Page 22 - WTP Vol. XII #2

15
Worries
Ihave a cherished friend who merges epical anxieties with small ones: our political life, need- less to say, but her archaic plumbing too, and the state of a friend’s shop in her tidy Midwest town. She fears that it won’t recover from the COVID scourge, which made recourse to online retail even more general.
I had some nerve recently to chide this friend for her copious concerns, despite my copious own.
For example, this morning, as I drove through a nasty blend of rain and snow to our village, my stomach churned when I spotted a near neighbor, a roofer, up on a scaffold. He was replacing some siding on an old house. Given the slippery conditions, that was just too risky.
And yet the world wasn’t ending, of course, and isn’t. At least not yet. And I remind myself, not every last thing’s awful or new. We’ve always had monsters, say, like the one from Cleveland, who lately posted videos of himself on YouTube, killing some random homeless man.
Since human beings started to draw breath, there’ve been evil, war, woe. What’s so patently dif- ferent nowadays is that nothing is hidden, nothing’s off-limits, not even the raves of morons who voice their opinions online, like the ones insisting that a nonexistent entity called Antifa was behind the January 6th assault on the Capitol—or that it wasn’t an assault at all but “peaceful protest.” That’s the same crowd, I suspect, including their traitorous idol Trump, who insisted that Mr. Obama was a Kenyan, his family all Muslims.
Our screen world plops the local ranter down at the very same keyboard as a modern-day Aristotle’s. Viewers can choose whatever claim turns them on. When that traitorous idol spoke of a terrorist horror in Sweden, for instance, the fact that no such thing ever happened seemed unimportant to his backers.
My friend? Yes, she frets too much, but for whatever it’s worth I understand. I didn’t see that roofer today when I passed. What happened to him? I’m going to call him up. We’re among the few left on earth who don’t instantly resort to texting.
I’d driven down to pick up the newspaper, which of course was filled... no need to end that sentence. I suppose somehow the shopkeepers, roofers and plumbers will endure, while other matters, un- derstood or vague, are more apt to lead us into disaster. As for me, I’m chiefly worried, despite my preachments against worry, that these days there aren’t enough like my friend who get it.
What, though, is it? Dear reader, let’s just be persistent, let’s do all we can to hang on, because a lot of this stuff will break your fucking heart if you let it.
Naked Trees — For Goran
Small Hercules in a small Augean Stable, I’ve been trying to tidy my writing room. And yet what
I’d imagined would be a quotidian chore is in fact brimming with surprises.
One especially: it’s an ambered snapshot that has lain for years in a piece of mail from back when we all used mail. The photograph shows a man outside a Serbian prison’s wall. Under the crude, uncomposed image there’s a scrawl in rough English that I can barely decode: My hotel twenty months.
The picture is three decades old now. In it, my friend the poet is a young man smiling. Yes, however indistinct his face, he’s impossibly smiling.
That letter and its contents got buried somehow until just now, so I’ve never asked him who held the camera. I will ask if, please God, we’re blessed to see each other again—and if I remember. The older I am, the more things slip my mind. Travel’s gotten daunting too. I’m tired, he’s far away.
sydney lea