You want things so forgotten

“At the hill’s foot Frodo found Aragorn, standing still and silent as a tree; but in his hand was a small golden bloom of elanor, and a light was in his eyes. He was wrapped in some fair memory: and as Frodo looked at him he knew he beheld things as they once had been in the same place.” –J.R.R. Tolkien

You want things so forgotten:
you are never telling them to stay.
The husky wind upon the branches,
the boastful breaking of the day.

You want to look up and say,
“Ah, those days were simple.
Those days will never come again.”
While I stand with my sole upon the soil:

digging, digging. You want things to unlock
themselves, to fall like parts of zippers made in
a factory in New Jersey. I want to nail them together--
ugly, unfunctional--and go with them across the sea.

You want things so forgotten. You want to call the moon
just the moon, as if it had never lit us in our wet walks
around the lake. You want the scent to die out
from your sweater. You want a lie to be forgiven,

for it is careful lying that turns one day into another,
and without it we’d just stop. Like photos, burned
by a magnifying glass onto tattoo skin. Like the lights
of a city that have forgotten to wink. Like a night

that never ends, and keeps plunging onward, down the dark hillside,
across the aching ocean, up the vinyl siding, into the open window,
through your unbelief, past your dental improvements, and down
your dark gullet. In that darkness it is unforgotten,

but you keep it secret, like a dream.

posted by Adam at 11:01 AM [edit]

Silent film

Can you see how on screen they are asking us to die?
Can you the see the silent smiles on their backs?
It was I who called you yesterday and hung up
and didn’t even think about calling back. I wouldn’t
like to talk. On screen they are asking for a dance

and I am missing the right clothes. The horse and carriage
are waiting in the hallway, improper, and the chandelier
is in the wine cellar. Flooded, just the way I remember us.
I didn’t even think, “Perhaps I should call back.” I just left
the phone on the desk in the room in the mansion which was
all black and white and painted. I wouldn’t have liked to talk.

The time has come for a duel. It is I unarmed and the little kid
sister from the first pastoral scene. She’s going to kill me for not
loving you enough, because misunderstandings are common like that
in film. Foul misunderstanding! I loved you so much I coughed reels
onto the cutting room floor and was laid up for weeks in a velvet robe.
Just like the silent film: though I did in fact call, I wouldn’t have liked to talk.
posted by Adam at 10:26 AM [edit]

To: Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Dear Mr. Krugman,

I am an avid reader of your column in the Times and personally appreciate your expertise in showing how liberal politics make economic sense. As a student of Latin America, I also depend on your analysis of events like the ones that took place recently in Argentina, and the influence of international capital and monetary institutions in the collapse of their economy.

I do feel that in your column today, "The Angry People" (Op-Ed, April 23), you have mischaracterized Nader voters as you draw parallels between recent elections in the United States and France. Presumably referring both to left-wing challengers of France's Lionel Jospin and, by association, to Mr. Nader, you mention "left-wing candidates... who have no chance of winning, but are engaged in politics as theater." I have seen similar formulations before and find them condescending to voters; the "theater" analogy seems to implicate an "audience" of voters, but the fact is that voters--even those of us who vote for a candidate we know will not win--are more active than the average audience in a play, because at the end of the show we cast a ballot. Otherwise we would not come out in the first place. The fact remains, despite many mischaracterizations by angry Democrats, that no one was duped or seduced into voting for Nader. The conscious, and for me quite painful, decision not to vote Democrat was made because of my perception that on many issues, but most particularly on campaign finance, both parties had compromised our democracy to a point that was simply unallowable. You may defend the parties by pointing out that Congress recently passed the soft-money ban, but I am sure that as an economist you know even better than I the extent to which that ban is a drop in the bucket, and the degree to which businesses--not voters--are now the "constituents" of many candidates on both sides of the aisle.

Of course I and Nader voters everywhere mourn the fact that Bush was selected by the Supreme Court to be our president. Mr. Nader is not perfect, especially not when he misleadingly asserts that Bush and Gore are two of a kind. We have learned all too well in recent months that they are indeed not so similar. But I remind you before you lump Nader in with the "silly leftists" on the ballot in France that to this day Mr. Nader has done more during his career to shape the way we live in America than either Mr. Bush or Mr. Gore, probably more than they ever will do. I also remind you that Gore's platform, unlike Mr. Jospin's in France, was not in fact "slightly left-of-center." To call it so is to allow the right-wingers in Congress, whom you so rightly criticize in today's column, to define the American political spectrum more than they should. Gore was, at best, a centrist candidate, with a running mate who until the campaign began was a supporter of school vouchers, an idea that abandons our government's commitment to improving public education. And I think noone deserves to be called "left-of-center" until he or she admits the basic need for universal healthcare. Mr. Nader, for all his flaws, stands for all these things which to so many of us voters are so basic, and so shocking to find the Democrats willing to compromise on.

I look forward to continuing to read your column, which both informs and provokes me. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Adam Rosenblatt
posted by Adam at 11:25 AM [edit]