| 08 March 2006 Good as It Gets This morning, in this place, is the best that will be. Empires rise and fall, ice advances and withdraws. The fabric of the earth itself rends and lava flows. Weaving our small lives into the warp and weft of such a mighty tapestry is daunting, but the loom creaks on. We stand at a summit, of sorts. It could be warmer, I suppose. There could not be a long meeting with a speaking part looming before me, with potential downstream economic implications. That meeting could be other than in Fairfax County, nor a dinner invitation downtown on the Hill, which will require movement across jurisdictional boundaries. The money situation could be better, and there are all those troubling portents out there. But let us stake stock for a moment. If it was warmer, the seas would be rising even faster. The checkbook has balanced once more, and the paychecks are continuing to come. The enormous deficit that our government is running has not come due. The flu has not leapt across species. The specter of civil war has not fully materialized in the zone of war, and we, me and you, both have our precious health. The housing bubble has not burst yet. The Chinese are still smiling and selling us everything we might dream of. If there are weapons of mass destruction already present on our shores, they have not been used. If the M-13 gang is present in the “affordable housing” area to the north of Big Pink, it has asserted itself only against the South Side Locos, and not against the residents of the placid. Dogs have not been banned form the parklands around the building, and the car and the truck are running well, and premium gas is readily available to run them, even if it is more expensive than I would like. I'll avoid looking in the mirror this morning, since the face that appears there represents the cautionary and operative part of the equation. Are the eyes more rheumy than they were yesterday? Has the jaw-line sagged again, or the chasms alongside the mouth deepened? Better not to wear glasses immediately after the shower. Still dripping, I absorbed the new things to worry about through the paper and the mellifluous voices that emanated from the radio. A renewed Patriot Act is on the President's desk for signature. Oppression continues in a military dictatorship overseas; sectarian violence in Iraq is either worse or not, though the eighteen corpses of morning suggest the work of a death squad in Iraq. The Taliban is training openly in Quetta, Pakistan, preparing for their return to Afghanistan. Truckers at the border have been scrutinized and fully a third of them at the wheels of the big rigs are convicted felons. Whoever runs the ports, these are the working-class people who operate them, American citizens or not. Anything for them appears to be fair game. Local violence passes by, almost under the radar screen. Thirty shots were fired by angry young men, carrying out a continuing vendetta from last week, hurtling from the District into Maryland and back again. A stiff anti-machete law is contemplated to stem a small but rising tide of intimidation and severed digits right here. I heard nothing about the climate change this morning, since ours is in the midst of the seasonal fluctuation, perhaps it is too hard to tell. Not too cold, There must be something good happening out there somewhere, some breakthrough happening on infectious disease, some new dual-processing computer chip that will make life more efficient. A dangerous plot is undoubtedly being foiled, and truck drivers are being rounded up, and perhaps another oversight panel will be established to ensure the national Security Agency does not exceed its bounds. There must be some sort of equilibrium of good and ill, some pattern that lacks drama and eludes our common daily comprehension. I do wish that it were warmer this morning, the buds springing and the soft gentle breeze from the West were bringing spring to us once more. But that would mean a leap forward in time. We have none of that to lose, and each of these days when things work is precious. Since it is currently as good as it gets, I resolve to enjoy the day before us. There is room for optimism, since all our striving must count for something, right? Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |