Demolition men

Temperature: just two weeks ago it was warm enough to work out outdoors in a tank top. A strappy one. Practically naked then. In October. Sweet baby Jesus, you’d think how wonderful, but I’m not okay with this.

Eating: chili sin carne

Drinking: kefir

Watching: Belgravia

Listening: to the grating sounds of construction coming from a few blocks away. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

Reading: The Irish Princess by Elizabeth Chadwick and Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen. The latter is a coolheaded autopsy of the Trump presidency; a fast read because if you’ve been paying even summary attention you already know these things; and yet it's a striking read, events and effects so clinically laid out and linked, and all the while you’re thinking: how is this man still president? And then this came out. Autocratization surges, yes, but resistance grows. If history were a seesaw, you could argue we’re pivoting. But a question to the autocrats, who are not very good at playing the long game: how do you think this will end, because you can’t win no matter what you do? For a moment you may feel you’re on top; you go about suppressing and oppressing, intimidating and silencing, stripping rights and taking lives. But that only breeds more anger and bitterness, leading to your tighter squeeze and then more resistance, a cycle whose logical end is something like North Korea where everything and everyone exists to serve the leader who is in fact the most vulnerable citizen of all. Your total power is a sad illusion because you have neither earned it nor won it, you have taken it. And it can in turn be taken away because you neither deserve it nor honor it. The whole country and its resources are your hostage, but you are no criminal mastermind or genius of any sort, you are an opportunist, just someone who got lucky as the seesaw moved.

Writing: “Dearest America, the president you elect you deserve.”

Thinking: We can’t drink oil, we can’t eat coal, we can’t shelter in the heat or rising tides. Please stop voting for men trying to convince you that of course you can.