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BIRTHDAY IMAGE
REPRESENTATIVE ANECDOTE OF THE DAY:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/11985.html?noop=1
Robert Novak involved in pedestrian hit and run. He wasn't the pedestrian. He was the one scooting away in his black corvette. I wouldn't expect anything less from the guy who helped leak Valerie Plame's name and then dodged all accountability. His actions stand as a nice representative metaphor for the ethos of the accountability-avoidant administration whose interests he has consistently served. As we survey the wreckage that they will soon leave behind, it is arguable that in may ways the last 7 years has been one long hit and run.
REFLECTIONS ON KARADZIC, IDENTITY ETC.
Really amazing story that this long sought war criminal (ok, alleged war criminal) has been hiding in plain sight like the purloined letter with a beard. Damn. They really needed someone with advanced facial recognition skills over there. Someone who wasn't tricked by the gestalt-altering potential of hairstyle and eyewear but knew how to break down the human face into discreet undisguisable anatomical units of analysis (eyes and brow/nose/mouth and chin etc.). Someone who was not misled by the merely ornamental but could see through to the immutable and essential. Someone who knew his way around the scalene of similitude. Someone like...hmmm. Moi!!
My shameless self-promotion notwithstanding: You've gotta admire the guy's chutzpah. Or psychotic disassociation. Or truly redemptive self-reinvention. Or perhaps all three. In fact, therein lies my fascination with the story. Was the mass murderer's transformation into an inspirational new age teacher/healer some kind of deeply cynical dissimulation? Was it an earnest attempt at karmic correction? Was it a defiant existential joke? Was it some kind of psychotic fugue state--that was in no way under the control of the ego? Was it some sort of public performance art statement about the unmasterable and irreducible contradictions of the Self? Was it a calculated step on the long road to becoming Santa? Was it some ultimately unknowable hybrid of all these things? Will we ever know? And most important: What was with that little black tuft of hair atop his head? Was that some symbolic remnant of his conscience? Was it a symbol of some deep identification with bird life? Was it a place holder for a dwarf yarmulke?
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You know if there is a hell, Saddam must be looking up right now and asking himself: Why didn't I think of this?!?!?!? He could have refashioned himself as the Dr. Phil of Fallujah.
IDEA FOR THE DAY:
Haven't we seen enough top athletes on reality TV shows like Dancing for the Stars? How about we flip it? A Reality show for Dancers in Football training camp. Broadway dancers. Ballet guys. River dancers. You name it. We get to see them block, punt, pass and kick. And then we get to see them blocked, gang tackled, body slammed and de-cleated. Hi jinx ensues.
DESCRIPTION OF THE DAY:
She was dead to him but still haunted him like the ghost of home.
STRANGELY MOVING SIGN OF THE DAY: (Taped to the wall in child's handwriting in the lobby of my building)
"MISSING. My Hamster. If you see him, please let me know. His name is Teddy."
Maybe it was just the name, maybe it was the proximity to my birthday...but it just felt so sad. Like it might as well have read. MISSING. My once cherished innocence. The chances of that hamster being found alive are about as high as the chances of OJ finding Nicole and Ron Goldman's killer anywhere outside his mirror.
SIGN OFF OF THE DAY:
OK, it just turned midnight. It's my birthday. Another trip around the sun has ended. Time to get used to a new number. It's gonna be really hard not to hear from my father today. Probably not as brutally hard as last year. But I expect a certain sadness to hover over the day. Or at least linger along its horizon. Birthdays are days of heightened presence. Presence to what is here and presence to what is no longer. They are reminders of the necessary wound we carry within us. The wound of birth through which we came into being and the inescapably twinned wound of death through which we will one day leave.
Or maybe it's just late and I'm feeling some of the fundamental poignance of things. Which isn't a bad thing at all. And perhaps a necessary condition for true celebration. There is, after all, a sadness that is indissociable from joy. And i guess I'm just feeling it.
In honor and memory of my father, I'm going to recite the birthday song once to myself in his behalf.
Happy birthday to me.
Happy birthday to me.
Happy birthday dear Teddy.
Happy birthday to me.
Let the celebration begin.
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Posted on 7/28/2008
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