Animals lately seen (1 of 3): Squirrel.

The other day when I was out walking and I was going by this garden by the edge of the local high school, I see this big oblong brown lump going half off the sidewalk and into the grass at the edge of the garden.

And, it turns out to be a (large) (dead) (brown) squirrel that might have seemed bigger than it actually was since it seemed slightly bloated from death -- a few flies were flying around its slightly gaping mouth and scrunched up eyes -- and as I pass by it, I see that where its lower left leg should be, there's just a small bloody mat rising a little bit off the lower part of the squirrel's belly.

The local (Central African) community.

Over Fourth of July weekend, I looped back from a walk in the lake park just north of me towards the one brewery whose patio I sit out on, and I could see a huge stage set out in the back parking lot of the adjacent (Central African) foodstore, where in between huge billowing cloth dividers setting off the parking lot, I could see small round tables set up and palm-thatched umbrellas and a number of long square tables at the far edge, with a few (black) caterers here and there setting up trays.

Later, when I was sitting out on the brewery patio, I heard them tuning up the sound system as it got dark, and some guy saying "Bon swa! Bon swa!" over and over into the microphone a lot, as lots of (dressed up) (black) people near me were parking cars and getting out and walking around the building towards where the stage area was.

"That looks like quite the party," I said to the one (older) (townie) bartender who works catering events and knows everyone.

"You should have seen it Friday and Saturday," she was like.

And, she said that her daughter went to school with a lot of people from that (Central African) community, and the word was that a lot of the families came over here so their daughters could avoid female castration.

My night out on the evening when Roe v. Wade was overturned:

1) At the alley patio bar, I bump into the (ponytailed) (aging) (white) hippie who talks to everyone, and I get folded into a group that included a (gay) (bodybuilder) (Persian) (PhD) student in a (STEM) field, and I demur from writing his name in the ancient writing system I've been studying, since I'm unsure how to render a word final "-a."

2) A (very thin) (late 20s) (white) woman turns out to be a federal employee who used to work in Peoria, to which I'm like, "Oh, Aaron Schock land," and she then tells me that everyone she knows loves him and voted for him.  

"He's one of those people who can make himself into anyone and so he gets along with everyone," she was like. "My grandparents love him."

"He's a blonde guy with abs," I was like, to which she was like, "He made himself be somebody."

Later that night, I asked her if she had heard about the scandal where he was at a strip club in Mexico City and was photographed touching a guy's bulge through a thong.

"Oh, Aaron...," she was like, "It's always a scandal with him!"

Only, she said that fondly, and not ironically at all, and her eyes rolled up a little bit in exasperation.

3) At the American Legion bar later that night -- yes it was inside, but I made an exception since it was very empty and it was the day that it was -- the (younger) (slightly heavier) (Irish heritage) bartender commiserated about the economy with me, and she said she's never had a job that required her college degree.

So, I tell her about how Katy Perry is keyed into spiritual wisdom and her motto for the first year of the pandemic was not to be attached to anything, but her motto for the second year of the pandemic was, "Open to better."

"I like that," she was like, like everyone always does when I tell them about Katy Perry's "Open to better" motto.

I then told her the one metaphor that I'd recently come across in an essay, about how we're reaching the end of a system based on indefinite future rewards, and how if you don't think there's a light at the end of the tunnel, why would you step into that?

At that, she sighed, and was silent for a bit.

"I like the Katy Perry better," she was like.

4) The (Korean-American) guy who's with us turns out to be the owner of the alley patio bar, and he says his wife owns the local winebar, and she runs the one and he runs the other.

"So do you guys get competitive about who's doing better?", I was like.

"Yeah," he was like.

"So what happens when you win?", I was like.

"I don't tell her," he was like.

5) A (young) (ponytailed) (white) guy near me who's kind of with the group asks me if I've ever seen the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and then we start talking about odder experiences and religious groups, and he says that he actually moved to the area with a guru because they had a thirty acre farm on the outskirts of town, and that in terms of spiritual wisdom, there's like [some Hindu god whose name I forget], then there's Krishna, and then there's [his guru's name, who I had never heard of before].

"So how did you first get involved with the group?", I was like.

"Oh, I was in [a state in the South] and I was kind of a druggie, and I stopped by their meditation class," he was like.

He also said that when he lived on the farm, he lived by "monk rules" with no alcohol or drugs or sex, and it was "pretty awesome," and like 6 or 7 years of his life were like that, which he wonders about sometimes, and he sighed.

Much later at the next patio bar, I took up the conversation again to reach out a bit, and was like, "You know, you have to remember, some people spend 6 or 7 years of their life as consultants..."

"What," he was like, suddenly hardening, and it turned that out besides now being married and selling fruit bark that he makes from these little red fruits from a bush that some people call an invasive species, he's also an IT consultant, and, our conversation never recovered.

