Poem Toward an Aroma Map of New York City

[After a recent trip to New York City, I tried to recall the odors I experienced as I walked from Grand Central Station east to Junior’s Restaurant in Brooklyn. In looking up previous attempts to do such things, I’m struck by the omnipresent dismay at the odors New Yorkers, especially Manhattanites, seem to experience. Notably, the effort has not been made in poetry. For myself, having been away from the City for decades, the scents were almost uniformly comforting. I walked the four mile route at least partly because I felt at home and wanted to reconnect with my home base of many years ago.]

 

Grand Central Terminal:

Diesel, oil, steam, human piss, perfumery scent

Park Avenue:

Carrot cake, hot pretzels, ditchweed, spiced halal meat

Union Square:

Ditchweed, roast lamb, hot coffee

Bowery:

Better cannabis, piss, coffee, damp wool, hot pork

Chinatown:

Vinegar, sweet coffee, steaming rice, strong herbs

Manhattan Bridge:

Wildfire Smoke, salty water, cannabis, coffee

Dumbo:

Coffee, cannabis, spiced meat, mixed Chinese herbs

Jay Street:

Exhaust, dust, piss

Walt Whitman Park:

Take out coffee, cannabis, yew pines

Tillary Street:

Hidden beer, coffee, dogs, scent

Flatbush Avenue:

Hot pretzels, cannabis, exhaust

Juniors Restaurant:

Percolating coffee, good beer, warmth, fresh Cole slaw, hot beef

Should We Cheer On the Lone Ranger?

 

[Quick note: This was published this morning prior to reports a suspect had been found and detained in Altoona, PA. Some answers may be forthcoming.]

I've been thinking a lot about the unsettling murder of Brian Thompson. It is a murder and it unsettles me because I only have guesses, and they aren't very reliable ones, for its cause. Putting aside the possibility that it was done with no connection to what he did for a living (!), should we be comfortable with a murder done on a person whose fortune came from essentially deciding who lives and who dies? (The words inscribed on the bullet casings imply Thompson was killed because of his work, but we've all watched mysteries where such clues are red herrings.)

That is, when you come right down to it, the job of every insurance executive. Their decisions are based on what will generate the most money for their stockholders, and that isn't damning in itself, because that is the reason companies like United Health exist. The rules they operate under, admittedly mostly self-defined, are often Byzantine and designed for profit rather than an individual's health, and that is how capitalism works. Whether that's justifiable is a different topic.

This is the world we are in and we need to maneuver in it, preferably keeping our sense of right and wrong intact. So I guess the question is, How should we react to a murder possibly done for vengeance? 

The overwhelming consensus expressed online is that the act is understandable, if not justified. That assumes a lot of background that we might find is wrong. But let's say all these guesses are true: That the murderer lost a loved one due, at least in part, to the unthinking juggernaut of the capitalist healthcare system, and he is acting, in the best Levitical tradition, on the basis of an eye for an eye. In this way he's acting as a stand in for justice, and I've seen him compared to the Lone Ranger or the Equalizer. 

The Equalizer deaths are gorier and nastier than a quick bullet to the back, so let's say he's acting like the more romantic Lone Ranger, albeit with the caveat he shot Thompson in the back. The Lone Ranger, of course, never shot anyone in the back. In fact, according to canon, the Ranger never killed anybody, always aiming to disarm, sometimes by wounding. 

But again, we're in the world in which guns are used more often to kill than to wound. We might not even be having this conversation if Thompson had only been wounded. There might have been a news blip, a short unsuccessful search for the shooter, and we'd hear no more about it. Presumably, executives would rest easier and there would be a lingering question whether their own insurance claims cover being shot, but in the end nothing more. 

Instead we have what Aja Romano and Sigal Samuel in Vox call "people [who are] posting vitriolic comments about Thompson feel justified in being smug about the death of this human in particular." There are some funny ones, I won't deny it--the "thoughts and prayers" and "my empathy is out of network" memes being two of the most clever if also the easiest--but the overall response by many people I'd consider comrades is exactly that, a smug assertion that Thompson got what he deserved. 

Here's why that gives me pause. Romano and Samuel recognize "The humanity we show each other is a complicated thing." Their solution suggests we expand our compassion so that we align with both Thompson's family and those families affected by his decisions, and that's one way to accept it. But in that rationale there's no reason to change anything, it's a "tut tut, isn't that terrible" response, and it's like saying everyone is responsible and no one is responsible. 

