I am They too

Boys go brain dead between thirteen and twenty-three

It's not fun to watch, this version of primal jungle biology

Then a few of them become aware of the anima, some even come to know the id,

and some start to talk about all the stupid shit they did.

(lyrics from "Let Us Now Praise Famous Boys", copyright 2018, Brooks Roddan.)

Now that I'm the age I am (67) I'm in favor of the past with almost as much intensity as I was once in favor of the present and the future. It's something I really have to fight.

For instance, I'm old enough to know better than to wish George Bush was President instead of Donald Trump, and yet I wish George Bush was President, either one of the George Bush's, as dreadful as they both were, were at least a a big step or two ahead of this guy. I'm not sure this is clear political thinking, as at least a portion of clear political thinking needs to focus on the present and the future, now more than ever..

(The really odd thing about the current political moment is not only that it didn't have to happen, but that the people who did want it to happen--a minority--are now beginning to act as if they didn't want it to happen either).

I had coffee the other day with M___, a 23 year old grad student at Boston University who wants to get into advertising. M___ is 'they', a person who has purposefully adopted a genderless identity. They and I sat in a coffee shop on Geary and talked for about an hour and a half, getting into one of those conversations that Hans George Gadamer called, "Horizonless;" neither one of us were trying to persuade, make a point, talk the other into anything. We were just talking, with no predestination. It had been awhile for me; I have such conversations with my wife and other family members, a couple of writers I know, but not all that frequently; and even then, many of those conversations always seem to be hoping to get somewhere, to prove something, to come out on top in each other's hearts and minds. 

After coffee, I walked home by myself, thinking, having nothing better to do, about the man/woman situation (talk about a trade imbalance!) and the just concluded meeting with my first They. While it was obvious to me that M_____was a young woman, a very pretty young woman, her neutral, gender unspecific identity must have had an effect, given me permission to enter into a brief verbal relationship that was free from...from what?...

what was I free from?...I can only speak for myself...from thousands of years of power I never asked for or wanted and yet always more or less assumed was rightfully mine.