{"id":21667,"date":"2021-07-16T15:07:20","date_gmt":"2021-07-16T15:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/?p=21667"},"modified":"2021-07-16T15:11:54","modified_gmt":"2021-07-16T15:11:54","slug":"life-island-times-marlows-porch-bath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/life-island-times-marlows-porch-bath\/","title":{"rendered":"Life & Island Times: Marlow’s Porch Bath"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Editor\u2019s Note: <\/strong>Morning! The Interns are having an off-morning. Both Stephanie and Josh are unlocated, and since they are not generally restricted to the Loading Dock area near the barn, veteran writers have been pressed into service to examine this offering from the redoubtable Marlow. To help readers focus, there is an original work of verse below, common to our shared space-time continuum, followed by a seminal work from his book on entering the Coastal Empire. In it, he and his beloved W have left one unique living structure in marvelously unstructured Key West and are establishing a new way of living in old-but-new climes. We hope the Interns come back. We have promised to give more credence to their Post-Sense orientation in the new world they are making. The Writer\u2019s Section spent time on a larger effort to understand some of our institutions in crisis. Their collaborative piece on The Bureau is under modification to accommodate the honorable service of almost everyone there. We think that is the way we are supposed to say it these days, right?  <\/em> –       Vic<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


<\/em>Author\u2019s Note:<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>Porch Bath\u00a0was written in the aftermath of the 2017 Las Vegas slaughter and is tangentially related to my ongoingGoing\u00a0Native\u00a0Savannah\u00a0narrative.\u00a0 W and I were still in the early days of our Coastal Empire educational boot camp.\u00a0 From the words below, so was our nation in the brave new world that was slowly revealing itself to us. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In retrospect, these events were, in the parlance of my old profession, an indication and early warning.\u00a0 Things felt fragile after that massacre in Lost Wages.\u00a0 How does this slow-mo\u00a0war of the wor(l)ds\u00a0feel now? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0 How does it feelTo fitInto their moldTo let go of what we knowAnd not have to hold our own \u00a0How does it feelTo getAll that we can get\u00a0All that we want to getIs that what we want to get? \u00a0And how does it feelTo beWhat we’ve becomeWhat we said we would never beCause I don’t feel anything anymore \u00a0How does it feelTo fitInto their moldTo let go of what we knowAnd not have to hold our own<\/em> \u00a0 -Marlow<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 October\u00a08,\u00a02017 \u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Porch Bath<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 With my attention consumed by the aftermath of the events in\u00a0Las Vegas,\u00a0I came to understand slowly\u00a0how close our beautiful Victorian era\u00a0neighborhood in the Coastal Empire\u00a0is to chaos only in dribs and drabs.\u00a0 It was like retrospectively watching\u00a0water\u00a0dripping upwards up from the sink\u00a0back into the faucet\u00a0this week. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First: early Monday morning\u00a0I found our black cat sleeping in a very unusual place\u00a0on the top step of the\u00a0staircase to the second floor.\u00a0 As I passed, I encouraged her to follow me downstairs\u00a0by giving her some gentle\u00a0love between her ears.\u00a0 \u00a0She steadfastly refused to follow, let alone come into the kitchen for her morning feed.\u00a0 She finally\u00a0came down two hours later when the sunlight had brightened the entire first floor. \u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later that day as I came home from shopping, I found a crew of two older gentlemen\u00a0who were assiduously cleaning our neighbor Ted’s front porch with 2-gallon sprayers and\u00a0cleansers.\u00a0 On Wednesday, W got the 411 from Ted, our hairdresser, who lives and works his trade two doors down. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems that there was a multiple\u00a0stabbing that took place on our street, on\u00a0our block, and likely on the sidewalk not more than 10 feet from our front door\u00a0that ended with the victim\u00a0on our neighbor’s porch.\u00a0 The victim had nearly bled out before calling 911.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The porch had been awash in blood, so Ted spent an hour that morning in the darkness hosing it off before going to work.\u00a0 Since the City considered the messy crime scene to be a health hazard, they sent their professional\u00a0cleaning crew to render the porch\u00a0and adjoining yard greenery safe for human habitation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0 I wonder if the City of Savannah paid them in gold coins like John Wick did his professional cleaner\u00a0Charlie in the movie of the same name.