This was starting as a normal day, with dog, except that the time is wrong and I have to pack and get ot of here. I had gone around to all the clock except teh one in the car and the truck to make sure that I was not as disoriented as I could be. But it never works. Something is wrong, and I can’t get it quite straight.

We walked properly, and I put him out on the balcony, and I need to get back downstairs, and then I got a note from an old pal that leveled me. He is in the midst of a misery storm; bearing up, but with tragedies on all sides.

Death is among them, and the specter of it, and it made me feel as chilled as the breeze from the west on the balcony, where the dog decided to talk to the creatures below. I hustled him back inside, since there is some crazy woman on the 7th floor that is circulating a petition to make this a pet-free building and I don’t need any more enemies than I already have.

I had to write my pal back, but I didn’t know what to write.

I had wondered why I had not heard from him, and so I wrote back in concern and horror that things can go so dramatically wrong all at the same time, and you don’t even have to add the stress of the job on top of it.

He asked me to keep his troubles to myself, and so I will. But I can see why he would need to talk, when the fundament of the world seems to be collapsing.

Meanwhile, I was typing and trying to do the wash so I would have some clean underwear for the Golden State. I finished a particularly insightful paragraph and raced down the hallway to find that the door to the laundry room locked itself on me with my wet clothes bunched inside the washer on the wrong side of the door. The airplane to California beckoning.

I need more stress in my life. I picked the lock with a credit card, and breathed a sigh of relief. Then I felt bad. Problems are in the perspective. There is laundry and there is the spetre of death.

It was an appropriately gray morning, as befits the one after the time change of fall, and the atmosphere is pregnant with moisture and the hint of the winter to come.

I am not a religious man, though I do have a streak of wild spirituality, and have found a mantra of acceptance that helped me through my younger son’s travails when he appeared to be dying as an infant, and has served me in dark moments since.

I am whispering it now. �Thank you, Lord, they will be done.�

Repeated in rhythm like a prayer wheel, it helps me meditate, and realize that the great inexorable universe is going to spin right over me, and my thoughts and concerns are just a bug spot on God’s windshield.

At this point lapsed into the world that I know, since it serves to .keep the graver issues of eternity at arm’s length.

The political shenanigans have been mildly entertaining, and the failure to indict Karl Rove along with Mr. Libby is an interesting one. I noted the photo ops with Scooter on crutches, an artful way to say that spin is an all encompassing art.

I wish him well. I do not think that government service should include the requirement to retain expensive and ruinous counsel at personal expense. This is a policy matter, after all, and I am not sure that a special prosecutor rampaging through the private corridors of the West Wing is in anyone’s best interest, and I have consistently thought that through Watergate and Whitewater and this strange interlude that only tangentially involves the purported crime of Deplameation.

I have been deposed only once in my life. It was conducted in the rooms of hostile counsel, and my Pillsbury Attorney was by my side. I was carefully questioned with my ex in attendance about my life history, under oath, I was compelled to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

It was as ugly as any moment I have experienced. I can see why people make up plausible stories, and I understand why people lie.

I didn’t, but seeing the truth on the court-recorders record is more intense than checking testimony to Congress for accuracy.

But understanding is not the same as approving, and I assume that Mr. Libby is taking one for the team, as did John Poindexter, and he is willing to suffer the consequences.

So there is that, which of course is about how we got to the war, and that in itself should be the discussion, regardless of what Prosecutor Fitzgerald says.

His investigation is part of a process that is as inexorable as it is inappropriate.

I have no particular sympathy for Martha Stewart, but she went to jail for obstruction of justice, not for fraud, and Mr. Clinton was impeached not for a statutory crime, but for trying to avoid disgrace. In the end, there was no crime, except for trying to dodge an implacable special prosecutor. There used to be an excuse in the law for doing something bad. They called it “self defense.”

I heard Chuck Colson speak on one of the chattering shows on the cable the other day. He was the one who said he was willing to walk over his grandmother for President Nixon. It was interesting to hear that things haven’t change regardless of all the time that has passed. He went to jail for his role in the Wattage business, and he said that after appearing before the grand jury some thirty times, he was never tried for perjury, but rather for the vague charge of obstruction of justice. He said he tired to be helpful, but it still got him more than a half year in the slammer.

The mill wheel of justice grinds incredibly fine, and I thank each day that I am not subject to the Questions.

So that, and the war, go on. Or perhaps they are part of the same thing. I can’t tell from this distance. Maybe it will be more clear in California, since that is several time zones from here, and that seems to bring clarity to things in Washington.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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