I woke up late today. Slept in, longer than usual, and felt a malaise mingling or was it meandering among my thoughts, the kind of flashes that zig and zag as perhaps remaining in bed even a minute too long, provides a person’s brain to burst with just too many ideas! For no reason, except the trauma of Trump has enveloped by psyche, similar to other ( autonomic involvement — what your body does automatically without conscious effort (heart beating, temperature regulation, breathing). As I began to finally get out of the confines of the blankets and cocoon of pillows pushed and puffed in perfect placement, I thought about Anne Frank! Then trying to sit up with one hand, (my left shoulder cradled in a sling, so nothing stitched could become unwoven and injured,) my brain asked me to consider the antidotal story of her crossword puzzle. Suddenly two actions were in place at the same time, the first “fuck when is this shoulder going to get better…) and second, whether true or not imagine living life, erasing all the responses from a crossword puzzle in which you know the answers, but still must pretend the questions are new and different. Crazy, I thought, struggling to get my long t-shirt over my head, but SERIOUSLY, my brain responded, what kind of existence might that be like. The battle of the T-Shirt with an almost immobile shoulder finally and painfully won, I still struggled with the idea of knowing the truth yet having to pretend it never existed, only to fill in the blanks and make it real until it was time to erase the facts and start all over again!
I ignored my phone, and its litany of news flashes, breaking news, and news you need to know, considering that maybe today I would pretend reality was a joke, and having laughed just enough at its punchline, it would go away. I rushed to the bathroom, as most 70-year-old men might do, peed, washed my hands then brushed my teeth, but nagging somewhere between my gut and temples of my brain, all I could perseverate about was, the idea that if and when Anne Frank actually erased the answers to that crossword puzzle, how frustrating it must have been to let the truth disappear, only to make way for it to live again, as each and every question of the crossword puzzle found its appropriate and correct answer.
My little honey of a dog, Chance, not one for sleeping in or able to use the indoor bathroom, was giving me the PLEASE take me out, I have to pee look and mini yelps, so I, as a loving pet owner, using my good arm, placed his leash over his body and he and I walked the same route, at the same pace, he all perky and pleased, and I stuck on the idea, that the truth is known, the facts are real, no matter how the Enablers/Republican Russian Party Oligarch Politicians wish otherwise…Trump is a criminal, his gang of Crime Family goons as guilty…treason is rampant in America…but each day, it seems once we fill in the answers to the crossword puzzle, the facts get erased and we start all over again. Chance had his walk and his call from nature, we returned home, and I found myself eagerly running into our home office, almost dragged to my computer, feeling the disease of Trump flowing through my body…and here I am having to speak up, speak out and sadly speak once again in total frustration. I can NOT imagine, how Anne Frank and her family and friends, lived in SILENCE, and how every few days, Anne Frank had to erase the facts and start all over again.
