Someone else will almost certainly say, “yesterday, December 7, 1941…etcetera”, today. I said it first thing in the morning, even though it won’t be effective until tomorrow morning. I got the jump on it. Actually, I didn’t ‘jump on it’ exactly. I did something more akin to sitting and typing on it. Since I had a nice cup of coffee before sitting and typing, I will be sitting on something else very soon. Sigh. Those who know me well will understand what I am talking about. My old friend and confidante, Mr. Coffee, has betrayed me in my later years. I have had incidents. Some of the incidents have been international, some more local. During the most heinous of my international incidents, a perfectly good pair of new underwear were abandoned in an airport toilet waste bin. It was amusing but I did feel a little exposed for the remainder of my trip home. The coffee that caused my episode was delicious, as this morning’s cup was. ‘scuse me for a moment.
I am back. That little distraction put me in mind of something else. A difficulty, as we age, that no one seems to discuss is: wiping up after a movement and it’s more cumbersome elements. Myself, I can’t bend and twist to reach around my expanding girth very well. Severe arthritis and bone spurs at C6 make such elaborate ballet nearly impossible. There are times I have had to ‘go between’ and that just doesn’t seem right. It’s unnatural. Because a bidet is completely unseemly, I have threatened friends that I may simply install a post. I shall call it ‘does a bear..question mark’ post. The post will, of course, have a foot pedal that, when depressed, will pull a new sheet of environmentally friendly material around the post after each use. The used material will be wound on a second roller and later washed, reused. I think it is a brilliant idea. For the sake of getting the idea out there and working, anyone may use it without fear of copyright or patent infringement.
Next time we meet, if you offer me coffee then later notice a noxious odour and can’t determine whence it rises, remember and note; I will most certainly be the one grinning facetiously and sidling out of the room at the time the mystery unfolds. If I suddenly reappear, wearing a new outfit? No, I am not being effette and ‘dressing for dinner’. I am being fastidious. I am not in the cast of Downton Abbey, I am just little ol’ ordinary me. Grin. The scene has played before. It happened recently. It happened before December 7.
In a dramatic understatement, my days of infamy have not been as extreme as that of the year 1941. While that particular December day of shit was an extraordinary day, mine have thus far been only moderately embarrassing days. My days have not been horrible. December 7 is an anniversary of horror. Sadly, not the only one. There are so many days of horror to mark in a year that it’s easy to lose count. It is easy to confuse horror with the mundane. It is easy to become blase. The aroma of horror fills our lives like a familiar, noxious cloud we can’t identify. The aroma of horror entices a little sniff, a wrinkled nose and a look away. We prefer not to acknowledge. We prefer not to really know. Somehow, we pretend the real is not real. We don’t want to engage with what is at it’s very least, embarrassing.
I wonder that I don’t finally quit coffee. I do try but almost always surrender to it’s delightful aroma. I get drawn in, wary or not. Our leaders prefer not to really quit encouraging horrible things, ordering horrible things done, then we get drawn in. The aroma of power wins out over good sense, wins out over considered, mutual, respectful engagement. Over and over and over and over. The same process, the same result. Tomorrow, yesterday, ad nauseum. Well, then.
Power, corruption, lies and coffee. Mmmmmmmm, irresistable. We are human, that is the way of it. Unfortunately, though it would be lovely to continue our ways, we are getting older. The body is changing and won’t accept the same things, the same poisons. There are more of us every hour. We can’t bend the way we used to and will have to build something fanciful we can rub up against and get clean. It’s our only choice if we don’t quit. We have been delighting in the odour of killing/warring/nationalism/righteousness. We have been drinking it all in, even though we know what will happen. There is plenty of history. Lots of abandoned underwear at the side of the human road. Some of it sticks up from under the surface of Pearl Harbour.
Robert On The Air 