People!
It is the time of plague and PTSD and I guess just straight up TSD to be honest. We are living in it. The futureless now. What will fill this vacuum, both good and bad?
I guess all nows are futureless but generally you can speculate, almost unconsciously. I can’t seem to hang on to any future speculations in the now we are in and it’s a real anxiety engine. The futures just tumble in slow motion into wreckage. They end with me alone, in haze.
I don’t mean to sound hopeless. I’ve adapted. I’ve accepted. I have no idea what the plan is in the micro, for me. Usually it revolves around should I stay or should I go. What will I have to share if and when we can be witnessed in public again. Constructing slowly.
It seems in the macro planning we all get the vaccine eventually and it will probably work for the time being. These bugs are crafty and ambitious.
I’ve been doing the work. The talking, the thinking, the writing things down (this), the cooking, the walking, the working out, the sitting (quietly), the stretching, the watching, the eating of things good and bad and the reading.
I cooked up some kasha varnishkes from scratch the other night. I made it the old school way, with schmaltz. I rendered it myself from my last batch of bone broth. I browned the onions in the fat. I coated the groats with egg and browned them in the same pan with the hint of onion fat in it still. I added the broth and the onions back into the groats and simmered them until they were soft. Made the bowtie pasta and mixed it all together, salt and peppered it, then used it as a time machine. I went back to being at someone’s house, maybe my grandmother’s, just being a little Jewish kid, the smells, the tasting. I went further back, Poland. If you make the old Jew food correctly you can get all the way back to the hats and beards of Ukraine and Russia. Ashkenazi seeds. Tradespeople, pogroms. Dying for being.
Then I can drop back into the present-day anti-Semitism. Looking into the bowl of groats and noodles is like a crystal ball. Qanon is built on the foundation of the oldest anti-Semitic conspiracies there are. It’s like a conspiracy clearing house but let’s not forget it’s ALL about the Jews. Jew-hate goes back to the beginning of Jews and the beginning of hate. Qanon may seem modern and kooky and crazy but it is fully realized anti-Jewish propaganda that will most likely keep morphing. It is about the othering of the Jews. The suspected world owners. The puppet masters. People are truly stupid. The Jews are not the puppeteers in this case but they people spouting the Q verses are definitely the puppets.
I do two or three sun salutations in the morning and I meditate for ten to fifteen minutes. Breathing in the now. Should I stay or should I go, now?
Today I talk to comedian George Wallace about his journey from being a rag salesman to being Seinfeld’s roommate to being a Vegas stalwart to being a Twitter celebrity. On Thursday, if all goes right, I talk to William Zabka about being the bully we all knew to being the broken man in Cobra Kai.
Enjoy!
Boomer, Monkey and LaFonda live!
Love,
Maron