“Boardwalks” (Little May) ♫
Relatable
And wouldn’t that be nice?
When my father died at fifty-one from the second of his two heart attacks, I was not prepared to cope with the crushing grief I would experience in the months that followed. It is true that I had had an extremely difficult home life and that certainly I had had more than just a taste of grief when I was small, but I simply was not equipped to face the finality of such an immense loss.
Although I had a few friends whose love I could count on during this time, for the most part I was left to sink alone in the heartbreak because, by and large, I was invisible to members of my family and only came into their line of sight when they believed I could be of use to them. Whether my mother, stepmother, brother, and sister-in-law understood how much trouble I was in remains an open question. In my chillier moments, though, when I am painting three of these four with a wide, dark brush, I think theirs was a self-centered indifference brought into even starker relief because of my largely successful attempt to make myself invisible to them.
But it is impossible for me to recall my brother Robert without seeing in him a rot that began to spread unchecked the day he touched down on the planet. Although it revealed itself in myriad ways until we stopped speaking to each other more than a decade ago, when I was a child it was his malignant, inexplicable contempt for me that drove his relentless physical and emotional abuse and that crippled me irreparably.
Still, I managed to grow up and to marry twice: The first time, in my late twenties, it was a secret elopement to Carson City, Nevada, with a man I would divorce not long after giving birth to our daughter. When my brother later learned of the nuptials, he decided, oddly, to throw me a lavish party in Los Angeles, which I remember thus: a feverish Fellini film starring Rita, my mentally ill mother, in the role of dying starlet, lamenting.
At some point during the evening I approached my brother and thanked him for his efforts. To this day, I do not know what he meant when he replied, “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for Dad.” I never asked for an explanation, though, certain as I was, and am, that his response would have been even more cruel than the original remark. Yet that is how it was with the lot of us. Such terrible, gouging things would be said, things that no one could take back. Then eventually, maybe years later, someone, almost always me, would do a belly crawl to the other with an apology, whether or not it was deserved. And after a while the other one, satisfied and smug, would open the front door and pretend to forget — or would stand there and actually forget. While the words themselves surely went off to live in us somewhere.
It should not be hard, then, to understand why I did not know how I would live after my father died. He had been my only hope, the only one in a family of impostors and scoundrels to have loved me, however imperfectly. I have very few happy memories of my childhood but for the delight I felt when he was nearby. And, on the day of his funeral, as I watched him being lowered into the ground, I would have thrown myself onto the coffin if there had been assurance I could have followed him into the afterlife.
To survive, I gradually walled off the part of me that loved him so and instead distanced myself from any memories that summoned my terrible grief. This year, though, in the week leading up to Father’s Day, I found myself looking with much tenderness at a photo taken of him shortly before he left his parents’ home in Brooklyn and enlisted in the Army. One evening I heard myself say to him, “Maybe when I die, Daddy, I will see you again.” Then added, “And wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Solid Ground”(Michael Kiwanuka) ♫
“Angel from Montgomery” (Grace Potter pays tribute to John Prine) ♫
From The New Yorker (May 4, 2020)
“This Is What Happens When a Narcissist Runs a Crisis” (Jennifer Senior)
It is not often that I reprint an article from elsewhere, but I think this Washington Post opinion piece by Jennifer Senior is such an intelligent, insightful, honest, and necessary addition to the public discourse about Donald Trump that I thought you would want to read, and share, it. I think you’ll also see how beautifully written it is — and how blistering.
Link to article and photo credit
Since the early days of the Trump administration, an impassioned group of mental health professionals have warned the public about the president’s cramped and disordered mind, a darkened attic of fluttering bats (emphasis mine). Their assessments have been controversial. The American Psychiatric Association’s code of ethics expressly forbids its members from diagnosing a public figure from afar.
Enough is enough. As I’ve argued before, an in-person analysis of Donald J. Trump would not reveal any hidden depths — his internal sonar could barely fathom the bottom of a sink — and these are exceptional, urgent times. Back in October, George T. Conway III, the conservative lawyer and husband of Kellyanne, wrote a long, devastating essay for The Atlantic, noting that Trump has all the hallmarks of narcissistic personality disorder. That disorder was dangerous enough during times of prosperity, jeopardizing the moral and institutional foundations of our country.
But now we’re in the midst of a global pandemic. The president’s pathology is endangering not just institutions, but lives.
Let’s start with the basics. First: Narcissistic personalities like Trump harbor skyscraping delusions about their own capabilities. They exaggerate their accomplishments, focus obsessively on projecting power, and wish desperately to win.
