8 February 2018

I want to write an honest sentence in which I use the real words, not the false. Not “stalker” but “guide,” not “president” but “dear leader.” I'm told “leader” is the wrong word, to say nothing of “dear.” When my daughter reads jokes from the internet, she pauses after each one to say she doesn't get it. We have two laughs and move on. When power mocks and the power to have power mocks itself: these are different cues, set on different stages. The one is too spare, like the wall I sense before me in zen; the other too ornate, like a joke done in brocade. Wanna beef, bra? Fake news in bad translation sounds apt, where the aide without a security clearance is found to have physically abused two wives and is pronounced “an honorable man” by “the good general.” I want gold behind my words, not this flimsy paper currency they fling about these days. Translate “transparency” as “mud,” “constitution” as “menu,” “due process” as “tunnel.” The actor found a skeleton with orange hair attached. I knew he was the actor because there seemed to be no character, only a man who wandered into a pilgrimage and took naps in toxic waste. Opposite of Sean Penn, who always acts the actor, bravura non-self parading his non-selflessness. This guide couldn't enter the room because his motives had to remain pure. Not like ideological purity, but like the unstained state of seeing ideology through. He was so scared he turned the wrong way and ended up in the mogul room. A bird flew past, then disappeared in thin air, if there was any. Not CGI exactly, but a gesture at it. Like the gesture that recognizes belief without succumbing to it. Is there such a thing as pure doubt? I doubt it. One always stumbles upon the rock in the river that stubs doubt's toe. Went down the rapids backwards, we did. Now ex-Director Comey tweets a view of that same river. His word was false before it came true, like a glass pyramid turned to the light, odd shaped tongue. His daughter was mute, or did she lack legs? What matter, she embodied incompletion, though in real life doubtless she had one. As the film ends, she pushes glasses across a table with her eyes as our eyes take hers in. To take in is either to adopt (like a group of elephants an orphan) or to absorb (like a beating). It's like suffer or any other word that means its own othering. His favorite scenes were those of the black dog walking in the water.

--8 February 2018