There's a new gallery up.

Frame number 323 shows Jackie in the instant after the last bullet found its mark.  She is looking at her husband almost quizically.  Unbelieving. 

I don't know if she ever watched this tiny, grainy, distorted film of monumental proportion.  I can't imagine she'd have wanted to, and she certainly never needed to.  For all her poise and grace, her admirable strength, her unassailable dignity and her impeccable character; nonetheless she must have woken screaming in the night more than once.  I suspect there was a film, not Zapruders, but her own--more vivid than any Super 8--intrusively replaying scenes from that horrific day. 

She never needed to be reminded.  But we do. 

I know it's ancient history.  I know about all the eminently contestable 'facts.'  I know the man was not a saint.  Hell, I even had sympathy for George Wallace when he was shot.  But I also know what we are supposed to do; we are supposed to forget.  We are supposed to focus our attention on the present, instead of the past, and we are supposed to stop dwelling on unanswerable questions.  Only they are not unanswerable.  I've answered them, which we each must do, one way or another, for ourselves.  And my answers demand that I remember, that I never forget the happy scenes around the Kennedy Compound--now there's a phrase reminiscent of my single digit years--scenes of tanned skin and wind-tossed hair, of throwing footballs on the beach, and children playing in the Oval Office.  What I have come to believe demands that I recall there once were days of youth and optimism; once there was a sense of safety, in the world, even with Kruschev hammering the Security Council podium with his shoe, and especially because of missles that never flew; they came close but were sent away.   There was a time when war was not inevitable. 

These are the things which demand remembering, from my lunatic perspective.  There will come a time soon enough when I will remember no more.  Some say that that is when all will be revealed, that then we will resolve all the unanswerable questions, and we will finally know who was right about the 'magic bullet.'  Until then, we come as close to answers as we can, and we fashion, from our experience here on earth, something to believe. 

I believe that frame 323 and the moment it depicts was only the beginning of all that this country has lost in my lifetime.  And this remembering is not morbid; indeed it keeps me clear and far away from death.  Remembering that day in Dallas keeps me conscious of what life is all about.

  *  

Rereading myself.  I really have suffered some brain damage, I think.  I am not sure I know the person who wrote these things, but I'd like to become more like him.

And while there, I noticed another random collection of words which I think go together rather well.

Thank you for listening.

They've either stopped listening to my calls, or they're doing it more carefully.  There are no longer the little clicks during my phone calls, clicks with which I have become familiar over the last two years, clicks which remind me of my mother listening-in on my extended calls to desirable friends.  She considered such friends undesirable; either that or she was jealous.  (!)  But that's all beside the point.  I just thought the Friends of Bush, Inc., would have more sophisticated equipment than was available to my mother.  Maybe not. 

Since the good Mr. Bush took over (or, more accurately, since his controllers took over) I have begun to harbor a great many paranoid thoughts.  In former years these seeds of paranoia fell and died upon the concrete of reality.  Since all the 'anti-terrorism' bullshit began, such seeds fall and germinate in exceedingly rich ground.  Reality has been broken-up and buried. 

There does not need to be an extensive investigation exposing every sinister nuance, nor even a complete exposure of all the roots.  To see lies flourish is enough to know those roots exist.  Uprooting is a tedious and extensive process which should only be pursued if absolutely necessary; it damages other delicate root systems—American traditions like justice, fairness, and free speech—sometimes killing them forever.  And even after all that damage, the poisonous roots are often not eradicated.  Congressional hearings will not save us.  This administration's Justice Department, most inaptly named, won't rescue us.  A president named Kerry won't cut it as the superhero we need.  I only have faith in The People to restore and preserve the dignity of their governments, to protect the rights of the weak, and to limit the power of those who would abuse it. 

My purpose is not to bash Bush.  That has been done to a nauseating degree by every person disposed to critical thought, and by quite a few not so disposed.  I intend to not continue in the shrill voice of hysterical panic, but to adopt the quiet voice of grave sincerity.  Whether I like the man, his administration, or the policies they represent matters little now.  Our way of life is at stake. 

The Patriot Act is the most unpatriotic law ever promulgated by any Congress in the history of this nation.  Other acts of similar stripe with equally deceitful names (the CLEAR Act and the VICTORY Act) approach enactment into law.  The crisis of terrorism has not been averted; we are well into the throat of that beast, and we are being led in the wrong direction.  Fear and hatred are promoted as virtues.  Courage is redefined as surrender to the new demands of state; each demand bears a specious intent, and all are repugnant to a child of Lady Liberty.  In Common Sense, Thomas Paine encouraged a final seperation from Great Britain by the American colonies, which were seperate in most ways already.  His bit of colonial propaganda merely codified the sentiments of a revolution underway.  Tyranny's geographical cure was in place; the first Americans had already completed most of the tedious work in the New World necessary for the founding of a New Society, and a significant portion of their suffering was apparently behind them.  Common sense then prevailed—I refer to the mindset, not the pamphlet—and the rest is history.  Since geographic cures of the scale possible in 1776 are impossible in 2004—there is nowhere left to go—then common sense would, it seems, dictate that (to lift Don Henley's phrase from The Last Resort) we have got to make it here. 

