The span of recorded history stretches back some five thousand years. Which isn’t that long, really, considering that we as critters have been walking around some 300,000 years. And it’s not even as long as it sounds, since that five grand includes cuneiform tablets.

Really, three thousand years, tops. That’s how far back we can go before things start getting really vague. Blink and you missed us.

That’s the continuity of the world we live in, the world of our language and culture. We speak of vast amounts of time, of a universe billions of years old, of the immortality of fame, but in the West we have no names before Homer. To be among the Immortals is to have your name written down somewhere, to enable passage from generation to generation.

All of philosophy, it is said, is but footnotes to Plato. You don’t get that without Plato being handy on the shelf.

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It was at some point during the Eighties that we realized America is fucked. We don’t recall the occasion, but given the era — the Reagan era — it would have had something to do with Our Fellow Citizens preferring lies to the truth.

Because we were sweet and adorable, this came as a shock. Somehow we had grown up thinking truth was something to be valued, that facts trumped fantasies. Somehow we were under the impression that this was a value we shared with other sentient beings who lived under our flag, that of course everyone was interested in the truth, that of course we all wanted to know the facts at hand.

And then, as we cast our first national vote, Americans elected a charming liar as President, and the wheels started coming off.

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January 6, 2017

What follows are notes I typed in the vehicle immediately upon exiting Trump Tower.

I said the Russians allegedly had tapes involving him and prostitutes at the Presidential Suite at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow from about 2013. He interjected, “there were no prostitutes, there were never prostitutes.” He then said something about him being the kind of guy who didn’t need to “go there” and laughed (which I understand to be communicating that he didn’t need to pay for sex).

January 28, 2017

I had dinner with President Trump in the Green Room at the White House last night. I explained that he could count on me to always tell him the truth. I said I don’t do sneaky things. I don’t leak. I don’t do weasel moves. I imagined that Russian hookers likely have expertise in both departments, but I did not raise this point in conversation.

At about this point, he turned to what he called the “golden showers thing” and recounted much of what he said previously on that topic, adding that he had known supermodels who craved the opportunity to “polish his brass” (which I took to refer to massaging his testicles and/or penis), and that he had never paid for intimacy, although the aftermath was occasionally expensive.

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You know, we tried to help.

We tried to provide access to healthcare. We tried to preserve inexpensive access to higher education. We tried to keep unions strong. We tried to keep you in your house.

We tried to help you survive.

We tried. We really tried.

But you didn’t listen. You voted for liars who wanted to line the pockets of their wealthy masters. You voted for warmongers who stuff your kids in tanks with cheap armor. You voted for hustlers who praise Jesus from the Cadillacs you paid for.

We tried to help. But you were really, really stupid.

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• String him up by his nuts.
• Imax Pee Tape.
• Soylent Orange.

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We do not have the olfactory acuity of dogs, but as a species, our noses take care of themselves. We know when something smells. We know when something stinks. And, in extreme cases, we know when something has a stench.

Which is an interesting twist of construction. Bathrooms smell. Shit stinks. But shit doesn’t have a stench. What has the stench is something other than what gives it the stench. Stench is an invasive species.

We know from stench. Certain streets in certain cities at a certain time of the morning have a very certain stench from the night before. If you’ve ever lived in a moist part of the country — say, Oregon — you know the stench of mildew, and you can see it spreading across your walls like a dark presence from the deep.

Stench creeps. Stench gets into something, and it’s almost impossible to get it out. Stench lasts. Stench is forever.

And if not forever, well, long enough. Stench doesn’t go away overnight.

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It was fun at first. One day you were alone, and the next day you weren’t. One day the only people you knew were the people you met, and the next day you knew people you would never meet. It was fun. It was fun not being alone any more.

It wasn’t just that you knew people you would never meet, it was that you shared something with them, something important, something you couldn’t share with the people you knew. You shared your spirit. Sharing your spirit is fun.

And it was fun knowing that other people were sharing their spirits as well, people you never knew and would never meet, people who had also been alone and now who weren’t. It was fun knowing people were doing that while you were, all having fun, all sharing their spirits, all finding kindred spirits to share them with, all those spirits swirling around in a place that didn’t exist, a place that couldn’t exist, a space that could only be filled with imagination, a space full of spirit.

It was like that for awhile.

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