I could not sleep in Arlington, a dramatic counterpoint to oversleeping yesterday at the farm.
I came back up around mid-day to get a decent swim and huddle with some former co-workers about the future at Willow. Old Jim was there, enjoying a tuna slider with hot sauce and the welcome warmth of the day. We solved no world problems, though we did talk about some of them.
I put something modest in the skillet when I got back from the bar and went for a short bonus dip with Bart, the taller of the lean Polish lifeguards of this summer. The upward spike of the temperature after the weekend made the cool water cross the threshold from “freaking cold” to “refreshing.” With all that is going on, it seemed like the right thing to do.
I ate over the skillet pensively in the kitchen. I am deeply troubled, as you might imagine, with the situation overseas and domestically. Hunger eliminated, I padded back to the bedroom to read “The Weed Agency,” a funny but depressing look at a not-so-fictional Federal agency devoted to combatting invasive (and sometimes imaginary) plant species, and the saga of its ever expanding budget over the decades. It is by a fellow named James Geraghty who also has spent too much time in this town.
Safely reclined, my eyes closed and I was down early, long before the scheduled time for the broadcast of “24,” which I am attempting to follow and almost succeeding.
I woke at 0230 and couldn’t get back to a decent REM rest. I would have read, but despite the solidity of The Weed Agency, it was too depressing an account to embrace at that hour. I had raced through the four “Monster International” books and am restless. The supernatural series is akin to the classic sci-fi of my youth- like “Them,” (giant nuclear ants) or “The Creature from Another World” (arctic invaded by blood-sucking creatures) which critics since have labeled as the escapist answer to the Red Scare of the day, which we now know to have been completely true.
With my eyes hopelessly wide in the darkness, I gave up and rose. I went to the living room and turned on Amazon Prime, and selected the episode which I had the foresight to know would have rendered me asleep in my chair in an instant and querulous in a still-lit room at about the same time that I returned to it.
Here is what Hollywood is trying to sell us at the moment, in the context of the writers trying to explain our reality through fantasy: since we cannot tell the truth about much any more, the story line has inverted just about everything. There are a few characters that might be from the Middle East. They are all portrayed in a positive or at least ambivalent light. The terrorists- who control a fleet of deadly American drones- are relentlessly Anglo-Saxon. They are opposed be the equally relentless Jack Bauer, and the American President, an Irish American with early onset dementia.
The terrorists are well dressed and carefully groomed. They are lead by an upper crust British woman, who lives in a stately house in the lush green fields adjacent to London.
Spoiler alert: The FBI station chief, a Hispanic American, is a traitor. The protagonist, a Canadian actor, is torn about his tough moral choices as an American agent.
This marked a milestone for Jack Bauer: the 200th episode of rip-snorting improbable action. I expect it to wrap up next week or the week after. I further expect the minor nobility will be expunged and the American drone threat (this is sort of complicated) will be eliminated.
I thought about all that I was expected to believe after I turned off the flat-screen and looked around. Still no sign of dawn. I shrugged. This is nothing as amazing as some of the things we are supposed to believe these days.
Plus, in “24” we actually know who “Them” are.
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303