Freedom isn't Free

It costs other people's lives. I mean, the hero of the battle of Bennington, General John Stark, who said, "Live free or die," said it years after he had survived the battle. And Patrick Henry got Liberty, not death, although he at least had the balls to throw down his statement before the fact.

Thing is, we have no way of asking the dead what they think. Maybe they'd say, "I wished I'd ducked."

"Freedom isn't free" seems to have been adopted by the armed intervention crowd to signify that if you're too lily-livered to face hot fire, you don't deserve freedom. But the real work in a free society is in the boring wrangling, the voting, the educating,the frustration and the general pain in the ass of putting up with people who might be different from you.

Or we could just fight to the death. Freedom isn't free, you know. And death, as John Stark pointed out, is not the worst of evils. Of course he was alive when he said it.

Repubican

Porn star Mary Carey continues to publicize her support for the Republican Party and pursue plans for political office. That shows you what you have to be able to swallow before you can swallow their economic theories.

In response, the Democrats are going to release the Monica and Bill video as a fundraiser. There's even talk of a live show at the next $1000 a plate party dinner.

WWJE?

Who would Jesus execute?