Fascinoma

Here at the Ministry of Elegance people are already laboring mightily to throw the annual Christmas party, a massive feed and booze-up, wherein hardly anybody lampshades or tells the boss off. We're all too elegant for that, and also there is a lot of well-armed security about.

I'm still not paying any attention to the news. Why, as Barbara (Father of our Country) Bush might put it, would I want to besmirch my beautiful mind with that stuff? I don't know if it's making me happier, but it's making me more focused on other stuff which might profit me better. Still, the Lobbyist tells me that the Senate, including many Democrats, voted down the Omnibus Bill (of which, in my news-bubble, word has not otherwise reached me), which means less money for the already impecunious and needy people she represents, and yet we're still shoveling money into the black hole of ForeverWar. The Lobbyist is truly sad, in fact I think she was near tears last night.

On the elevator last night, as I was late leaving the hushed and darkened Ministry I encountered two young women who work on the Top Floor. We joked on the way out about buying Costa Rican real estate against the day President Palin takes office. But it occurs to me, who will stop sexy Sarah from taking the helm? The same wise and decent Americans who elected Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Cheney (twice!)? The courageous and visionary Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and....?

Nixon, Reagan, Palin, Satan! Is that a cheer or a historical trend?

I'm still not watching any news to speak of; in fact I'm paying as little attention as a Washingtonian can to politics -- though I'm peripherally exposed to the machinations of the Kleptocracy by the Lobbyist's daily lot.

It's been very good for my writing, I think. It's like sublimation or something. The psychic energy and scribbler's urge I don't expend on civic eternal vigilance come back to me in the form of intellectual and literary foment. We'll see what comes of this.

Still, I feel the urge to blog a bit. So, I will, on whatever subject. For instance, last night I was running through the frigid darkness and just turning the corner for the last third of a mile up my street, when, just at the top of my peripheral vision I saw something blurry and scurrying on a big tree beside the street. I was an obsessive naturalist as a child and last night I was a bit amazed at how quickly my internalized field guide came back to me. In the space of about a stride my brain-pan flashed "Flying squirrel." I stopped and turned back and circled the tree until I found the little critter splayed head-down against the trunk. As soon as I spotted him he turned and zipped up and around the trunk, in a sort of lightning-fast, hyperpprecise movement that reminds one of hummingbird flight. I eased around the tree some more and spotted the squirrel again, now peering down from the crotch of the tree's great bifurcation, little wombat-eyes shining eerily in the backscattered streetlight. I clapped my hands just to see it move again, and up the tree it zipped, and away, seeming about ten times as fast as a normal squirrel. I ran on, enchanted for a good while, and thinking back to the time when my late sister and I trapped a couple of flying squirrels in our wooden box-trap, on the edge of the Fort Belvoir woods, maybe fifteen miles from my current home. We peered at them for a day and then let them loose. Apparenty they're not that rare but they are nocturnal, and so rarely seen.

This morning, in at trap in my kitchen, there was a mouse, peering up at me with the same sort of black beady eyes. I was rather less enchanted to see him -- perhaps because he's been crapping on my kitchen counters. It's all context I guess.