The Ash Wednesday after (Ha) Tsunami Tuesday

Really, you just have to give a Pulitzer Prize to some so-called journalists who come up with something that assinine. Oh, I know they have done worse..... Why don't they have a sort of Raspberry award for the ones who dumb-down a world audience so that they might get a clue, huh?

Yes, you guessed correctly, I did my rounds on the blogosphere this morning, curious as to what the peeps 'decided'. The MSM is pushing the sHill as winner-in.... The link above tells us why the results might be something else altogether, although the tone is sort of cheerleading....

I have this very uncomfortable mental connection when I hear the term 'Ash Wednesday'. At first, it didn't mean much to me, and yes, was brought up in the RCC faith, but it was just the day you were forced to go to Church, and some creep dirtied up your forehead with a thumb-print.... probably from the cigarettes they smoked out of the ash-tray from the night before, after having had a hell of a time on Maundy Tuesday with a bunch of cabana boys, looking back at it now, but what do I know?

But when I was about seventeen or so, and a very verklemmt and inhibited young person, I read a novel, you see. (Nothing new, I read seven to ten books a week for over thirty years of my life, hey...) That one totally shocked me. The novel was in four (or five?) sections, and was extremely well-written. It was about a young man, who sells himself sexually. (There is a point to this, btw.) It was brilliantly written, not pornographic, but way out there for telling some truths absolutely no one ever wanted to hear.

It ends in New Orleans, on Ash Wednesday, and is so depressing. The I-narrator has been offered love the evening before and rejected it, and is in a world of pain. And that is what Ash Wednesday became to me. I knew I had 'feelings', and they frightened me to death. Almost... And that novel opened up a world I had no idea existed. It shook the foundation of the world as I knew it. I had felt like the most alone person on the face of this planet.

But that was in the Sixties, and in the whole book, just about every figure was a sort of a freak, someone you so NOT to want to emulate. And then the main character rejects the only person who seemed 'normal', and reached out. I believe I read it later, but it shook me then, as well. It left me with absolutely no hope, probably retarded my personal development by years. I so did NOT want to go there, not if there were people like that around.... Like most people, I just wanted to be loved..... What a crime.....

So why am I telling you all this? Easy. I look around me, as a person open to the world, and in the election race, looked for someone to believe in and who would give you hope. Someone who would give everyone a sense of anticipation, and participating, and being a part of a community. (Yeah, am so old I saw John Kennedy speak, and you wouldn't BELIEVE how he electrified the public.)

I wish I could be as enthusiastic as the diarist up in the link, but I am not. One needs leaders one can look UP to. Where did he suddenly get thirty MILLION dollars, huh? Something fishy there. And the sHill is suddenly short on funds? Uh-uh....

Tja. Ash Wednesday, hey. You were expecting Herring salad, maybe? (I have done it---out of lurrv... that and eel.... just don't get me started, ok?)

Oh yes, the novel. 'City of Night' by John Rechy. I later read he got a professorship in English, but didn't give up selling himself. And don't we all, in one way or the other.....