'Here' is not the Presidential election of 2004.  'Here', whether you like it or not, is you.  You are the hope of the world.  You are the nation of light which has led the world by the strength of its committment to justice, not by the power of its military.  You are the city on the hill proclaiming to every human heart holding dreams of freedom that such hopes can become real.  Now blink away any tears these words may have brought, and shrug off the glowing mantle they describe.  Drive the SUV.  Pay the private school bills.  Go to work at your job (or jobs) everyday, be compliant and ask no troublesome questions.  Adopt a 'hands-off' policy regarding your own government.  And soothe your conscience with a bottle, or a drug, or a church.  If you can, disparage the importance of your role as a citizen in the greatest nation of free souls that this little planet has known.  Bad-mouth the so-called foreigners who seem to have taken over every Dunkin' Donuts and fast-food place in America, as if by doing so we can deny that you and I and the nation in our possession holds the promise and the dream for every beating heart on earth. 

The Bush administration is only the first incarnation of the Empire Builders.  In four years they have driven us from a budget surplus to a trillion-dollar deficit, and back into a national debt that is increasing immeasurably into the future.  Social Security will continue to be drained until its value to you and your children is negligible.  Your grandchildren will know of Social Security as an artifact of history.  Medicare is evaporating before our eyes, like a mirage in the desert.  The privatization of the Great Society is well underway to society's great detriment and to the benefit of a very few.  Meanwhile, the Empire Builders continue to wage wars of conquest for reasons known only among themselves.  The Iraq war, its incalculable losses, and the facile lies which pretend to justify it, is not the last.  Empire is voracious and insatiable, it will never cease until it has consumed everything, and finally even itself. 

This Republic, with liberty and justice for all, is truly our last resort.  If we must choose between the saccharine promises of Empire, and the humane certainties of this Republic which we have known all our lives, then let common sense be our only guide. 

It's late. 

Bobby just stopped by.  He's the one I call the love of my life, currently.  He smells good.  He looks good.  He smiles at me.  Can anything but selfish excess demand more than this? 

Is my writing becoming more succinct, or am I leaving it all out—all the delicate details and subtle shades?  Am I letting the fatigue of these pretty pills I take every day make me just roll over and pull the covers up over my mind.  It is tired.  It loves to cry.  Ahh, sweet, sweet saddness, I will miss thee more than all the rest. 

There are so many stories untold; as many as there are stories I have avoided.  There's the love affair with any of about three of my past neighbors which I never allowed.  There is the story of me with wife and child.  And the story of the playwright I did not become, accompanied by every story of each play unwritten.  There is the story of the phallus that penetrated through my flesh and beyond—into my soul.  Untold. 

Untold riches, and I have denied them for myself, and that somehow makes me God. 

Time's up. 

This old entry makes me feel ancient.  I've been sitting in front of this computer for four years, and they haven't come to get me yet.  What's up with that?

This man makes me wanna cry.  To know the hope he represents is to fully grasp the despair which threatens us.  That's when I finally feel how much it really hurts me, what we have allowed this country to become.

If my country tortures, it is not my country.  If my leaders hate liberty, they are not my leaders.  If my government despises justice, it is not my government. 

I get so depressed from the daily news that I hide from it.  I retreat into the pretend world, the place that has always been safe.  I have not seen any of the pictures [from the prison at Abu Ghraib], but I know what they mean more than what they show.  I can't stop those thoughts from intruding.  When I finally stop screaming "It doesn't matter," I can start to change it. 

...me among them, if I dare be so bold.

Does this mean I am a Marxist?   I'm not really, but...   And does this mean that I am an enemy of the state?   I hope so.   And I regret that I have but one life...

It amazes me how close has been the home of this remarkable philosophy to me; less than 2000 miles.   And nothing amazes me more than how much the United States has moved in my lifetime away from its former humane and life-giving ethic.  

Greatest country on earth?   It may be in this hemisphere, but I regret that it is not the one in which I live.  

So explain it once again to me; who is the dictator, and who is the leader of the free world?  

'Everything' is over at the latest.

Despair.  Hopelessness.  Is this the right direction?  It's getting dark—and colder, much colder.  Wilderness.  I hope I am not lost.

I never really listened to this song, until today.  I always assumed it was a ballad about a natural disaster.  Hurricane Carter, in my Winamp playlist, sounded similar to The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.  It is about a disaster, but it is not natural. 

Among all the tragedies of life, I wonder if knowing the promise of civil liberty and social justice, and seeing them slip away, is worse than never having had them at all.   Can I find a place of no tears in a Great Society which is no longer great? 

I know I'm wrong—Dylan's right—justice is a game, and ever will be.  But why can't I join the monsters who happily pillage our great potential for freedom in this nation?  I could make a lot more money as a Republican speechwriter, I know most of the tricks.  Speaking of tricks, there's some real pretty boys waiting for one just like me in the dark corners of the Conservative closet.  I'd already have had most of those trick-boys, if not for all the shit I'd have had to climb through to reach them. 

Why can't I just be as hopless and cynical as I say I am?  Why can't I just take everything, waste it all, and not give a care?  What is this unsupressible feature of my soul that stops my feet from joining in the plunderer's dance upon the faces of innocence and hope?