A winning proposition

Some 61% of California said Yes we can. Then, further down the ballot, they decided No you can’t.

The primary horserace

“I think she should complete the primary season, and then she has to re-evaluate and her supporters have to re-evaluate.” - Clinton supporter Nita Lowey, Representative of New York

 So that’s what the coaches are now saying: no time for the moment to dwell on results; just finish the season. This is what an athlete gets to hear when the coach realizes that, despite all the preparation, someone else has done it better, or that despite being seeded first, another phenom has gone undetected. They say this, too, to an athlete who suddenly finds himself sustaining some kind of chronic injury. Nothing so debilitating that it prevents him from crossing the finish line, but unshakeable enough that he won’t break any records. The resignation in that phrase, though–”just finish the season”–brings you down lower than that: when you hear it, it means not only that you’re going to fall short of your projected potential. You are actually, gently, being swept into the great unclassed. You become just a finisher. You lose even the worth of second place, because neither you nor anyone around you ever thought for a moment that you’d be anything but first. Bill Bradley took second; so did John McCain, once. But for Hillary, there isn’t even a “Well, I beat John Edwards.” Yet the only time that she was truly winning was before the race officially began, so every step since then has been a step back, or down. That’s why “finishing” is really just losing. “She should complete the season” is a careful way of saying, “She should finish losing.”

On China

Fareed Zakaria has it pretty right.

Some sense about Tibet

In today’s Times.

This is an unprecedented day

Today completes a certain number of years that I’ve been around. Tomorrow I will have a new age. I think I prefer to celebrate today, rather than tomorrow. Today is the last day I get to be __ (TK years). Birthdays, I’ve come to think, are really for mothers to celebrate. I’m pretty sure that the day of my birth was fairly meaningless to me. I have no memory of it—there is nothing to remember. My mother remembers it. She’d never been through anything like it.

So I commemorate this day—today—as I suppose I would commemorate graduating from school, or relinquishing an apartment, or riding, for the last time, on old roads before quitting a place. (On Commencement day, you woke up and they gave you champagne. Even the shower felt strange that morning. The day after Commencement, everybody left.) I didn’t do much out of the ordinary today, except for one thing: I listened to a recent radio interview with John McPhee. He’s been putting things in perspective for me for a little while now, but here he does it almost expressly–like he’s talking to me. It reminds me that the one thing I’ve got a grasp on at the end of TK years is a sense of what I want to make. It’s not a complicated thing, and he puts it very well. In fact, it’s the simplicity I’m after.

Nell remains

I had thought this post would be called ”The remains of Nell” instead, or better yet, “Oh SNAP!” But the truth is we haven’t nailed Nell. The peanut butter in four strategic locations has not tempted her in the least. Instead I saw her again, jogging leisurely down our short hallway and behind the refrigerator. Mice are smart. I guess they wouldn’t do anything we wouldn’t do. I’m told now that they can smell traces of human tampering. So the dozen times that my roommate got her finger bitten while setting those traps has probably left those things swathed in human odor (and murderous intent).

Last days of a city mouse

My flatmate and I have a mouse. She is gray and about half the size of a subway rat. We’ve named her Nell.

One of Nell’s first meals in our home was some bread made from ground spelta. I found the loaf with a hollow in the shape of a mouse. The first and only time I saw her was when I surprised her in the bathroom. I was brushing my teeth when she made a break for it, her momentum throwing her off-balance as she sprinted out and hung a sharp right for the kitchen. Her little legs showed tension and fear.

Today we put out four traps. Snappy affairs. The recommended bait was peanut butter—a lick of a death. Nell’s last meal will be Trader Joe’s organic crunchy unsalted.

 Nell’s days are numbered.

Well, here’s a blog.

I got this blog because sometimes I want to say things to people and don’t know how or who all to say it to. This didn’t happen so much before I moved to New York. I used to spend the better part of my time riding a bike, and probably put a lot of what I had to say into going forward, or upward. But I didn’t bring my bike into the city—I didn’t know what kind of place it would be. It turned out to be a pretty fast-moving thing in itself: I could stand still and the scene would go by on its own. Though I’d rather do the work myself on a bike, I do admit it’s exciting, and I do profess to like some of it. I like my building, where I live at the very top—though it’s only three stories high, this being Queens. And when I have something to say—I mean something I wish I could broadcast—I climb out and just sort of fume or ponder into the air. I hope this blog will make it easier.