Return to the Mist
For some reason I am back on the get-up-early program. The good news is that I’m sleeping a bit longer at a stretch, but the bad news is that I’m waking up on East Coast time for some reason. One of the best parts about that is that I get a jump on the day and I get to sit at my desk and enjoy the view to the north. That’s the mountain view from this hilltop and it has the San Jacinto and San Gabriel Mountains in the distance (they seem to have lost some of their snow in the last few days of warmer weather). In the foreground are a few of the local hills and the spectacular mist that hangs in those valleys in between at this time of year. We are not yet at the June Gloom stage of maritime inversion, but that mist is so palpable and so primordial in its look that it invokes lots of random thoughts in me.
There are two things on my mind that feel very primal to me. The first relates to a series of interactions that I have gone through in the last few days over the cancellation of our originally planned motorcycle trip to Spain and Morocco in October. Now that the world has officially returned from the brink of COVID and the travel business is back in full swing (all predictions that it might be permanently impaired to the contrary) there is a bigger than ever need to get out ahead of travel plans and get one’s travel agenda organized as much as possible. We are lucky in that both Kim and I tend to be planners when it comes to travel and much less the procrastinators that some seem to be. We have some friends that can’t decide what to do until it is too late to do it. To me, it is like deciding that getting to the airport just in time for a flight is a good way to live. It makes no sense to rush around in a panic, either at the airport or online with travel booking hassles that can all be avoided by just doing a little bit of planning. I’ll never understand people that don’t see that logic, but then again, here I am awake at dawn staring out the window and giggling my legs with nervous energy. I guess we are just who we are.
Along those lines, we found ourselves listing all the conflicts we have in our lives in the back half of 2023 and have concluded that going on this Spain/Morocco trip was not in our best interest. Strangely enough and somewhat to be expected, I am the only person who planned to go on that trip that actually bought flights for it in advance, so I am the only one who will suffer breakage from the changes (that has a no-good-deed-goes-unpunished feel to it, doesn’t it?). Anyway, when we chose to cancel, i immediately informed the organizers and they then chose to cancel the whole shooting match. That left me to advise everyone, creating the wrong impression that I had cancelled it, when all I had done was opt out. Others opt out for their own reasons all the time, but when I do with this particular group, everything seems to change. I sort of understand that since I have been the leader of the pack for 28 years now, but what I don’t understand is why it all needs to create such intrigue.
You see, we are quite a diverse group and as such, we are quite representative of America in all its good and bad. That is especially so with politics these days as those views have become so much more strident and divisive. I am clearly on one side of that spectrum and it is no secret that it is the liberal democratic side that I inhabit. I used to think that the older one gets, the less liberal one gets, but that somehow seems less so these days. I would go so far as to say that the older one gets, the more galvanized one gets in one direction or the other. I know that is the case with Kim and me and I can see it being the case for others in our circle as well. Anyway, everyone agrees in concept that motorcycle trips are no place for politics, religion or (as my Istanbul buddy likes to add) soccer/football. But is still happens, and it seems to be happening more and more these days than every before…at lest in my lifetime.
Truth be told, decisions are always made holistically and there may be governing principles that lead the way, but there are also undercurrents that are unavoidably present as well that sway the decision process. That subtlety seems hard for people to handle. They want to put the blame on the headline political issue. I, in turn, do not want to pour more gasoline on that political dumpster fire, so I say it ain’t so. And it’s not…sort of. I have now had one email from a major right-leaning member (he was actually a major Republican politician, who, strangely enough, is married to a lifelong Democrat) publicly admonishing me for not going on the trip, even though his personal circumstances do not allow him to go. How funny is that? I set him straight, but I’m betting he doesn’t believe me. But I also now have a more private email from the wife of one of the right-leaning shit-stirrers of the group, who is playing apologist for her hubby and hoping that I am not acting on those divisive concerns. I have told her that is not the case, but have used the moment to say how upset we are over the whole assault rifle issue that is one of the central right/left themes these days. She responded that she is equally furious about the same issue as we are. That seemed a more satisfying exchange, but both speak to the same underlying message. Everyone is jumpy around these issues and knows how wrong the current state of play is about big issues like gun control, no matter how much they try to keep to their party line. I am convinced that my trip planning is just an excuse for those views to find an outlet. This is all very primordial brain stem knee-jerking that is emerging from the mist.
The other thing I get out of rising early and watching the mist disappear (which it is doing while I write), is that I get to read longer issue pieces I come across like one from the L.A. Times this morning. It seems that a recent study shows that life expectancy in the U.S. is showing some important things about the state of our country. During COVID, life expectancy naturally declined for the firs time in 100 years. Not surprising given that this was our first pandemic in an equally long period of time. But the subtlety of the numbers by state tells another story. The states where the numbers are still declining, and only half attributable to COVID, are the Republican-dominated states, particularly in the deep Southeast and Upper Midwest. The conclusion of researchers is quite stark. Many Republican policies around issues like COVID, healthcare insurance, welfare, education, gun control and abortion are simply impacting overall longevity. In other words, Republican policies are killing off the very electorate that has empowered them. That beats just-in-time airport arrival for sheer stupidity.
But wait. Maybe the statistics are hiding an even more devious plan. Maybe these policies are thinning the herd at the low end of the socioeconomic and educational spectrum and just reinforcing the strength of the red elite in those states. But the red elite know that they are such a minority that they need the low end electorate to gain office (until they can rid themselves of this pesky democracy thing that so hamstrings them). No, that sort of Machiavellian planning is simply too much to expect from people who want to get to the airport late so as not to waste their precious time.
The mist has now receded completely, but my mind returns to the mist and these primal thoughts do not leave me easily. Man is a strange beast and I am inclined to want to think the best of him, but he is always jumping out at me whenever I wander back into the mist.