Editor’s Note: The recent chill affects us all in this swath of the Eastern Seaboard. Marlow provides his take on the events which paved our highway and the way we drive upon it now.
– Vic
We seem to be endlessly watching America’s leaders and opinion makers in suave put-together outfits, inhabiting well staged scenes, and reading from crafted scripts that are so over the top beltway DC, it hurts to watch their ensuing Mark I Mod 0 do-nothing melodramas.
In fact, breaking up with them seems likely next November, and they won’t appear to have any regrets that they were at fault. They will be briefly sad for some of their unelected compadres and comadres, the loss of prestigious position, office, staff, and perks. But once they pick up the pieces, they will find new ways to mumble about the philistines who pushed them out. They can and will at least mingle with the ghosts of their past successes for ideas upon which to plot their return to the pinnacle, trying to ensure no one goes too far or not far enough the next time.
These poseur Savior “magicians” (they are so far beneath the level of shaman) are unfashionably hapless enough for some acolytes to commit career if not actual suicide over watching yet alone supporting another campaign and fund-raising trail run. We the unwashed will follow them out of morbid curiosity as they go steadily downhill, snickering at them insisting on staying at the most convenient dive hotel that has 24/7 room service and mini-bars. Pseudo political slumming in a word.
Most Americans do not recognize that the only reason most things in our Imperial city are off-white is because it had long ago once been gleaming white. Hell, my generation remembers those pristine moments before these greasy farting smoke makers arrived.
I used to like it there a lot, the town’s elevators were slow, but things got done . . . Now these old puds who currently run the joint mutter fondly as they recall when groups of them — the new kids, people in their late twenties and early thirties — rattled up and down the city’s grand staircases, the boys with that short hair we used see in Italian clothing ads, and the girls with short hair too looked so . . . All had those captivating silvery eyes on black and white TV screens, and we imagined them during those pre-color-TV-world days possessing a kind of titian or champagne golden hair that very few people could pull off.
Back then when I spied them in public, all I could muster was a breathless “Far out!”
Even when some wore green shirts with their black suits or navy-blue skirts, they looked as though they could be in a black capes on the way to the opera — an elegant vampire look. That alone should have made it obvious that they were or would become the living dead.
Their smelling of peonies, double tulips, and dahlias not currently in bloom — scents that no parfumiers would ever consider using in their product lines– should have tipped us off that something was amiss once we heard them utter things too DC for words. Our alarm bells sadly would remain unrung for many decades.
Yes, we Boomers were in it just for cheap thrills — more like the expensive-trouble kind. Sorta like what one of my astute thoughtful co-workers said once, “expensive regrets.”
I laughed at this phrase the first time I heard him say it, responding “Well, we’ll live forever, so we’ll have more to regret, and the more, the better.”
“Well, I was in Vietnam and regrets suck.” he softly whispered back.
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Were we blind or what? I’m not stunned. You know, it’s just so hard to believe that once there was a time, you know, back in the seventies when I actually thought we’d won. I mean, I thought our side was so right, we’d never lose again.
Watergate proved it. He was caught and paid the price. After getting rid of Nixon, out of Vietnam (the disgraceful bug out scratched this triumph off the list), women could have legal abortions and the US government was found to have illegally spied on hundreds of thousands of us citizens (the Patriot Act and events during the last Administration scratched this one off the list), we had won. So, no regrets.
But no, here we are — PresBid and Giggles, SpeakerNan and Chuckles – an anti-charisma four-way on the way wrong side of a payback backlash happened. Expensive? You bet. Trillions and trillions are the textbook definition of legislated expensive regrets. But that’s only a beginning. This temporary inflation is going be a “to the moon, Alice” costly regret that no one under say 50 has a clue about.
