NOVEMBER 11, 2024 – Today the world rotated yet again and made all of us a day older. In my own little corner of the globe I experienced enough to fill at least two episodes of the current season of my imaginary Netflix series. Otherwise put . . . to capture for posterity the details of my day in their full range of light, color, humor, anxiety, perspective, poignancy, and complexity, I would need half a day of complete solitude and a full stock of writing supplies—a fountain pen, 40 pages in a journal, and at least three cartridges of ink.
Unfortunately, most of what I had to laugh or worry about; most of what would be of interest to my readership, I cannot divulge without breeching the privacy of many people and offending their trust and sensibilities. The material that today fell into my lap, boxed me in the ears and slapped me across the face and back is the stuff that would turn a gifted writer’s inkwell into a gusher. Even at the nib of my pen, today’s material would keep a reader awake after their normal bedtime. But I must keep the journal closed—at least for now.
Perhaps one day I’ll write a novel—or a screenplay—based on the themes that played out today; themes originating long ago and unfolding into the distant future. For now, however, I must consign each reader to the fate of Tantalus, who stood in water he could never reach to drink while he reached for low-hanging fruit he could never grasp to eat.
I thought about pontificating about politics, but with commentators running wild and most everyone already having an established opinion, I’m not highly motivated just now to add anything at this late hour of an otherwise eventful day.
In any event, at this stage I detect a slight increase in the velocity of the earth’s rotation. It could be the weight of the current political climate. Or the urgency to address climate change, as representatives of governments around the world gather in Azerbaijan to . . . discuss and issue proclamations. Or, maybe what’s speeding up the turn of the globe is added energy expended in the den of my sister’s house, where for the better part of an hour this evening she’s been facing off against a gargantuan insect straight out of a horror film. Just after I’d solicited her response to last week’s election results[1], she screamed, “Oh my God! There’s a bug in my house! A bug bigger than any bug I’ve ever seen before; a bug that appears to be a huge cockroach!”
I could feel the magnitude of the disturbance in photos she texted me in the course of her real-time account of the battle. I suggested that she close the door to the den and stuff a towel under the door to isolate the critter from the rest of the house; then repair to bed with a book, and on the morrow, buy a can of bug spray, which, unlike a glass jar and piece of cardboard (her method deployed thus far but unsuccessfully, given the quick reflexes of the monster), would likely work with sufficient alacrity to neutralize the intruder and end the standoff.
Subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
[1] We never got beyond her opinion that the Democrats had fielded “a terribly weak and incompetent candidate”—a contention with which I vehemently disagreed—and the joint conclusion that our political system so punishes the best and the brightest, most people of such caliber are discouraged from running for high political office.
