The Sphinx 2

The sphinx has seen them come and go. The strong and the wrong, the wise and the wicked, the haughty and the lowly. She has seen elegant structures and torrents of chaos. Great swirling embers of power, and heart, and loss. She has stood both outside the gate and inside the gate, and found them to be the same place. The sphinx has endured the chattering sandstorms of the ages, and has remained unmoved. In her defense, it must be noted that she is made of 270 tons of stone. The sphinx is mostly sedentary.

The sphinx has lived through alphabets and minarets, prophets and parapets; she has emerged smoothened and wizened and so free of fear. She has eaten the choking dust of memory and been fed. She has seen breadths of time lap against impossibly distant shores and even still, she has not yet seen everything. Why is there always something new? What fresh momentum moves these crossing currents, turns these driving wheels, dances these many, many feet?

It's worth considering that the sphinx may not know. Her tears are long dried, baking daily in the punishing heat. For all her years, what has she accrued beyond survey? Her untold wrinkles are untelling. What has she seen but the sights? The world is set in motion, adrift but alight, and our human countless nows weigh nothing.

Our time is weightless but our actions have force. We can run circles around the sphinx, but we can also run forward. Run ecstatic, run through the gates, run in time as though time could never catch up. No, the sphinx does not know. She will never blink or lift a paw. We are the ones, the sands that blow, and breathe, and build.

thanks

but no thanks.

Unconventional Speech

Countryfolk! I stand before you tonight as a humble remainder of the hope that was this Nation's legacy, the pride that is this Country's most forgivable venial sin, and the embodiment of the idea that things will get better as a direct result of the actions of government.

When I began this primary season more than 40 years ago, I was like you - way down there in the audience, wearing a silly hat, uncertain and underfunded, wondering how I was going to secure reliable help to care for my summer home in the off-season while I was criss-crossing this great Nation, not attending Congress hardly at all. Now of course I am up here with you today, and I thank you for your support, and for these supports, without which this platform would literally fall down, injuring many of you, and myself, for I am with you all the way.

My opponent would have you believe that he (or she, though in fact this time it's a he) has all the answers. Of course he's wrong, because I have all the answers. Can there be two correct answers to the same question? Well, yes and no. I won't pretend to tell you, and won't even actually tell you, that we live in a world without shades of meaning. I haven't forgotten the lessons of Nuance-Gate. As per regarding the fact of clarifyingment, I offer you this analogy - when you drive - and I have driven, believe me, in my own car and with me at the steering wheel - when you drive - you drive like I have, with respect, experience, and most importantly, in only one direction at a time. It is in this direction I will drive this Country.

Some have said, and this despite my having met most of you personally - not to mention that you didn't say it to my face - some have said that I am out of touch with the concerns of the average citizen. I reject this position with every fiber of my suit. Would you really rather have a president who knows the price of a tomato or a president who knows what to do when our great Nation's banks start caving in? Anyhoo, you might even say that a guy with multiple homes has an even better idea of the troubles a homeowner faces in these difficult times. Sure, I've never pumped my own gas. Why would I want to? But I am told it is expensive. In fact, I had to attend three extra fundraising dinners, where the food was frankly abysmal, just to pay for July's airplane fuel. So I feel your pain, and am raising money to assuage that pain. I hope to lead by this example.

As I stand before so many familiar-looking faces, I am brought to mind of my travels across this great Nation, and the stories that I thought were interesting enough to remember. I have met this Nation and her people, a mildly-irritated people with burning questions and a persistent rash of troubles...

I have met the silver-haired iron worker in Harrisburg with the heart of gold whose health care plan is too meagre to replace it with a less malleable metal alloy.

I have chatted up the watery-eyed waitress in Cheyenne who makes so little that after taxes, she had to pay me for my coffee and coq au vin.

I caught a nasty cold from the toddler in Huntsville who asked me, in the tiniest of voices, why her mommy and daddy couldn't afford a unicorn when they had six jobs, three alimonies and a ranch - sorry, a ranch house.

I knocked back some beers with the dudes from the line in Mt. Pleasant, men whose hard work at the Studebaker factory, year after year, goes unsung, unappreciated, unsold and unpaid.

I gakked a bag of meth with a group of young baseheads in Council Bluffs who are so disenfranchised that they can see no future for themselves in this Nation which is for them, a Flophouse without Pity.

I roughed up a man in Minot who said some awful things about my wife. I'm not gonna stand for that. He better get an absentee ballot, because he's not going anywhere soon.

I shared a BBQ with the brave firefighters of Amherst who have suffered a budget reduction of 770% and are now forced to douse fires with Faygo Red Pop, enduring a crippling shortage of CO2 tanks and massive ant problems.

I took tea with the animal psychic in Santa Fe whose cats are so upset at the idea of my opponent's tax plan that they can barely finish their dry food.

I texted with a young man from Beaumont who wanted to know Y x$ 4 CL B/C I wana B N GIN IR. It was sad really, but hard to say why, specifically.

I played phone tag with an old woman from Nantucket who asked me why her cereal is so expensive. Her answering machine kept cutting me off when I tried to explain the complex global economic factors involved, so let me now offer this to the dear lady: please consider a less expansive lifestyle. At your age, you've had your turn. Move over.

If you knew these people like I know these people then you would know, like I do and am telling you now, that this Nation is hard-working, optimistic, resourceful, caring, energetic, and in deep, deep trouble.

And that's why tonight I am honored to accept whatever it is that you want to give me, for I am a politician - without your approval, I'm just a guy who talks a lot about what is wrong with our great, messed-up Nation. Thank you and good night. Try the veal.

Unsafe at any speed

Dick Cheney on the campaign trail, 1976.

A face to meet the faces...

Various street art: Springfield, IL; Grand & State, Chicago; Hyde Park, Chicago.

Three parargraphs about politics, and money.

We know of a recent high school graduate who is working as a part-time research assistant for Chicago Public Schools. His supervisor recently told him, "You know, when school starts, you can work full time." He explains that this won't be possible, he is going to college in the fall. She tells him, "That's OK, we'll just make you full time anyway."

The supervisor later tells him there's someone he just has to meet. So he goes to lunch with a big-time Chicago political operative. The operative suggests he should go to work on Clinton's campaign, we'll send you to Iowa, etc. Though not especially fond of Clinton, the recent graduate is interested in politics, he will probably do this. The operative gives him $50 to take a cab the two blocks back to work.

Senior advisers to President Bush have recommended that the president veto Senate legislation to increase funding for children's health insurance. The plan, which expires September 30, subsidizes health care for children and adults who have too much money for Medicaid and too little for insurance on their own. The legislation calls for a 61-cent increase in the federal tax on a pack of cigarettes.