Categorically Speaking

I'm back to reading Javier Marías who sadly passed away two years ago. Now that I know his body of work is static and limited, I ration the few I have not yet read.  This one, like several others, takes its title from Shakespeare... Thus Bad Begins-- ominous words for these times, maybe more so when one considers the quotation ends 'and worse remains behind.'

Not to preface a lecture on Hamlet, but an entrance to one of Marías' mystery narratives which opens with a disturbing comment that truth is categorical. While the old 'me' would balk at such a concept, the quagmire of this political soup in which we find ourselves has broken into my belief system like a thief. I am having trouble maintaining and defending the things we held as self-evident in light of what is dangerously becoming law.

It's not just politics; in this AI era one would think fact-checking was a digital shadow that kept us all honest... but it doesn't seem to be working.  We are able to replay basketball points and foul-calls in great detail, from several vantage points, but our justice system does not have this tool.  Innocent people are deemed criminal and white-collar criminals are sometimes not just exonerated but rewarded according to the manipulations of legalities.  Then again, inside our jails there is another justice system, and an all-too-common abuse of power among prison employees that further obscures the administration of human rights. 

It's like a labyrinth of morality. Our government daily shakes the dice and changes the rules.  Immigrants who came here pursuing a dream under a democratic regime now find themselves hunted by ICE agents.  It's like getting on a train going west and having the sign changed arbitrarily, finding oneself headed anywhere.  Liars and cheaters are winning.  We have less social motivation to be good and kind, except that most of us, fortunately, are made this way.  

I am lucky to have women friends of all ages-- from 16 to 99. Listening to them complain about relationships and the difficulty of finding appropriate partners is one of my constant pastimes.  Of course at 99 the options are limited. But for those who are recently divorced or separated, or still single in this city and searching, truth can be categorical.  Online profiles and apps are filled with shysters and fibbers... men who are still married or partnered... people who like your profile photo enough to temporarily masquerade as exactly what you profess to want. And then all bets are off.  One still, in this digital dating world, goes on analogue dates, develops real attachments and in a city like New York, suffers break-ups and disappointments with someone who can melt back into anonymity in mere hours. 

We are confused; we are betrayed, we are like sheep without a proper pasture.  Most scenarios, like novels, have a variety of endings; some predictable and some, like the best of mysteries, will end in a shocking twist.  I can't help wondering where all of this is going... not even a hundred days into this presidency, and institutions of kindness and generosity are being dismantled, cultural platforms stripped and charitable organizations paralyzed.  Public research will be funded according to an agenda which serves not the people but itself.  

In the background of most Marías novels is the looming history of the Spanish Franco regime-- the way it persecuted freedom and then sort of deflated and petered out, with its proponents skulking away without much ado, and its victims in a sort of heroic limbo. Like the Third Reich in Germany, there's a residual national guilt that doesn't disappear, despite generations born without memory of these times.   Is this going to be the Great American Shame, the darkest era in our young history?  Will a national catastrophe or pandemic cause this terrible government to implode? It's hard to find a safe haven; it's hard to sleep when the very foundation of American justice seems like a kind of sport where the rules are constantly being changed by the Great Orange Moderator. 

When I was small I had a doll-sized figure of Sojourner Truth my nanny gave me. She fought for Freedom, I was told.  I stood her on a special shelf with my favorite shells and rocks. This was a symbol; truth was a solid, provable thing that had to do with freedom and civil rights.  It held the world up like an invisible column-- like God.  Even science was simply a quest to find the inherent truth of things-- the atomic number, the definition.  

So maybe in this era Marías will not see, truth has become simply a category-- an option. Guilt is relative; there are only the jailed and the jailors, the rulers and the ruled, the empowered and the powerless. There is love and there is a great lonely population, I am discovering, in our city which cannot seem to find its footing in these times where its elected leadership is questionably prosecuted but not convicted. 

No wonder people are obsessed with March Madness, with television and netflix and instagram and dating apps, with ordering food and cooking competitions-- with anything, really, where there is a kind of winner and loser. We can't even get a proper diagnosis here, because the business of medicine has subjugated science to profit, and prevents physicians from treating patients equally.  

As for me I am once again entranced by the skill and astute intelligence of Marías who insisted his many accolades were due to the general dearth of quality literature in our time. While temporally and politically skeptical, he has a way of finding his truth, uncategorically. At this moment it's all the closure I may get.

