I have divorced myself from politics, not out of despair, but with the clear-eyed recognition that the number of my days has dwindled into a quantity imminently recognizable as finite.  Of course, my days have always been numbered, but with 80% or more of those rotations having disappeared in the rearview mirror, why squander precious unlabored respiration lamenting what you can’t control when you could be watching a Marx Brothers movie or listening to Rashaan Roland Kirk or holding hands while exchanging anecdotes?

That said, I do glance at headlines in the Times, often proclamations from a pathologically insecure man incapable of self-deprecation, a man who extolls self-proclaimed virtues like his “genius” or “sanity.” He boasts of his “top tier education” or his takes credit for the fact that under his watch no one has died in a commercial air crash.  Recently, he has become aweary, aweary of the First Amendment of the Constitution of a republic he would rather rule than govern.  To say that he is an egregious ass is to understate his odium.

Yet a third of the country approves of him and more than that voted for him despite his garish, cartoonish appearance, despite the bankruptcies, despite his impoverished vocabulary, despite his taking pride in grabbing the genitalia of women he has just met.  Evangelical Christians are particularly devoted to him for reasons that defy rational explanation.

Of course, there is no easy explanation how a promoter of professional wrestling has come into the possession of the nuclear codes.  Pundits posit emotions like “resentment” or suggest nativist xenophobia as possible factors.  Then there’s that whipping girl Hillary Clinton whom many people simply abhor.  Recently I’ve read (in passing) that no one, including Trump, thought he could win (which, along with sloth, would explain why there was no transition plan).  So why not throw away your vote on Jill Stein or write in “Oprah Winfrey” since there is no way that Donald Trump could win?

Anyway, I’m contradicting myself by going on like this when I need to be rereading Frankenstein, which is due next Tuesday, the day after we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

I’ll let Mary Shelley have the last word.

 [I]f no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquility of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved, Caesar would have spared his country, America would have been discovered more gradually, and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.

Mary Shelly, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.

 

Because for me and my family – and I dare say the nation at large – 2017 was such a doleful twelve months, I thought about not constructing my traditional year-end recap of my blogging; however, going back through the posts has been, if not exactly therapeutic, instructive as dredging up the past has provided me a more detached idea of my state of mind during Judy’s decline. Essentially, the omnipresent Scythe Wielder is ignored, which makes sense, since Judy was a reader, sometimes (not often enough) a proofreader of this blog.

January was Trump obsession month, though my favorite post attacked not the Donald but king hell hypocrite Paul Ryan, suggesting that the arch Catholic should read Flavory O’Connor, but I did stray away from politics  to reminisce about Judy’s and my courting days.

In February I fantasied what it would be like to see Trump as a tragic hero and wrote about the practical advantages of memorizing poetry,  Huh?

And celebrated Mardi Gras on Folly Beach by making a film. As it turned out, the celebration supposedly got out of hand.

In March, in an act of great generosity I provided stuck fiction writers the titles and scenarios for mass market paperbacks based on Dylan lyrics. More seriously, I offered teenagers, whom I know something about, some good advice, and to offset any pretense of wisdom, told the story of bribing my middle school sons by buying them the issue of Playboy magazine depicted below.

April is supposedly the cruelest month, and it came very close. By now I had abandoned politics and turned my thoughts to avoiding a living death  with the idea of termination looming.  Perhaps I was angry at the universe.  Why else rant about hairstyles?

May

Judy dies.

I grieve.

I deliver a speech.

June

The Art of Grieving,

But life goes on.  I learned a new word.  Failson, and reported for jury duty.

July

As Emily wrote:  “First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –”

Unanswered prayers.

Trafficking in Mockery.

And speaking of failsons. Here’s a shopping guide.

August

As far as writing goes, I was lazy in August.  I was hanging with a grief counsellor, hanging at Chico Feo, discovering the Island Breeze, preparing for my 32nd year at PG, checking out total eclipses.

September

Back to school and into a new classroom.

October

Definitely, the highlight of the year.  NOLA.  If you haven’t checked this out, you need to.

November

Judy Birdsong In the Lobby of the Chelsea Hotel 23 April 2011.

December

If typing this in London, leaving tomorrow, need to pack, so I’m out of here.  Thanks to all my repeat readers.  This blog sort of keeps me off the streets and out of trouble.  Happy New Year.

 

The first time I visited in ’83, punk ruled.  I talked to a woman in a nurse’s uniform with piercings galore and a pink Mohawk that brought to mind the plumage of an exotic bird that you might encounter in a Sci-Fi magazine. She was sweet as pie as she instructed me how to get to or obtain whatever I had asked.  Last night when I was momentarily lost, the seeming old gent wasn’t quite as accommodating as he waved his cane and growled ‘Je ne sais pas” after I asked for directions to the Tower Hill metro station.  Robert Earl Keen fan that I am,  I put on my most meanincing ugly American mask and hollered, “Ou est la gare? Ou est la gare?” Of course, he ignored me, walking on, stooped over, tapping, disappearing into the fog.

Do you know the Robert Earl Keen song “Whenever Kindness fail?”

However, the folks — both staff and clientele — at the pub Hung, Drawn, and Quartered were as nice as could be as Ned and I ordered minced pies and local ales.  I like a joint that calls a “toilet” a “toilet,” that makes you go downstairs and pass through double doors to take a piss in a communal urinal.  These conveyances are okay for the Herculeanly endowed, but if you’re hung like Ganymede, and it’s crowded, I suspect it might be embarrassing.

At any rate, a good time was had by all.

So after the pub crawling and 11 hours of uninterrupted sleep (thanks for the earplugs, Loquacia), it’s Christmas Eve, overcast, dank, and gloomy, just like in the illustrations of A Christmas Carol I remember as a boy.

Of course, Ned and I are here to avoid memories of Christmas pasts, but, at least for me, Judy’s omnipresent, snaking with me through the roped maze at Heathrow, the documentation safely stowed, or sitting next to me in a pub pre-children pining for Sally and Jack, the springer spaniels we’d leave behind for two months in 1983.

However, these are good memories to be smiled at, not wept over, and as it turns out, I’m doing some contemporary pining for the left behind as I type this just across from the Tower of London where historically some bigtime pining went down.

So it’s time to accumulate some new memories to be smiled when tomorrow’s Christmas has come and gone.