A Good Day

So, in the second year of the pandemic, in the fading horrors that accompanied the Trump years; in the mid-winter of the Midwest in the 21^st year in what is already proving to be a dreadful century; in a time when scientists say the doomsday clock sits precariously at 100 seconds and when climate change predictions threaten to speed up that measure portending mass destruction; when systemic racism pervades American society; when a Republican congresswoman avers that the California wildfires were caused by a laser beam aimed at the forests by alien life forms; and when so many of the Republican Senators and Representatives violently contort themselves to engage in unrecognizable forms of logic, reason and intelligent thought as they conspire to defend former President Trump and his absurd unproved allegations that the election was stolen from him; and in moments when the Republican ranks will not acknowledge that the violence that erupted at the Capitol on January 6 was incited by the former President; despite it all, I have been wondering of what a good day might consist. This is a skeletal, paltry and even preliminary list. A good day would be:

1.     When the breakfast cereal (Cheerios, Rice Krispies and Corn Flakes either separate or all together) and the whole milk are consumed in equal measure and at meal’s end there is remnants of neither left at the bottom of my bowl;

2.     When another Republican Senator or Representative throws in the towel and declares that this is not the party s/he joined and declines to run for reelection;

3.     When the weather forecast predicting six to eight inches of snow proves (again) to be wrong, and even though the sun doesn’t shine on my back door today the sidewalks are clear for my daily walks;

4.     When the dinner I prepare actually takes exactly the amount of time the directions suggest it should;

5.     Oh, and when the dinner I have prepared (see #4 above) tastes sufficiently acceptable;

6.     When my Amazon delivery arrives when exactly they say me it will arrive;

7.     When the three-hour fake log (that they tell me are environmentally safe (see above) actually burns for four hours;

8.     When I complete my reading of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “A Defense of Poetry” for a class in which as a senior citizen I have enrolled at the University of Minnesota, and actually seem to understand some of the essay. Admittedly I never understand very well what the Romantics mean when they talk of feeling and emotion and passion in their prose manifestos, but they do seem committed to the ideas. Wordsworth says poetry comes out of spontaneous overflow of feelings recollected in moments of tranquility, but that is also what I understand to be therapy. And Shelly says that poetry “is the creation of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the creator which is itself the image of all other minds.” What? Shelley also says that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, but I don’t think anyone in the Trump administration could even parse Shelley’s sentence.

9.     When I continue my study of the detective novel that began as a distraction from the above but has become a study of the nature of fiction. Oh, and they do still are distractions.

10.  When I have slept through the night having to arise only twice to pee. And then return easily to sleep, and perchance to dream.