6) At that same bar, the (younger) (dyed hair) (white) bartender was like, "I'm Stevie" when I introduced myself, and so I was like, "Like Stevie Nicks" and she was like, "Yes, my parents are hippies," and then we discussed tracks off of Rumours for like ever, and she could see my point that Christine McVie "Songbird" was underappreciated, and "You Make Loving Fun" would be a good karaoke song.

. . .

(That was like a lifetime in a night, and my life used to be more like that. In some certain ways, I feel like I'm occasionally getting my vibe back.)

My day on the day when Roe v. Wade was overturned:

1) I was able to roll out of bed a bit after 8am and score an appointment at the DMV later that morning to update the address on my driver's license, so I had some coffee and got going and hopped off the cross-town bus at a run-down donut place a few blocks away from there, and I got two shitty cake donuts from a (thin) (older) (Chinese?) man, though the name of the business was "[A hispanic woman's first name]'s Donuts."  At the strip mall DMV, there was still Juneteenth decorations up along the Plexiglass dividers along the counter, including one that said something like "FREE-ISH SINCE 1865."

2) On campus later, I early voted and then went to take care of some stuff at the university library, where suddenly when I was about to emerge from the stacks and do check-out, I realized that I didn't have my library card, so I had to retrace my steps across multiple floors and then I found it laying out on a shelf near where I had first stopped to get a book and had paused there to flip through some volumes (I must have been holding it and set it down there, while I was looking at the books?). At the scanning station there that people without a job there can use, there was a (shorter) (cleancut) (older) (white) man who was doing voluminous scanning, and he politely stepped aside so I could scan my two short articles and my one short book chapter. 

 "If my meter ran over, it's already happened by now, so it doesn't matter," he was like.

He was an ethnomusicologist who's done work on Africa, he said, and he too had an independent scholars affiliation, and lived in a nearby town.

3) After that, I popped by a (Palestinian-run) shawarma place where the (dark) (young) (virile) counter workers were familiar and handsy with each other and I got a huge spicy chicken wrap that I ate outside at a patio and got slightly queasy from, both because of the spices on the chicken and the fact that it was like a steamy ninety-some degree day (I had thought that the yogurt sauce would balance out the spices on the chicken, but they just didn't). By the end, I had like two to three bites left of the spicy chicken wrap and I just couldn't down it without vomiting, so I halfheartedly re-wrapped it up in the bottom of the metallic wrapper and I tucked it into a side pocket in my bag, only to take it out like 40 minutes later and eat it after I had downed a lot of Slurpee knock-off that I had gotten from a gas station that's on the way back to my apartment, which is something that I sometimes do, even though the Slurpee knock-off comes in a styrofoam cup, which I hate.

3) In my one "academic summer bookclub" phone conference later that day with my one (Mormon) colleague, he mentioned the existence of some gnostic texts where Jesus details how he superintended the conception of each of the 12 apostles.

At that, I started laughing ruefully.

"Sounds like a post-Roe v. Wade world," I was like, and he didn't laugh, but he didn't disagree, either.

Pervasive uncertainty.

I've noticed that the past few weeks, a sense of pervasive uncertainty has been hitting people my age.

Like, just no-one knows what to expect even in the short- to medium-term future, and it's overwhelming their decision making.

Like, I was talking by Twitter direct message with my one friend who met her husband as a college radio DJ in the South, and she says that they're planning to start a family, but they really just don't know now, and her friends who already have kids are kind of like, "What were we thinking."

It's really true, there's such uncertainty that you have no sense of what the economy or life will be like just around the corner, so there's no way in heck that you can really make any decently long-term plans about it.

Retirement village flashbacks.

Walking on campus the other day, I saw a historic plaque about a modern major invention involving the electrode, and I *think* the guy's name on it was this one (ailing) guy who I met through my one now-quit job at the retirement village.

Even before that, I saw an obituary in the local paper, and there was the name of another guy who was there briefly before dying, and it said something about how he was involved in inventing a very historic early electronic music synthesizer.

I just never knew!

A word of comfort.

So, I have this one grad student unionization friend who's gone boho in Central Europe and has a nominal academic affiliation to get in, and then does remote editing work to earn money and get by.

"The economy is so f*cked," he's always like, "That dropping out is the only rational response."

Anyhow, like two springs ago he was in town to clear out his apartment that he had sublet for a year as a stop-gap measure, and we were able to catch up at that point, including around my plans to try to get dual citizenship in an EU country.

(I also was able to dump on him all my knowledge about what countries it's good to have ancestry from, and he's now pursuing dual citizenship through a great-grandfather from Italy, he's told me by email.)

So, anyhow again, at this one lakefront going-away party with pizza and beer and whatnot, towards the end of the night we had a bit of one-on-one time, and I was telling him that my default plan barring any major life changes is to maybe go try living abroad in a few years, though the timeline to get dual citizenship after you manage to file is still like another two years barring any major delays on their end, and at that point I was a bit despondent and was like, "Only, I hope by then that I'm still going to be young enough to get some ass."

"[My first name]," he was like, automatically and in a comforting voice, "A person is never too old to get some ass."

And at that, his eyes lit up and he chuckled.