Meanwhile the country is aimlessly driven down dusty canyon roads that only the old fondly remember from long ago John Ford movies, while the young don’t recognize there will be no easy or quick exit from these box canyons and that those shadowy figures high up on the ridges would, not could, do them harm. I’m thinking Ukraine and Afghanistan here for you who are keeping score. Taiwan might well follow.
If things fall poorly, America could become like pre-Build Back Better pavement – old, pockmarked, and potholed with dollar and body count expensive regrets. Yup, even Sunset Strip in LaLa land and Pennsylvania Avenue in DC will not be spared.
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Here’s a tell — our White House’s national security advisor favors an outmoded if not downright square preppy look, always dressed in loafers and comfy socks, a white or light-blue shirt. Jesus, he’s the 2nd coming of Robert McNamara in the flesh. Are we getting regretful yet?
We should be.
It’s gonna be expensive as hell.
Why couldn’t they have been like the long-ago silent movie stars who gracefully exited after 20 or so yearlong careers when talkies started to have been buried with warm honors in some National Cemetery plot with a view under tombstones with huge angels on top, naked with faces full of empty, dulled power lust?
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Is it me or do many of these folks look like the crotchety shushing librarians from our distant past? How can they not sense they are not coming off as reasonable, rational, hip people who deserve to rule the world?
They tempt us by all but imploring that they want us to live with and like them, free to come and go as we wish, staying in one of their guest houses.
We can’t see that they are asking us to sell our souls to a pack of low rent weasels.
They up sell market us on an endless state of ever ascending and mounting marvelousness.
Something bad’s happening here. Why it isn’t exactly clear is obvious.
Maybe it’s just we old salts are finding out you could take the boy off of the ocean, but you couldn’t take the boy out of dangerous high seas for long.
We are seven seas possessed.
Our suns’re beginning to set, we’ve been here so long trying to make clear what we see as looming tragedies, nobody who knows us thinks of us in that way because . . . well just because.
We never thought of DC this way, that it was something to be sneered at. We thought it was something we could run better or at least it seemed that way until stuff started breaking down in the late 80s and early 90s.
Maybe as the saying goes — everything will work out, but badly.
Probably I should stop cultivating this disillusioned and world-weary attitude to counteract my rude smart-assed streaks of snarky optimism. It gets in the way of reality. To me thinking that nothing works, always made me laugh.
Anyways, we, W and I, are in a place that once you get there, you don’t want to leave with
the sultry smell of burning candles
our old turn of the 20th century French posters
velvet scented garden air
unbridled fiery endlessness
laying down and in oak scented smoke
pretending to be Halloween pirates
no curfews, lockdowns, or quarantines
occasionally reading about beltway electrical storms of anarchy that spread from speeches and images on TV of DC and other cities caught up in simultaneous combustion
we have weak spots and know each other’s weak spots
but unlike us, DC is all weak spots.
mine include W’s just stitched, red kimono-like house robe hand made from winery patch cloths that looks like Joseph’s Technicolor Dream Coat
anyways who could breathe that DC air?
not ever going to try
perhaps we shall dance to jazz in the living room while DC . . . well you know . . .
we know things are bad, but
we still have hope.
Maybe we have a touch of hippie that keeps us on the side of “things are going to improve.”
Detached and ironic are just too hard.
Our past cheap thrills were just expensive regrets?
Perhaps being corny and intent on happy endings, yes, they’re wishful thinking, would be a nice change.
But the fear I can’t shake is their utter bad taste.
Some Sundays when we finally get out of bed, we jump into our car to drive through our city and coastal countryside as much we can stand seeing, smelling, eating and talking about.
It’s those moments when we both know, just know, that it won’t an earthquake or meteor or climate change that nearly destroys us but us, ourselves, to each other.
That’ll be the ultimate expensive regret. But, should it occur, will there be anyone around to feel it?
Makes us long for another perfect day for the Tybee Island beach, warm and sunny this coming summer, and once more we’ll slide into our personal Empire oblivion.
Copyright 2022 My Aisle Seat
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