jumpingfish

1.

A purple hoodie. He was wearing a purple hoodie and running along the sidewalk. Two of his friends were nearby, one ahead of him looking back, the other running alongside. It was a sunny day at the end of the year. The holidays were just around the corner. And it was the beginning of the weekend. 

And he was running down the sidewalk in a purple hoodie.

2.

Out by the curb late at night. Orion is overhead. It’s the holidays. No cars are on the road. Down the street five or six houses, there is a riot of kids out in the front yard. They’re laughing and playing basketball. There’s no school tomorrow, because … it’s the holidays. 

And they are running around in the dark of night playing basketball.

3.

The holidays end tonite. Tomorrow it starts up again. And a decidedly lower-case new year. 

I don’t know what to think or write or say when I sit here, these days. These nights. I’m stunned beyond my usual cynical self.

So I will sit in the sun on the weekends if it’s warm. And maybe even when it’s not. Looking down the street for the boy in the hoodie. Or listening for the racket of kids playing basketball.

Because their frames of mind are a better place to be.

It’s cold for us, although it might be colder for you. You might look down your nose at our definition of cold. (I did, if I recall, see minus signs on temperature maps last night.) But thankfully minus signs never reach down here, so cold for us is when outside faucets get wrapped and cold-not-so-hardy plants get covered and a 75 watt incandescent lightbulb gets hung in the greenhouse.

So snippets from a cold day…

1. AHIHA

Izzy walks into the study and looks at me, certain that I will catch her drift. If I don’t, she’ll put her paws up on the side of the chair, and if I still don’t, she’ll scratch at my legs until I pick her up and slip her under the American Hearing Impaired Hockey Association sweatshirt that my brother gave me years ago. She curls up and lets out a contented sigh, and unless I get up, she will stay there — a lump under the sweatshirt — for the rest of the day (unless of course, the fair and industrious Trudy has something better to offer, like a browning chuck roast in the kitchen).

2. Mr. Guinness

His ears were always sensitive. He was wary of anyone reaching down to pet him, because they might rub his ears, and his ears often hurt. And he didn’t like the sound of unrolling packing tape — that scraping, unsticking sound that accompanies any effort to seal up a box before taking it to the post office. 

As she seals up a box before taking it to the post office, the fair and industrious Trudy pulls on a roll of packing tape, making that unpacking tape sound. From the next room, I think the same thing she does. Guinness always objected to this, barking loudly to voice his complaint. This year, for the first time in 16, there is no complaint.

3. Titmouse

“Remind me,” I said a few days ago, “when it gets cold, I need to knock down the wasp nests by the front and back doors.”

Yes. We typically have wasps by the front and back doors. But we like our bugs, by and large, and those we don’t like are generally kept in check by wasps, and so the coming and going of wasps just above our heads is a cost we are willing to pay for the service they provide. Still, there’s a limit, and so typically we knock down their nests at the end of the year, so that at least they have to start over from scratch in the spring. Otherwise, the headstart leads to comings and goings of wasps not above our heads, but rather at chin-level, which has obvious downsides.

“David, come here,” the fair and industrious Trudy calls. 

We stand at the patio door and watch a Titmouse come fluttering up to the eaves and pick determinedly at the wasp nest. It flies off and then returns and picks at it some more. And yet again.

I won’t have to knock down the nests, after all.

“When are you leaving?” Trudy texted.

“In 30 minutes,” I texted back.

By the time I left, which was almost certainly longer than the promised 30 minutes, it was mostly dark. I walked across the parking lot and made my way to where the car was parked.

The sky was glowing that urban gray that low skies glow when the city lights reflect off the low-lying clouds. But it was dark in the shadows under the Oaks and Elms. You could only barely make out the green of their leaves, because it was that time of day when colors flee and shades of night set in.

“Hoo. Hoo-hooo.”

I stopped and looked up.

“Hoo. Hoo-hooo.”

I stood a bit longer, trying to find where the owl was perched that I might see golden-glowing Great-Horned eyes. It was somewhere up in the canopies, and although it was hardly being shy, it was not about to reveal itself.

So I humored myself into thinking that I knew where it sat — somewhere just up there on that branch over in that tree among those shadows.

Then I got in the car and drove home.

Juan Cole has an analysis of the soon-to-be cabinet and their views on political islam, a term he has a little trouble with, since it’s often used (my interpretation) in a context that ignores obvious (?) parallels with political movements in other religions.

He points out that whereas the term is used to whip up right-wing hysteria, it fits alongside what we might call political judaism and political christianity.

Political Islam is the attempt to make Islam the basis for a political ideology that would dictate government policy. It is analogous to Zionism, which makes Jews the basis for a political ideology. It is also analogous to the Christian Right in the US, which makes Christianity a political ideology and pursues the Christianization of American law (e.g. striving to ban abortion, to outlaw sex outside Christian marriage, etc.)

So to connect the dots, we should be equally hysterical about christianists who yearn for a christian caliphate.

Christian caliphate!? What on earth are you talking about, man!?

Well, have you ever seen this bumper sticker?

Stop and think about this for a second.

The key phrase is in that order, subtly rendered in a small font at the bottom but proudly rendered in red. The driver declares that their christian religious values trump their conservative political ones and that those trump their American ones (pun intended).

This is a proclamation that constitutional values are subservient to christian ones — equivalent to a call for a christian caliphate.

So why isn’t that cause for hysteria?