YES, I’LL SAY YAY BUT…

Published April 26, 2024 by Nan Mykel

How can this be? A search of Google for Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House of Representatives includes an Intelligencer story titled “26 Things You’d Rather Not Know about Mike Johnson.” I read it and although the title may have a fault (I couldn’t re-visit without money), the items were the most offensive positions he has taken in the past (Trump Won, Anti-Gay, etc._.)

“I never expected the music to swell and the credits to roll with Mike Johnson’s face in the center of the frame,” wrote Frank Bruni in a New York Times opinion piece.

Johnson, the House speaker, reversed a position that he’d previously held, banded with Democrats and infuriated some of the loudest members of his party — that’s Marjorie Taylor Greene you hear wailing in the wings — to pass a $95 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan last weekend.

“…In an era this intensely and corrosively partisan, it’s especially important that we give warranted praise and appropriate thanks to people with whom we usually disagree. Tribalism discourages that, but a healthy democracy demands it.” Guess I’ll say thanks and wait to see what happens next.

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MIND BLOWING

Conjoined at the head, living a life as a transgender man with spina bifida, and facing the other direction an able-bodied sibling, Lori, who had musical talent and and pushed George on a stool that had wheels. A blanket over one of them provided privacy during intimacy. The Schappell twins, who died recently at 62, said that they never wanted to be surgically separated, and that they did not wish they had been born apart. Read more about these and other conjoined siblings via Google.

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HICKORY DICKORY DOC

It feels strange to read that the ACLU is on the other side in the Tik Toc issue. I’m unclear about which high road to favor. In the end I guess it’s follow survival.

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WHEN I WAS IN PHYSICAL REHAB a year or so ago, the occupational therapist stopped by my bed and asked if could walk. No, my foot was broken. Which foot? The right foot. The left? No, the right, whereupon she checked my veracity by looking herself. The day before when I reported to a nurse look alike that my heart was pounding, she asked me what did I want her to do about it.

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. According to the internet, 10% of Americans believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows.

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“ADL tracked 8,873 antisemitic incidents across the United States in 2023, the highest level recorded since ADL started tracking this data in 1979.” — U.S. Antisemitic Incidents Soared 140% percent in 2023, Thanks to Dr. John Persico Jr. for that tid bit.

MY INTERPRETATION

For some reason, I don’t see the unexpected widespread antisemitic sentiment, especially on college campuses, as being rooted in anti Jewishness, but the empathic horror and sympathy for those continuing to suffer in Hamas. Of course, contributing to a war on one side while offering aid to the other at the same time does seem a little crazy to me. And I still continue to secretly (or not so secretly) tend to suspect that both 9-11 and the “surprise” invasion of Israel were permitted to justify the resultant wars.

A Little Poem

Published March 31, 2022 by Nan Mykel

WANTING TO BELIEVE

On the farm, at five, I remember

both realising and regretting

that no one else could share

my experience, that each of us

is separate. I still regret it.

As a youth, at bedtime, I would

sometimes hold one arm up

in the air for minutes. Any

involuntary movement of my arm

might be by God.

One day while in college I

had a flash, a “knowing” that we

are all together in our dreams.

Hungry for connection, I still hope

for something to be true.

Nan March 2022

KEEPIN’ ON

Published March 1, 2022 by Nan Mykel

Image: Pixabay

KEEPIN’ ON

Don’t say why, say how.

Why presupposes an

unattainable degree

of reason, as in truth.

Happiness happened

in graduate school, with

wonder and growing edges

always in process,

Connecting in the same

tongue searching for the

how, puzzled by all the

unsolved mysteries

All the learning not

yet used! The flying bishop,

prophetic dreams, who,

what when where how

The tip of the plow

still unearthing that

which might be now

or in the future.

Could quantum mechanics,

going with the flow, free us

to occupy a niche in

our haunted cave?

I’m still curious and

not willing to leave my

lust for understanding

back with my bones.

Should that occur, I shall

go out hollering and hope

to transition into someone

else’s Muse.

Philosophical Flash Fiction

Published December 30, 2019 by Nan Mykel

I think I’m one of the handful of our species who still carry a few Neanderthal genes in their DNA (another fantasy, or it could be truth?) I withdraw to my inner cave for comfort, also when frightened by the antics of my universe.

The entrance to my cave is narrow, if not hidden, and its roof everpresent, overhead and revealed by the spirits of the night. Inside I most often experience protection and shelter, but then unpredictably, for no reason, the sky is rent and the displeasure of the spirits falls through. In 1971, without warning, joy morphed into fear as my precious wombling appeared, both mongoloid and terminal. Fear had pelted from my sky, so long protecting.

The sins of the fathers, surely not mine? I watched the rent in the sky, distrusting its false reassurance. .

Years passed, propitiation helping maintain the fabric of the sky, until the sky was rent again and again and the size of my haven shrank. After years of succor by the cave spirits, fear moved in, and the floor of my cave became unstable. Retribution was upon both me and the few family and clan mates who also had sought succor.

Expatiation for what? As we look on, age, disease and a mysterious silence fills the cave. A shepherd’s crook reaches down and snuffs out its own. Finally, overhead, rocks begin to fall from the sky of my refuge and we crawl out to discover a frighteningly similar world.

The scene in this sprawling land of mountain crags of cautious and fearful humans creeping out from their places of temporary refuge feels somehow archetypal. I look up and wonder, is this a new day or a new night?

285 words

c.nanmykel

A PUZZLE

Published October 27, 2019 by Nan Mykel

If a jumping spider can hear through the hair on his legs, why can’t people have an esp receptor somewhere on their body? My readings on consciousness for a book I’ll probably never write are pushing me closer to the agnostic category, rather than the atheist.

I used to say with the rest of them that an atheist is just an honest agnostic, but I’m beginning to slide to the other way around.

My Mental Mire

Published October 12, 2019 by Nan Mykel

On my fifth birthday, riding on the swinging garage doors, I wondered about life. I wondered about the essence of awareness of conscious existence. Why was there no connection between my awareness and that of others? What did existing entail? My first five years had only served to confuse.

I saw two sets of worlds: the world of myself as against all others, and the world of children as against adults. I never believed I would grow up. Not really. One thing worried me especially: would I essentially change as I grew up, or would the me of myself remain constant?

That afternoon by the garage on my fifth birthday I resolved to keep in contact with myself. From birthday to birthday. I promised myself on my fifth birthday. I promised myself to keep in touch with myself on every proceeding birthday. More times than not, I keep the faith. I re-familiarize myself with the five year old and touch base.

Not long ago I came across a letter written five years after that fifth birthday. It was addressed to the me of the future. It read:

Hello, How are you? What do you think? Have you changed?

Of course I’ve changed, and for the worse, as do all people growing up. Childhood is the age of innocence and wonder and faith in the infallibility of adults. Since my childhood my innocence has been tainted by knowledge, my wonder has been dulled by complacency, and my faith in mankind has been demoralized by observation. I can still remember the jarring shock I received when I saw an adult act in childish temper.

I feel somehow guilty that I have changed. It seems I should have kept the girl of five alive to a greater extent than I have. I make compensation to some degree on my birthdays, when I remember.