What that means, during this pandemic: Trump says we’ve got plenty of tests available, when we don’t. He declares that Google is building a comprehensive drive-thru testing website, when it isn’t. He sends a Navy hospital ship to New York and it proves little more than an excuse for a campaign commercial, arriving and sitting almost empty in the Hudson. A New York hospital executive calls it a joke.
Second: The grandiosity of narcissistic personalities belies an extreme fragility, their egos as delicate as foam. They live in terror of being upstaged. They’re too thin skinned to be told they’re wrong.
What that means, during this pandemic: Narcissistic leaders never have, as Trump likes to say, the best people. They have galleries of sycophants. With the exceptions of Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, Trump has surrounded himself with a Z-team of dangerously inexperienced toadies and flunkies — the bargain-bin rejects from Filene’s Basement — at a time when we require the brightest and most imaginative minds in the country.
Faced with a historic public health crisis, Trump could have assembled a first-rate company of disaster preparedness experts. Instead he gave the job to his son-in-law, a man-child of breathtaking vapidity. Faced with a historic economic crisis, Trump could have assembled a team of Nobel-prize winning economists or previous treasury secretaries. Instead he talks to Larry Kudlow, a former CNBC host.
Meanwhile, Fauci and Birx measure every word they say like old-time apothecaries, hoping not to humiliate the narcissist — never humiliate a narcissist — while discreetly correcting his false hopes and falsehoods. They are desperately attempting to create a safe space for our president, when the president should be creating a safer nation for all of us.
Third: Narcissistic personalities love nothing more than engineering conflict and sowing division. It destabilizes everyone, keeps them in control.
What that means, during this pandemic: Trump is pitting state against state for precious resources, rather than coordinating a national response. (“It’s like being on eBay,” complained Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York last week.) His White House is a petty palace of competing power centers. He picks fights with Democratic officials and members of the press, when all the public craves is comfort.
Narcissistic personalities don’t do comfort. They cannot fathom the needs of other hearts.
Fourth: Narcissistic personalities are vindictive. On a clear day, you can see their grudges forever.
What that means, during this pandemic: Trump is playing favorites with governors who praise him and punishing those who fail to give him the respect he believes he deserves. “If they don’t treat you right, don’t call,” he told Vice President Mike Pence.
His grudge match with New York is now especially lethal. When asked on Friday whether New York will have enough ventilators, Trump bluntly answered “No,” and then blamed the state.
And most relevant, as far as history is concerned: Narcissistic personalities are weak.
What that means, during this pandemic: Trump is genuinely afraid to lead. He can’t bring himself to make robust use of the Defense Production Act, because the buck would stop with him. (To this day, he insists states should be acquiring their own ventilators.) When asked about delays in testing, he said, “I don’t take responsibility at all.” During Friday’s news conference, he added the tests “we inherited were broken, were obsolete,” when this form of coronavirus didn’t even exist under his predecessor.
This sounds an awful lot like one of the three sentences that Homer Simpson swears will get you through life: “It was like that when I got here.”
Most people, even the most hotheaded and difficult ones, have enough space in their souls to set aside their anger in times of crisis. Think of Rudolph Giuliani during Sept. 11. Think of Andrew Cuomo now.
But every aspect of Trump’s crisis management has been annexed by his psychopathology. As Americans die, he boasts about his television ratings. As Americans die, he crows that he’s No. 1 on Facebook, which isn’t close to true.
But it is true that all eyes are on him. He’s got a captive audience, an attention-addict’s dream come to life. It’s just that he, like all narcissistic personalities, has no clue how disgracefully — how shamefully, how deplorably — he’ll be enshrined in memory.
“Above Everything” (David Ignatow)
I think this poem is gorgeous: it fills me with such peace and hope. I especially like that he has placed “others like myself” between “plants and animals” and “ships and buildings.” I also think the semicolon, the only one in the poem, is perfectly placed, and the title is perfect, too, sitting as it does atop the poem — and reappearing as its last line.
Zeus
I saw this in my Twitter feed yesterday and watched it more times than I will admit because, well, I just needed to laugh and to feel outsized joyful emotions for another being. When I went to YouTube to get the URL, I noticed that there were 12,465,938 views since January 3, 2016, which included 366K “likes.” But there were 4.5K “dislikes,” and I’m trying to figure out why. I’m typically very sensitive to anything that has even a hint of animal cruelty, but I don’t see any here. Is it that those who gave a thumbs down thought he was being teased or exploited perhaps? Or did they just not like the sound of the dog expressing himself so passionately? Or were some simply being trolls who roam the internet looking for ever more ways to be a******s? If you have any ideas, please leave a comment.