\u00a0 Regardless, the professional cleaners of Las Vegas\u00a0will likely be allowed to enter behind the yellow tape today to begin their grisly chores. \u00a0 Before this week, I thought that by living in this small southern city,\u00a0we had left all that sanitized-for-TV, big city, crime scene stuff behind.\u00a0 The two-guy clean-up crew next door\u00a0said otherwise.\u00a0 In fact, as the days of this past week rolled by, we have been plunged back into our nation’s growing film noir crime\u00a0scene. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0 I fully expect Hollywood will leverage this latest horror with some\u00a0anime and gun fu technique laden film\u00a0scenes in\u00a0a\u00a0spaghetti western revenge film where the mass murder\u00a0perps finally get it in the end. \u00a0 But back here in reality land, we all have started\u00a0to think about buying more guns.\u00a0 We are\u00a0fearful — rightfully so.\u00a0 We fear a coming chaos and know that when it happens it will be coming to a nation that no longer can act in our proactive defense. \u00a0 \u00a0 We were\u00a0given a unique, nationwide-broadcast\u00a0warning\u00a0of our growing fears of\u00a0this coming chaos just two weekends ago during a\u00a060 Minutes\u00a0<\/em>piece by Oprah Winfrey and national political pollster Frank Luntz.\u00a0\u00a0With Luntz’s guidance,\u00a0Oprah ran a day long focus group of people\u00a0from Western Michigan that surveyed a diverse group evenly made up of\u00a0pro-Trumpies and anti-Trumpies.\u00a0 It was very good with one surprise when a participant mentioned “fearing civil war.”\u00a0 Both the anti and pro Trumpies supported this dystopian view of the future.\u00a0\u00a0You should have seen Oprah’s face.\u00a0 Even this practiced actress could not hide her surprise and fear.\u00a0 It was priceless. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was instructive was how shaken the old pro Luntz looked after the event during a short scene at the close of\u00a0the piece.\u00a0 It was obvious he has never seen such anger.\u00a0 He said that that was the moment when the participants went full on tribal mode. \u00a0 Oprah offered no on or off-screen\u00a0comment on this (a good idea IMO) but sadly\u00a0sought no further or follow up\u00a0explication on the\u00a0civil war<\/em>\u00a0remark.\u00a0 This string could have been pulled, and\u00a0maybe they did but didn’t want\u00a0to share even more unexpected\u00a0results. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That many across the\u00a0entire\u00a0political spectrum, save each\u00a0side’s leaders and their\u00a0horse-holders,\u00a0think the country is collapsing —\u00a0society, culture,\u00a0 leadership —\u00a0calls into question the elites’ and their leaders’\u00a0legitimacy.\u00a0 When\u00a0cultural and\u00a0social\u00a0infrastructure crumble as our belief in its meaninglessness grows, then\u00a0the implications are clear. \u00a0 Americans will purchase more not fewer\u00a0guns and ammo\u00a0because — oh, just pick one or\u00a0more of the following — drug gangs, zero trust in our neighborhood’s\u00a0safety, our personal and financial information just\u00a0got hacked\u00a0again<\/u><\/strong>, the\u00a0country\u2019s high tech Silicon Valley\u00a0overlords are clueless regarding their customers legitimate\u00a0needs,\u00a0 AI driven\u00a0robots rising in rebellion after first\u00a0taking all our jobs, etc etc.\u00a0 Yeah, this may\u00a0sound like a\u00a0Saturday Night Live\u00a0<\/em>skit but consider the\u00a060 Minutes<\/em>\u00a0piece. \u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things are very\u00a0fragile now.\u00a0\u00a0Why the privileged few don’t get it is easily explained in\u00a0that they didn’t get what happened last November and still don’t\u00a0because nothing seems fragile to them. \u00a0 With their wealth cushions, they live in tony neighborhood bubbles with overlapping layers of\u00a0security systems, doormen, and\u00a0cameras.\u00a0\u00a0If a\u00a0civil war comes, they may finally see what good those things are, just like the truly innocent did in Las Vegas last weekend. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9 2017\/2021 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From My Isle Seat<\/p>\n\n\n\n

www.vicsocotra.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note: Morning! The Interns are having an off-morning. Both Stephanie and Josh are unlocated, and since they are not generally restricted to the Loading Dock area near the barn, veteran writers have been pressed into service to examine this offering from the redoubtable Marlow. To help readers focus, there is an original work of verse […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-island-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21667"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21672,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21667\/revisions\/21672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}