11 Comments
User's avatar
David Roberts's avatar

How you kept your cup of coffee is a sign of something! It does feel like the pendulum is moving.

Mark Slouka's avatar

Let's just hope it's moving in the right direction, David. Personally (though I have my bad moments) I think there's evidence that it's reached the top of its arc, that the swing-back to normalcy is not too far ahead.

Sydney Lea's avatar

You can't know how profoundly I pray that your prognostication fulfills itself, Mark!

P.S. I've taken a number of those sudden falls in my eight decades, and you are right: it all happens so quickly as to seem surreal. Keep these reflections coming.

Sven Birkerts's avatar

That universal dog pooping shame...I feel it everytime I encounter that evacuated and cadaverous face, and I seem to encounter it all the time...

Melville!

Mark Slouka's avatar

Ah, Herman, wasn't he the one who wrote to Hawthorne that he could neither believe, nor rest in his unbelief? It was something along those lines, and I'm too tired to google, so I'm relying on my actual, human memory. Scary.

Dzovag's avatar

Good God, Man. Buy a lotto ticket.

lou J's avatar

Once again you give much hope while not just acknowledging, bit conveying the horrendous context. Been seeing lots of good signs around here too though that Melville phrase sure rings loud and true.

When I leave the country, I feel universally supported. Only here do I encounter those who follow him. But their voices have shrunk in volume and pitch.

lou J's avatar
Feb 8Edited

So hard to accept that he won the election without getting the majority of the vote and knowing he is so widely despised.

Any chance you receivedthe Jess Walter book yet?

Mark Slouka's avatar

Yeah, well, as you and I both know, we can thank the electoral college for this disaster.

Nothing on the book yet - may have gotten stuck. I'll try to check.

Mark Slouka's avatar

May those voices continue shrinking, Lou. Aside from me, there are a couple of billion people who'd like nothing better.