So much that could be written about the last six months. So much that will never…ever…be written.
Such a tease, right?

No, today’s thoughts balance upon the current political situation in the US. A subject about which I have generally avoided writing directly, because I simply do not want to think about it any more than I already do. But now, more than ever…and this present shitshow has been building for 10 years….

DO NOT ENGAGE.
DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS.

I was walking down the street, heading to the pub for a pleasant dinner date. Absolutely minding my own business and very obviously focused on my companion.
And a woman sitting outside the “billiard hall” says, or rather shouts, “I SUPPORT DONALD TRUMP!”
I look out the side of my eye. She is older. She is obviously inebriated. She looks like she’s had a…busy life. And she is staring directly at me.
Not looking at her companions, two “gentlemen” sat to either side of her. But staring aggressively at me and my companion.

So many thoughts crowd into my head in that split second.
But big and bold and right up on top is, “I am too hungry for this shit.”
Because it is shit. Just some sad old biddy looking to pick a fight, to get some acknowledgement of her existence. More so here than with a “normal” Cheeto-licker, there would be no outcome of an interaction that would be anything other than a massive waste of time…for me. I’m sure she’d have gotten a solid ego boost.
And I was really hungry.
The choice was easy.

DO NOT ENGAGE.
DO NOT FEED TROLLS.

But, wellllll…… I am only a weak, imperfect human being after all.
I did respond.
I shook my head as I walked past and away.
Leaving her to shout, “Don’t you shake your head at me!”

Sorry, Piggy; that’s all you get.

Laundry, as a task, is perhaps the perfect marriage of OCD and ADHD.
The OCD is satisfied by the sorting, by the matching of socks, by getting everything folded just so, and finally put in their proper space.
The ADHD is satisfied by the process: you can’t get bogged down because the task requires you to merely hop in and out of the laundry room; loading and transferring and unloading and folding and hiding away in drawers and closets.

I am in the middle of a collection of short works by Thomas Mann, a German writer active from the late 1800’s. This collection begins with a short story from 1897 and ends with a piece acknowledged as the pinnacle of his achievement, written in 1912. He continued to write after this for decades, but was apparently never again quite satisfied with his output. I have yet to reach this piece, being forced to pause a moment to acknowledge certain thoughts corresponding to what I have already read.

You might notice the alteration to my elocution – an alteration which is entirely in sympathy with the works to which I have so recently been exposed. A certain stilted formality, perhaps. Further reading of this piece might render transparent a definite and nearly inflexible morality.
These are hallmarks of Mann’s writing, at least at this stage of his career.
He is a powerful writer, gripping in spite of the austere subject matter, the overbearing morality, the lack of plot in deference to basic character study.

These facts of Mann’s writing begin to inform opinions, thoughts on possible social and moral lines connecting the world in which Mann wrote to that in which Durrenmatt wrote some 50 years later. You may recall, or may wish to revisit or even visit for the first time, what I wrote on Durrenmatt some three months ago.
Granted that Mann was German and Durrenmatt was Swiss, there are definite sympathies in style, in tone, and even in subtext. I look forward to reaching the “grand piece” of Mann’s collection; it should prove informative and perhaps conclusive on the subject of those potential sympathies. I suspect that I will have more to say on the subject at such time as I am able to complete my perusal of this current collection.