America Agonistes

    You’ll be glad to hear (I assume) that I am no longer depressed, not in the all-consuming way I was a couple of weeks ago — in fact, as a matter of brain chemistry I’m more or less fine, and am having a bit of a hard time conceptualizing the headspace I was in the last time we talked to one another on this blog. I have finally resolved myself to the fact that I’m going to have to be medicated for the rest of my life. One too many close calls and eventually you get in a wreck. Should probably put that seatbelt on, if you see what I’m saying.

    But. But this morning I sat in the bathtub for an hour and worried about Donald Trump. Then I got out of the bathtub and sat down at my desk to work and worried about Donald Trump. Restless, unable to get anything done, I finally went to the supermarket, where I worried about Donald Trump. I was so wrapped up in my worry about Donald Trump, in fact, that at one point I rounded the corner into the produce section and discovered I couldn’t decide what to buy. I mean, I knew what I needed — a vegetable to go with dinner tonight. This is an easy decision. There are three vegetables I know how to cook. But I stood in front of them and just stared, and stared, and stared. Finally I put some apples in my bag and just wandered off. Later I came back and grabbed the first thing I walked by — asparagus. I don’t even like asparagus very much, but there you have it.

    As I left the store, I found myself doing a curious thing: I was reminding myself of the things that are not in Donald Trump’s power to change, that will remain good, no matter what happens next Tuesday. In no particular order, some of these things follow.

1. Apples will still grow, and taste clean, tart and bright when you bite into them. A fresh ripe one will still resist just enough when you bite to crunch when it gives way. Its juice will still get on your chin and your hand will still be sticky after you eat it.

2. Sharp cheddar cheese will still cause that pleasant tightening in your jaw, the unbidden rush of saliva to your mouth, will still smell pungently of itself and taste lovely on bread with thick slices of ripe tomatoes.

3. When you wake up in the morning just as the sun is coming up, its light will still fall quietly on trees and streets of your neighborhood, and you will still think that this is a good place, this place you’ve found yourself in.

4. One day you will find yourself running — to catch a bus, or your kid, or a hat blown on the wind — and you will remember being a child, and running for no reason, with no destination in mind, just because it brought you joy to be in and move your body, and you will feel a little bit that way again, if only for a second.

5. You will still, if you wish, be able to put tiny pieces of rubber in your ears and from them will pour the music of James Brown, or Claude Debussy, or the Ronettes, or Beyoncé.

6. You will still come to the end of a really good book, close the cover on the last page, and lie back on your couch and stare at the ceiling in a state of wistful ennui, wishing a little bit that you could go back and read it all over again without any memory of how it unfolded in your hands.

7. There will still be a cute Australian woman who works at your cat’s vet, and every time you go there you’ll look at her wedding ring and think idly about a different world in which that ring wasn’t there and you asked her to go to coffee with you after her shift, and you will still smile at the thought every time.

8. There will still be hot days in summer when the sun stays up till nearly ten, and you will still hear the neighbor kids playing soccer in their front yard. There will still be diamond-like winter days when the sun strikes the snow in just the right way, and you will see a thousand tiny crystals of ice, each its own unique size and shape, glinting. You will still go walking on a foggy autumn morning and smell the sweetness of fallen leaves mulching. There will still be a day each spring when you see the first purple crocuses turning their faces to the weak and distant sun.

9. You will still fall in love, or not. You will still have children, or not. You will still meet people and learn new things about the human race that surprise you, and some of them will be good things. You will still say something funny to the woman in the checkout line at the supermarket, and she will still laugh. You will still stick your tongue out at toddlers when their dads aren’t looking. You will still pet friendly cats that approach you on the street. You will still have strange dreams and tell them to someone who only half-listens and goes, “huh,” when you’re finished. You will still see that guy around the neighborhood who goes shirtless and wears American flag swim trunks all summer. You will still go down to Waterfront Park and wonder why the teenagers there don’t try to sell you pot until you remember you can just buy it in a store now. You will still think wistfully of the days when you could eat pineapple without getting heartburn, and then eat some anyway. It will still be worth it. All of these things will still happen, every day, to someone, and sometimes it will even be you.