My, what a difference a solstice makes: A mere 6 months ago, at summer’s zenith, L’Orange had about as much chance of winning back the presidency as did Roo, my orange Abyssinian (both being the same age and of an equally shared intelligence). Yet here we are arrived, in Groundhog Day fashion, playing presidential musical chairs to the opening salvos of autumn’s official descent (on Dec. 21) into winter’s malaise and decline.
Trump, in yet another example of his unique ability to always fail upwards, is but the second president in U.S. history to win nonconsecutive terms. Edgily, I keep harkening back to that off-the-cuff assurance he gave to a group of his evangelical, senior supporters back in July: “Don’t worry, in four years you won’t have to vote again.”
One can’t help but involuntarily sense a sort of vaguely impending premonition of catastrophe — nostalgic of those late-night revelers aboard the Titanic whom, come midnight’s cheer, couldn’t quite yet discern any underfoot lilt (albeit, such professional card sharks whom loitered about the men’s First Class smoking lounge wanly noted that their highballs’ pour levels, from atop the poker tables, suddenly appeared to be canting just ever so slightly off kilter). Into our frankincense-&-myrrh scented air already wafts a miasma of perturbation.
Just recently, my husband and I returned from a Thanksgiving holiday excursion to Europe during which we found ourselves serendipitously arriving in St. Peter’s Square just at the very moment in which a work crew placed a golden star atop its giant papal Christmas tree, still encased in its scaffolding, directly adjacent to the largest of Cleopatra’s 13 Roman needles (a baker’s dozen of colossal, 300-plus ton granite obelisks pilfered from Egypt during the heretical reign of Caligula).
Exactly why such a Christian totem was being erected side-by-side a pagan monolith we’ll leave to future archeological theologians.
Meanwhile, my husband — absorbed in the surrounding
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