May Day

I've been swirling various ugly issues around lately; the shit in the toilet that is my mind. All of them seeming to converge around the topic of "normalcy": what is it? What are we to expect from one another as "normal" behavior? Does someone giving their word mean anything? Do any of us, really, have a responsibility to each other - and where, exactly, are the boundaries?

Today's my ex-wife's birthday. As most of my readers know, I had a "bad divorce", and though it's been almost three years, I still can't shake the implications of it. Part of it is I still have nightmares, which (thankfully) my mind, for the most part, protects me from; I just wake up and know, from the state of the bed clothes, that something wild happened during the night. Like wolverines attacked me.

But occasionally, like last night, I do get a glimpse of it and it's not pretty. There's my ex, all smug and superior, because she's violated every social convention and/or personal assurance she had ever given me about what I may expect of her. Sure, she promised to do this, and she always swore she would never do that, but being a "spiritual" person meant none of those things mattered because (as Oprah, and Eckhart Tolle, are selling today) she was a NewAge "God" - now hooked up in a pornographic "spiritual connection" with a lying killer of a Homeopath. And, together, they were easily capable of re-writing the rules that governed both of our lives because 1) neither of them gives a damn, and 2) nobody else does either.

It seems to be a given nowadays, amongst the general public, that what people do in their private lives is no reflection on their public standing, no matter how dastardly. A kind of "rules are made to be broken" ethic that's taken to extremes - with disastrous consequences for anyone not in the loop. You know, the folks that didn't know childhood was going to segue into a "spiritual" orgy.

Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, slept with his best friend's wife and, after an initial bout of shame (about a week) proudly declared he wasn't going away. Sure, he made a Lindsey Lohan-type token show of rehab to, supposedly, getting his "act" together - with promises to come back rejuvenated and better than ever - but he's now in City Hall, unchanged in any discernible way; still an asshole with The City going to the shits faster than ever. There's even talk of him running for governor of California. Meanwhile, I was depressed for, at least, a month when the whole sleazy story broke.

San Francisco's got a huge budget deficit. Crime is souring. Someone was killed at the zoo. Downtown is a Hell hole. Parking fees are skyrocketing. There's even been a new $100.00 fee for leaving recycling bins out where they can be seen. (A group of Buddhist nuns were the most recent recipients of that bit of karma.) But Gavey-baby goes on, with hardly a peep from the press or the public, like no one noticed that a man who proved his word wasn't any good, to even his best friend, can't be expected to do right by his constituency. That's now the standard. Just ask my ex. It's the same standard as in France.

When Bill Clinton was busted with Monica Lowensky, Hillary Clinton famously said "there are worse things than adultery", as though Bill would have to be that guy in Vienna who locked his daughter up in the basement for 24 years, and got her pregnant seven times, for his transgressions to be salient. The fact Bill's recently morphed into into a congenital liar and racist, right before the Democrat's recently-opened eyes, seems to have left few willing, or able, to make a connection to the fact he proved, with his serial adultery, that no one (especially the woman who wants to be president so as to allow him to be our "roving ambassador") could trust him to tell the truth. That's just the way it is and, damn it, because of what he did she deserves to be the president.

There just doesn't seem to be an end to what people will allow, overlook, or be apologists for, as long as it doesn't involve serious mayhem or death. Deviancy appears to be the norm - or, at least, all that's thought worth celebrating. The congregants of Barack Obama's church cheer Jeremiah Wright's nonsense - including the Harvard professor, Cornel West, who punctuated Wright's recent Press Club lunacy with wolf whistles. Harvard. I heard it was a "good school". West must be a "good teacher" as well. Or am I missing something?

"Expelled" is a hit movie, when any idiot should be able to discern that it must be wrong because, if it wasn't, all the science and medicine we're aware of wouldn't be able to work. That's how strong the case for evolution is. And don't get me started on the popularity of Homeopathy (for obvious reasons that haven't been diluted enough.). I swear, to me, none of this makes sense. But don't get me wrong: I'm sure, there has to be some one else who it probably doesn't add up for, either.

But, like I said, we're out-numbered by people who, ultimately, don't give a damn. So my divorce-mares are something I'm learning to live with (I've rarely needed a full night's sleep as it is, cold sweats and screaming, or no). My only problem, now, is what to do about the nightmare of the waking hours. Because I don't think those may ever go away.

Happy Birthday, Baby.