Good morning. I realized I’ve got to do these for me. I was getting hung up thinking I was doing them for somebody else.
I’m making a smoothie right now. That’s actually what made me think about this — pulling up some old recordings I did a year ago.
I freeze my spinach. Once it’s frozen you can crumble it up into little spinach flakes. Those go nicely in my smoothie with bananas and almonds and some unflavored protein powder.
What got me thinking about it? I was pulling up some recordings from last year and I’d stopped doing them. I think I got into a funk and got sick. I never revived the ritual of just a few minutes of audio diary, whatever comes to mind every day. Then I found the old recordings and — it’s not like it was great stuff — but it was really kind of interesting to go back and just listen to my thoughts.
So. Where else am I going to log the fact that I am permanently — not scarred. It’s an impression. An impression was made upon me about how whenever Barack Obama would have a snack of almonds, he would always only ever have nine almonds. Or maybe it was fourteen almonds. Which seems so OCD. But then there’s something where I’m like, wow, maybe he has dialed in, with just hyper focus, the exact optimal amount of nutrients and hunger abatement that one should manage via a handful of almonds, and figured out that fourteen or nine is the exact right number.
So that’s how many almonds he had. And so when I make my smoothie — or even when I just eat almonds — if I power down like twenty, I’m like, fuck, I’m above the Obama quota. It could just be because he was a tweaker. It might not be based in any nutritional sensibilities. But I’m still beholden to it.
It’s seven degrees Celsius outside and it’s 9:47 a.m. on November the 8th.
It’s Friday. We elected a new president a few days ago. I don’t think there’s ever been millions of people who collectively felt the same kind of anxiety all at once. Historically we’ve had millions of people experience jubilation all at once. But the amount of despair and anxiety that was unleashed by Trump’s reelection all in one day — I can’t think of another event quite like it. We woke up the day after 9/11 and there was shock and sadness and fear, so that stands out as a seminal day. But as far as one that just unleashes dread and anxiety? I can’t think of another. Maybe his first election. But this is different, because back then we just knew he was a nutter. We have so much more information to feed that anxiety now.
Obviously there’s some jubilation here too. Half the country voted for Trump. But I’m obviously thinking more about the hand-wringing and hair-pulling on the left.
Anyway. I’m very grateful to not be living in the United States right now, where it’s unavoidable — the chatter, the media, everywhere you go. I don’t disparage people’s concerns. The things they’re worried about are very real. But ninety percent of what you’re hearing in the media is just extra. It’s beyond what you need to understand the situation and the stakes. Most of it is product out there to play on your fears and insecurities and keep you engaged. That hyper-availability feeds public discourse, and so people are out there talking about it more than they’re acting on those feelings. If people were acting on their feelings as much as they were talking, I would welcome the discourse.
But people like to bellyache. A lot of people don’t have the means to do much about it. All the excess fuels anxiety, fuels feelings of powerlessness, and these things degrade someone’s ability to actually do something about a problem. It’s not about burying your head in the sand — it’s about finding the right balance between staying informed and maintaining your own health and well-being enough to be active when it counts.
The heads of media corporations — cable news, online outlets, newspapers — at a quiet moment have to acknowledge, if not celebrate, that Trump’s re-election is extremely good for business. Keeping his bullshit on the front page keeps people engaged. He’s like a shock jock. People who hate him, people who love him, they all want to know what he’s going to do next. And you’ve got to look at whether you’re over-consuming. Are you buying too many Big Macs? If you’re watching more than one news program a day — and I know there are people who turn on Fox at six and MSNBC at six and let it run, watch three shows, practically identical in messaging but with different hosts — the nutritional content of those three fast food sandwiches is the same.
Anyway. The question becomes: what are we going to do, week to week?
Trump didn’t lurk in out of nowhere — not this time, not in 2016 either. But I think he caught a lot of people sleeping. I don’t know how many times over the last four years I thought his goose was cooked. After January 6th. After the midterms. It seemed like his stock was dropping. And yet, two years later.
I didn’t even turn this thing on today because I wanted to talk about politics. But it’s on everybody’s mind. Strange times. I’m not just concerned because I live in Europe — I’m concerned about the geopolitical situation in Europe, my work in Ukraine. There is a coalition building, whether implicit or direct, between the rising nationalist movement — spearheaded, coincidentally, by the leader of the country in which I now reside — and what is soon to be the current American administration. Hungary, Germany, Poland, Italy, France. Strange times. No projections, no prognostications. We’re just going to have to wait and see.
There was an overconfidence about doing things the old way. Democratic strategists huddled somewhere while people were screaming for months that they needed a more vigorous candidate, and it took months to get old Joe off the ticket. Same thing with Clinton in 2016 — nose-in-the-air politics. In a free and fair election, the grounded, down-and-dirty politics won overwhelmingly. The nose-in-the-air politics of the Democrats is feckless. It’s weak.
Anyway. That’ll wrap it up for today. It’s chilly, it’s sunny. The leaves on the trees in the courtyard are sixty percent gone, seventy percent of what remains is yellow. Almost brown, but a little prettier than brown. I’ve already forgotten what it looked like with lush greenery and full trees. November now, and from December through April — five months — all these trees will bud out again and I’ll marvel: God, I forgot how full that looks.
All right. That’s enough of my ramble. Peace out.
