transpose

Cookie cutter crescent moon against a taut sky of immaculate liquid blue. The small hours fade in that limbo between night and daybreak. Too early, this isolated trek from front door to subway door. Too little sleep and too many divergent thoughts grapple for lucidity through tangles of sleepiness. Too early to adopt my usual swagger, or my detached, slightly amused expression. The life of this neighborhood is drowsy behind sporadic lighted windows of the houses and apartment buildings I pass. My footfalls are nearly silent.


Card swipe to the platform, again I gaze up at the impassive smile of moon. The reverie ends after a minute or two when the train clatters into the station. Seated, my serene sleep gaze through the nicked and scuffed windows and across the east of this borough. I consider all of those disparate lives and stories out there across the sprawl.

Swept under the river and through tunnels, it’s generally a trouble-free jaunt at this time of the workday. The trains are not yet ready to veer off schedule or break down. The masses have not yet emerged from their cocoons to cluster and shove. No crowds – just the usual suspects heading to the morning shift of somewhere. Some of these faces have even become familiar.

Dragged from stupor at my exit, through the gate, up the stairs and into the heart of the city. The detritus of another city night greets me. Stray night owls, loiterers, insomniacs. Hacks lean against their yellow cabs, lined along Broadway in front of the fast food joint, waiting for their dawn fares, coffee clutched like a defensive weapon. Traces of last night’s deluge of rain are collected in polluted curbside puddles.

The storms had pummeled the house, lashed the windows, gusted across and over and around. Locked out. And I was locked in, sheltered in solitude, words at my fingertips, distracted only by the din of the storm and the passive slow motion flow of the lava lamp.


My demeanor shifts to express lassitude, but beneath the guise lurks bemusement and perception. I observe, scrutinize, discern – it’s inherent. It’s what I always do. Convey life and memory and impression into something on a page resembling coherence. Put it here for anyone, anywhere to read. I keep so much to myself, but I put as much here as the ego’s comfort level allows.

Outside the office, a morning forager beats on a discarded pipe array. This is kind of amusing – a momentary distraction from contemplation, theory, fatigue, hope, tomorrow. His wheeled cart is loaded with the scraps and trophies and treasures of his life. He beats on this insulated pipe arrangement, the jarring clang of metal-on-metal in an attempt to loosen the conduit box and… I’m at a loss. Maybe the pipe is fitted with copper. That’s the ticket. He can sell it for a few dollars to get him through a few more days.

In the office now, alone in silence. Fluorescent sunshine-substitute across this tiny company-owned planet. I almost enjoy this calm before the workday’s controlled chaos. Soon enough this place will be crawling with our regularly scheduled players, and I will be scheduled for my usual desire to exit the stage, discard my role in this sideshow. There are so many other places I yearn to be right now, but at this moment, in a blink of existence, I am only here. So, for now, I slouch in this ergonomically correct chair, rub the sleep from my eyes, insular, huddled into myself, and I wait.

symmetry

The voters of America have rejected the status quo. They rejected lies, corruption, and the consolidation of power. They rejected propaganda and the politics of fear. It seems they even rejected the agenda of Fox News.

I've had a taut, sinking feeling about the negative shift in the political and cultural makeup of the United States for several years. I think it initiated when the rumblings of an invasion of Iraq was first considered in 2002. The apprehension was exacerbated when administration lackey Colin Powell performed the heinous Republican wardance before the United Nations in February 2003, where he presented the flimsiest of evidence regarding "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq.

And for over three years now the citizens of the United States have watched the country's respectability and standing, both at home and abroad, slowly and steadily erode. We who wanted to somehow save the country, to return to common sense and American ideals of freedom, stood angrily bound on the sidelines as the warmongers, liars, and thieves stole the United States away from the people.

These withering feelings did not ebb until the night of the mid-term elections on November 7. The feeling gradually lifted throughout the day on the 8th. Finally, the system of checks and balances was back in place after too many years of sanctimonious and misguided one party rule.

One party rule is China. Cuba. Syria. Iran. It conjures images of the Soviet Union. That is not America. And if I might place tongue-in-cheek and borrow a hackneyed term from the duplicitous neo-cons, to espouse and champion the warped ideal of one party power is tantamount to treason.

Please don't read too deeply between the lines here - I'm not even a Democrat. I'm an Independent whose political views lean toward the Libertarian, and that is usually where my votes go. We must allow additional political parties and disparate voices into the current system - offer viable alternatives to rote methods - for true progress to become attainable in this country. To have Presidential debates between a mere two candidates who too often are mirror reflections of each other is absurd - and even insulting.

This exhortation is not declaring the Democratic Party saviors of the American soul. Their claim on both houses of Congress is probably not going to fully mend bitter rifts or heal the lesions that have been inflicted on the country by the callous shortsightedness of Republican rule. There is the chance the Dems could accomplish nothing. But for now I want to avoid cynicism and not state that it will be political business-as-usual in Washington. I want to hold on to this sense of sanguinity, at least for a while. There is the chance that the Democrats could push the U.S. in a positive direction. And as mentioned, the crucial scheme of checks and balances is restored.

And that, not only for the people of the United States but also for the citizens of the world, is a prodigious relief.