Where the Truth Lies

Last night in the rain a man literally walked into me on the street, and then shoved me and shouted out how I'd better look where I was walking, etc.  It shot me into this sort of rage that I witness so often in the city-- I mean, this 'fight' reflex.  I'm going to find a policeman and have you arrested for assault, I threatened, knowing well I'd do nothing. 

And it wasn't the physical shove that made me want to punch him as much as the phony accusation. My personal history is a little littered with these twisty versions of reality, these false manipulations which place one on the wrong side of a barbed fence.  It's the Trumpian version of reality-- the slippery miscarriage of facts that makes him an absurd debating opponent and an elusive and dangerous candidate.  Our daily newsfeeds bleed with his petty face-slaps and pokes and lies.  One wishes that AI could highlight untruths in red. It just piles up-- day by day. But it was as though the man on the street was trying on DT's personality costume, with an extra dose of bully. 

On 14th Street I've noticed a new approach to panhandling.  It's sort of migrant-related, because young mothers sit on cardboard blankets with their children-- sometimes two or three-- with a sign saying they've just arrived and need help.  It's heartrending and also manipulative, when most of these families are being given aid and shelter-- granted, not ideal-- but using children this way always bothers me.  Last week I was confronted by a man-- maybe around 30-- who asked me for money for his baby.  He showed me photos on his phone and I looked into his eyes and tried to see his soul, as I agreed to use my food stamps to buy him formula.  In the supermarket, the large-sized can was $36; as I paid, the checkout girls were all silent and judgy as though I'd assisted in a crime.

So apparently, I learned from a more streetwise neighbor, powdered formula is used to cut street heroin or other drugs... looking back, it was sort of a generic baby photo I'd seen-- it looked staged and professional.   I tried to forget... it wasn't the $36 but the complicity that plagued me.  

My longtime friend and onetime fiancé has been like family throughout my adult life.  For thirty years he accompanied me to funerals, graduations, events... collected me from wearying hospital visits-- photographed my son at sports events.  As we aged, we often talked about taking a retirement trip across the country-- living in an RV-- doing things I'd never done... maybe even sharing a mountain-house somewhere with a front porch and chairs to rock in while we admired the view and drank coffee like old friends.  But I was utterly shocked to discover that he'd been secretly married... yes, I had to pry it out of him... and was living an absolute double life.  It wasn't the romantic thing-- that had long since fizzled out and we'd always shared stories of affairs, etc... but the utter betrayal of what one assumes is a kind of honesty among intimate friends-- or even thieves, lol. The fact that day after day he'd stop by and we'd drink a coffee in his car-- he'd call or text many times. He described every move, every meal... or so I thought...  he came for Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc... always solo, not that it was a requirement; he knew all of my circle.  Could my judgment have been so poor? I felt ill-- tainted... invaded.

Even my close friends could not believe his duplicity-- like an alternate reality.  While he begged and wept for forgiveness, alleging he was stuck in some terrible entanglement... well, I gave him a little slack and sympathy.  Years later, I find he has never divorced, and while he claims to have left the state, he has been here... he appears... presumably still pays her rent, like a sort of guilty phantom. And me-- not just another betrayal-- but a huge one, because my trust was so broken, not to mention the fact the 'wife', known to no one,  had no knowledge of his attachment, romantic or not.  I am not the 'other woman' and I have a right to object to being backed into that complicitous corner. Swallowing other people's lies is like bad food-- it just doesn't go down.  And he, above all, is a liar. Full stop.

I was thinking today about Pete Rose-- how he fell from grace... was it money, some kind of temptation or just bad decisions that imploded his career some years back?  His legacy will be vaguely lightened by his death, but not whitewashed. I can't imagine how his family must have felt... 

With all the cameras around-- the constant recording of reality-- how is it that we seem less attached to truth than ever? Plastic surgery, weightloss drugs, pitch-correction, photoshopping and filters...  we can present as almost anything. As for Mayor Adams, I am withholding judgement.  In this milieu of deception, lying, cheating, his indiscretions seem less heinous than the things that roll off of Donald Trump's tongue hour by hour.

So at my age, it's no wonder I'm wound tightly enough to want to punch back at the man in the street who shoved me... to feel venomous toward my friend who wants to be forgiven. The baby formula-- well, I've been duped many times and choose to believe the 1% possibility his baby son is being nourished on my 'dime'. Watching resignation after resignation from city agencies, it's hard to believe in the innocence of our mayor.  Assuredly running municipal business requires skills I'd rather not think about. But on the larger stage we have a criminally indicted ex-President who has somehow maneuvered his way back to candidacy.  What is wrong with us?