Here’s an idea, I thought. Pick a topic in the morning — when topics sprout up on every page of the Times — and think about it, off and on, as a sort of theme for the day. Then you’ll have something to write about at bedtime.
So that was the idea that I’ve been thinking about today. Yes, it’s a bit meta. And if I were to summarize my thinking in a theme for the day, it would be I Can’t Think. I can’t think, that is, unless I’m doing something else, like ironing napkins.
Ironing napkins saved my sanity in the late morning. I had half an idea of walking over to the Museum and having lunch in the cafeteria, and then looking at the Robert Frank show. But there was so much to at home — even though I’ve been doing stuff at home for what feels like forever. There is always more. Seeing that I was about to tip into a compleat tizzy and start foaming at the mouth (this happens), I also beheld the pile of damp napkins at the foot of the bed and decided that I would get rid of them. By ironing them, of course.
And so I just did. I unfolded the ironing board and I turned on the iron, as if this is what I had been planning to do. In actuality, rapeling up the side of the building would be easier than planning, in the state that I was in. Intricate networks of priorities were crashing.
I really am very worried for the safety of President Obama. I mean this seriously and sincerely. It must be fun to laugh at wackos like John Perry, but frankly, I can’t manage so much as a tepid “heh.” Something that Adam Gopnik said about the Dreyfus Affair in a recent New Yorker has lodged in my mind.
In any modernized country, the backward-looking party will always tend toward resentment and grievance. The key is to keep the conservatives feeling that they are an alternative party of modernity. (This was Disraeli’s great achievement, as it was, much later, de Gaulle’s.) When the conservative party comes to see itself as unfairly marginalized, it becomes a party of pure reaction, which is what happened to the French right after Dreyfus. Instead of purging the anti-Semites, people on the right decided to rally behind them. They came to hate the idea of the Republic itself. When Maurras was sentenced for collaboration after the Second World War, he cried, “It’s the revenge of Dreyfus!†It wasn’t true. But Vichy had been four long years of the revenge of Drumont.
Not to mention Thomas Friedman’s “where’s the we” piece, comparing the United States today to Israel on the eve of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination.
Ironing napkins, in such cloudy conditions, is therapeutic: eventually the pressed febric convinces you that everything will be fine. It convinces the dumb part of your body that doesn’t understand what the prefrontal cortex is so worked up about but can tell that there’s a rumble. As for the prefrontal cortex, ironing calmed it down as well. Apocalyptic visions yielded to the urgent longing for an intern.
When I ask myself what I would look for in an intern, I answer right away: personable youngster who needs a year off to reconsider that future in pediatric medicine. Someone who loves kids, and the grandpas who act like them. (Where’s my tea?) Actually, I would arrange for Kathleen to interview candidates (of whom there would be many, I’m sure!) On the eve of our 28th anniversary, Kathleen has a fair idea of what it takes to “assist” me.
Yes! We’re celebrating another anniversary! 28 seems sort of dinky, though. It’s a lot, but it’s so not 30. Not to mention one of those really big numbers that you can reach only if you marry in high school. This year, Kathleen has decided that she would like me to buy her a piece of jewelry — but not just any jewelry. I’ve been sent an array of Web pages published by the shop that wraps things up in blue boxes, and I’ve got to run down tomorrow morning and buy the one that I like best. That way, there’s an element of surprise — but only an element. Kathleen, like Scottie Ferguson in Vertigo, certainly knows what she likes. Â
If I was going to be running to midtown tomorrow, then I might as well go to the movies in midtown as well, even if the Paris Theatre doesn’t sell popcorn. No popcorn! And should I really be going to the Museum today? Whatever will I do? What’s to become of the rest of the day?
I wish I could say that I thought about any of this.Â
