Is it Noonan or it Not
A president, this president, is about to leave us. He was a vacation, of sorts, for this country comfortable with Caucasians and clarity and compromise. But it wasn't about hue, it was about honor and hubris and heart. (Ahhh, alliteration). A vacation not gone wrong, so much, as not right. The ocean view was a crane and a new tower under construction and a giant HVAV outside a spotted window. The continental breakfast was toast and coffee. The room musty from cheap sex and the desperation of tourists. The comedian used props and talked of prostates. This president a headliner but only in certain venues.
The words, usually my friend, don't come to me easily today, the emotions drained out of me by this man, this MAN of precision, of efficiency, of otherness. He is a phlebotomist, drawing from us blood, sweat, tears, history. His pre- and post- op perfunctory. Cold, calculating he was. We, a nation, sat on an exam table, exposed, embarrassed, our bottoms barely covered by a cotton gown on a sheet of paper and an industry's casualness. So clinical, so antiseptic he was, never looking up from his chart to see our fear and palpitations and our inviting, vulnerable nakedness. When he touched us, we felt nothing but schooling, test scores, his unfeeling finger probing us without pity or affection or reassurance. Reagan loved us, by contrast. And when he hugged us, touched us, fingered us, it wasn't just those big arms of his, those muscular repositories of grit that embraced us and pulled us and our bosom areas into his massive chest for sustenance and warmth, it was America and its arms hugging us, consoling us, its fingers dancing on our skin. Reagan had a black doctor bag with suckers inside. He sat on the edge of America's bed and asked, "Where does it hurt?" It wasn't just his strong, tender hands, the hands of a man who chopped wood and pulled reins and patted hind quarters, it was America's hands, as well, choreographing our passion like Bernstein. Alas, we touched ourselves. He showed us how. He watched. You could feel it, see it, I felt it. My breasts and nipples felt it, the friction mixing with lust. Ahhhh. You could feel America in him, all of it. It coursed through him, effortlessly, like a raging river over strip-mined land, the country's verve and pulse vibrating in his every breath, its passion in his loins. If you put your head up to his chest, as I did many times, you could feel a working heart, an American heart. It's what I felt at the revolution. Duo-dup; ba bum; plop-plop; thud-thud; pop-pop. That's the sound of a country without A-fib. Again ... again ... again. The beat of a man, the beat of a promise, the beat of a country.
The beat now stilled by old age and Alzheimer's and of course death. He looks out at the Pacific these days. The ocean smiles, feels secure that he watches with his Reagan-like gaze.
But this president, this man turning gray before us, this man who allows the job to get to him, the man who fist taps, yells at Anderson Cooper. Hugs without throwing his shoulders into it, you can tell. A quick pat, a rub, done. Maybe with his wife, he's different, who knows--she, a big black beautiful woman who dances with Ellen and wears fancy dresses and tells us all to exercise and eat right. They will not be missed, she and her husband, these two from--who knows--Chicago, they tells us (Let it be)--they will be remembered. But presidents shouldn't just reside in our memory banks along with old loves who leave us and rip our tender hearts out in the prime of our budding youth (yes, it's happened to me), presidents should be in OUR souls and innermost regions . My heart is empty since ... since ... doesn't matter.
I think of guns now, shiny, hard, some new, some from good men in shops, some from strong salt of the earth men in plaid shirts and jeans with big belts sitting behind folding tables at gun shows. Guns don't politicize people, people politicize people. Why shouldn't they be able to sell their wares. They are salesman, they are Willy Loman without the angst and guilt. They could be selling baseball cards, beads, energy drinks, women's lingerie, electronic cigarettes. This president, though, never a friend of business, entrepreneurs.
I wonder--and it's so hard sometimes to do that, to understand where--WHERE America is headed. I weep for the past, for the present, for the future. I weep, alas, because to not weep makes me weep. It's so tough to put into words what are barely thoughts in my mind. I saw things at the revolution, yes, things I now miss, things I can no longer remember or articulate.
And so I write
The weeping continues, the yearning continues, the heart wants its memory, its morning, its revolution, its surly bounds loosened.
I am lugubrious.