Part of the reason I'd consider many of these smug posters comrades is because we reacted together in horror at the fact that Donald Trump won the popular vote (yes, I accept it), that a majority of people accept and relish his view that people they don't like need to be brought to justice in some way, that laws need to change to make them pay, either by exile or prison, fines at the very least. 

Trump, on the other hand, was found guilty in a court of law of at least 34 felonies, and there might have been more had he not won the election and will definitely negate his convictions and trials to the extent he can, whether through Constitutional means or not. Trump is the opposite of what Lincoln called "the angels of our better nature." He has voiced his primary desire (and many of his supporters echo this) as vengeance on his perceived enemies, the people who would hold him to the laws. 

To cheer on Thompson's killer is to join sides with Trump, only changing the list of the deserving punished from right-wing enemies to left-wing enemies. Do not join his side. The urge to punish, poetically justifiable or no, sits in the cavern of our hearts where anger and frustration and hatred reside. They are angels of our baser nature and we must have the courage to refuse to give in to them.

May We be Overreacting

In conversation—okay, an argument—with someone I know who, while not necessarily a voter for trump, is nonetheless willing to give him the benefit of whatever doubt she still harbors, she said I was overreacting because of the "hyperbole and rhetoric" of the opposing campaign. "This has," she wrote, "caused policy disagreement to elevate to terror."

She is, of course, a lawyer who has long spent time making big things out of little ones, so she knows of what she speaks when it comes to hyperbole.

But I hope she's right. While I don't recognize these "disagreements" she mentions, which seem to me more like fiats, I do recognize the terror people feel about them. I know folks who fear for their livelihood, their housing, their health needs, even for their lives, because of things trump and his toadies have said they will do. 

But I would like to be wrong. I would like to wake up one day and realize, "God, what was that all about? Why was I so worried?" In this world, trump is no worse, if no better, than any other president, having made no real inroads into the American psyche or legal structure. As a result, he goes down in history, not as the King Joffrey of our political structure, but as the Claudius of it, being no more memorable or despicable than Millard Fillmore. And maybe played by Derek Jacobi.

Of course, his first term eradicated that possibility. This one has all the earmarks of being worse given what we're already seeing of his choices (RFK Jr at HHS? Matt Gaetz as AG?). But I would still like this to be an overreaction on our parts, projecting all our fears and worries onto a politician (and he is one now) as pliable and loveable as your grandfather with the initial stages of dementia. 

From my lips to God's ear.

I also really, really doubt that. 

Rule Number One: Don't Isolate

This is an issue I'm particularly prone to. I feel embarrassment after a political loss, as if I somehow failed the people I worry for. As a result, I would self-isolate if I could. It's a hard thing, dragging myself to meetings and church services and even work when all I want to do is hide in the bed for the next four years. 

But we know that's not productive, either on a communal or personal level, and I know from past experience it doesn't leave you or the people you love any less a target. As the author writes, "you just need to show up consistently. How else do we get to know the people around us if we don’t make the effort to get together?...[Every] interaction and every group meeting is an opportunity to get to know one another and create trust." 

And trust is our weapon the opposition can't replicate. 

I Will Not Give Those People One Tear

I'm in the process as I'm sure many of you are looking for as many allies and good people as I can. To that end, I'm going to share them with you. 

Nana Tuckit is a drag queen on Instagram (for now? perhaps) who brings her A game to the results of the election. As she says, You can stand behind me.

An Essay You Should Read

 

This is a good, hard look at what our immediate future can look like if we can look beyond our own fears and trepidations and stay in touch with the people we trust, not just to bitch but to bitch and work toward solutions. Don't allow yourself to be isolated, that's the way these motherfuckers get their way. Love each other and stay safe. 

Take courage friends.
The way is often hard, the path is never clear,
and the stakes are very high.
Take courage.
For deep down, there is another truth:
you are not alone.

Wayne B. Arnason

Hope Among the Meanness

 

I've often lived in an America meaner than the sum of its parts. I was born into the hopeful Kennedy years, and I was five when the Civil Rights Act made things a little better. The American with Disabilities Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency were a couple bright spots, too.

