The Kvetching Samaritan

Two more members of Starfleet bit the stardust.

And then one morning before sunrise I looked out my kitchen window and saw a crescent moon smiling in the sky and Jupiter above it and Mars above that in a slanted alignment that made me think of the allignment in 2001: A Space Odyssey, just before Dave is hurled through the Star Gate.

But I’m not saying it was an omen, although it feels like we’re on the brink of something and sometimes I think the System will soon collapse into either a bloodbath or a lengthy pie fight.

And inflation is so bad now you can’t buy an election with 400 million dollars.

Malignant Narcissus has lost the beautiful reflection of himself, his only true love, in the slime of the Reflecting Pool, and has gone insane. 

The Golden Solipsist has no control over the world inside or outside of his mind.

But Reality always wins.

I know that the favorable midterms are only a baby step In the revolution we need to create, God help us.

I want to be part of that, but I don’t know what I can do.

Take hold of what concerns you ultimately, and embrace it with all your heart, soul and might, I recall someone saying, 

and love your neighbor as yourself.

I’m not confident about this.

I spend my free time gazing into the grand abyss of critical theory, but have yet to grasp a possible practice, or “praxis”, as we like to say.

I’m too disorganized to be an organizer and no longer good for long marches.

I’m an old man and 

I have a long way to go and 

I’m not strong. 

I get off the 6 train at Astor Place and I’m carefully climbing the stairs and a woman calls from below 

Excuse me! 

Excuse me!

I turn and see her with her big bag on a whadyacallit, a luggage thing with wheels.

Will you help me carry this? She asks.

I groan silently and take a careful step down. 

A young man now appears up above and is descending the stairs. 

He looks stronger, the lady says. 

Excuse me! Excuse me! Will you help me with my bag?

He also silently but almost audibly groans, and hurries down, and picks up both the woman’s big bag and whadyacallit together, and holds them over his head as he bounds up the stairs.

The woman follows and as she passes me she says, 

He is stronger.

Screw you, I reply.

Thank you, she responds.

I have a long way to go and I’m not strong.