Was Becoming Wonderfully Absurd

My old friend died.  Found out last night.  He was my boss and he changed my life in a wonderful way when we met about fifteen years ago.  I’d had a chance to see him on my last pass through San Francisco.  He’d been diagnosed with Leukemia and though it was serious, his doctors had good things to tell him.  Today, my old colleague wrote me and many of the old team let us know.  Within the somber mood, I was glad to remember I’d managed to tell him that he had positively altered my life forever with his actions and to think of him as the mighty force he was, heading somewhere new. 

I don’t want to feel numb.  My daughters are American.  But they didn’t grow up here.  And now they are trying to make sense of this place, that seems so much less well managed and so much more volatile than the idyllic Beijing they grew up in.  America is worth trying to explain.  But just now so much is inexplicable.  My older one is trying to figure out how she feels about protesters who vent and rage but don’t wear masks during a pandemic.  My younger one is noting how everyone in the BTS Army is sharing a black screen in support of Black Lives Matter, but she is rightly commenting that most cases it seems forced and obligatory. 

Part of feeling numb is looking in vain for intelligent articulations of the situation from supposed leaders.  And it feels, wrongly that we are denuded of leaders.  And there is the hollow feelings that leaders can’t help just now.  We have been stretched to the ripping point through the administrations anti-management.  Everyone, everywhere, it seems is frayed. 

Pauline Hopkins wrote “Of One Blood” in the early part of the last century.  And though some of the drama is a bit contrived it is also wonderfully anticipatory of Sun Ra, and Funkadelic and the Afro- Futurism of "Black Panther."  I had an odd journey where I was drawn back into the narrative, despite how fantastic it was, because it was becoming wonderfully absurd. 

My calzone came off tonight.  The one side stayed in there a bit longer than it should have but I learned from my last foray and had removed all the excess dough.  There was enough of it in fact that I made a small pizza out of it, that seemed to be the favored dish for my little one.  My shredded turnips and zucchini bake was not particularly well-received.  I keep hoping I’ll find the magic formula on that.  

Monday, 06/01/20