Meanwhile, a majority of citizens supported wars in Vietnam, Laos, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan, and lots of little places and little wars in between. Jimmy Carter, with his sensible sweater and solar panels, made me think things weren't so bad. But I remember the Reagan/Bush years, when nastiness was the point and people were encouraged to say what they already felt, the Clinton years, when citizens were left banging on empty factory doors, and the Bush II years, when lies authorized a lot of death.

Obama, well, what can I say. We really saw a difference, both in personal conduct on the president's part and government. That "hopey-changey thing" Sarah Palin disparaged made things easier for a lot of people. Sure, there were still food wastelands in all our inner cities and prices fluctuated, the way they always do. But for the first time, in my lifetime, we had a president who understood that most of us live paycheck to paycheck, a lot of us don't have steady transportation, and those that do can't always afford to use it. Obama understood that bosses could be assholes and owners looked out for themselves long before they paid a living wage or overtime. We felt the meanness many Americans experienced at the hands of officials begin to slip.

Then came trump I. The hood came out. Children were separated from parents. Many children died. The guy who was supposed to be looking out for us suggested we pour bleach in our guts to relieve the symptoms he got the most cutting-edge treatment for. In the name of enriching himself further, he bullied, stole, and cheated. 

We hired Biden, Obama's number 2, and thought we'd bid adieu to America's Bunga-bunga leader. And for a while, especially when Joe made the decision to put country before himself and stepped aside for Kamala, it looked like we had it made. It would be a rout.

It was a rout. But in the wrong direction. 

Kamala was not a flawed candidate, or not any more so than any candidate, and if you want to call a candidate flawed, look to the one with 34 felony convictions, the one whose followers were violent because he told them to be, the one who had to have a new vice presidential candidate because they tried to hang the last one. In any contest, there shouldn't have been one. But there was.

We lost. 

America is mean again in the agglomerate. Get any two together and they'll find a way to diminish a third.

That's who we are, and I want to thank the electorate for defenestrating the notion I wasn't aware I still held that we were a unique nation, one where right wins out, where history is slow in coming but is coming still, where decade by decade the lives of its people get better. This second trump term, even if it ends with him, leaves the clock America lives by spun back, particularly if he names another SCOTUS member. 

This time it's not just Muslims and Hispanics (whose individual votes for him actually increased) on the receiving end of their meanness. It's women (oddly, a group which voted in greater numbers for him than in 2020, despite all they have lost, except for black women, who have never had illusions about America's meanness) and the LGBTQ+ community and people who are already at a disadvantage and whose lives were already endangered. I'm white and straight and already on a lower rung of the middle class, and I can feel the meanness boiling around me. I can't imagine the fear my friends face. 

Amid all this despair, can I offer any hope? Yes. 

While America in the aggregate is mean, individual Americans are not. When I lived in my car, I was often taken in by people I never would have expected. From sharing beers in the truck bed with a bunch of guys who had more guns than teeth, to fundamentalist Christians who gave me a safe place to sleep and eat without attaching their religion to it except as the reason they did it, to any number of people in suits and skirts giving me money because I asked for it, when you get people one on one they surprise and delight you. 

While a majority of us allowed our inner trump to direct our actions and together can terrorize what Jesus called "the least of these," I celebrate the rolled-down car window and a hand holding out a $20 to the guy standing by the exit; the cop who might disdain their behavior helping up the trans~ victim of assault and listening to their story; the angry worker bee who has had it up to here with these illegals handing a bottle of water to the thirsty Guatemalan at 6 AM in front of Home Depot; the self-described trad wife whose greatest fear is she won't have dinner ready on time offering the single mom who's paying with EBT and is short $2 to add it to her bill, and then takes out another $10 in cash for her. 

Are these examples of self-aggrandizing individuals making themselves feel a little better about how they have it by deigning to give a little out in dribs and drabs? Maybe. Maybe it's all we've got. Maybe we're all we've got. Like the beloved Ram Dass said, "We're all just walking each other home." Even Jesus laid it out on the individual: "Sell all you possess and give it to the poor and then follow me." Maybe the best we can hope for in a mean America is the individuals who give away what they have one element at a time, making one person's day a little bit better. 

It's like the kid who throws a starfish back into the ocean. Help that one.