100 Proof

I escaped traffic to a side street, and passed a man with a python draped around his neck. With his left hand, he held the snake’s undulating head away from him. Two open-mouthed children stood a few feet away, and a woman in a tight top backed toward the snake, angling her phone for the selfie.

For so long, so many of us drove main roads, comfortable with the usual scenery. We forgot different things were happening just blocks away. But these are days of detours, and we have no choice to see what we were missing all along.

Most mirrors, these days, reflect disillusionment. A slump-shouldered man wipes the steam from the glass above his sink. A woman with a turned-down mouth flips down the sunshade on the passenger side of a car, and pushes her hair behind her ears. On TV, a comedienne’s hilarious impression of a bumbling spokesperson signals the death of decorum.

How does one find the right pose in this time of dissatisfaction? Is there a lipstick that can disguise a frown? What tie is appropriate to wear to a party where every dish on the buffet has gone just a bit off?

Years ago, I stood out with my classmates on the school soccer field on a clear, bright day, cold enough that I remember the feel of the air on my skin, but not so cold that we were miserable without our forgotten jackets.

We waited while the Cuerpo Nacional de Policía searched the school, looking for the bomb called in by someone interested in interrupting the day.

I was only eight, but I still remember the feeling in my belly as we evacuated, the way we milled about nervously wondering if we’d ever be safe again.

Right now, someone is imagining Hillary Clinton in a pantsuit, wielding a hammer to destroy an old Blackberry. They are certain this happened, because they can see it as clearly as they can see the children abused in a cold storage room below a pizza parlor.

For a moment, you, too, imagined.

A flicker of a film forged in fantasy is all some need to revolt. Can one carry a false flag into battle without shame? It is a question of rage, a question of acceptance, a question of faith.

What are you writing about? he asked.

Right now? Pretty much just my high level of anxiety about the current presidential administration, I replied.

Really? he said. You should step away from that. Take a day off.

I had been trying to do that, but how does one avoid the scales on their eyes? How does one stop looking at the spotlit grimace in the dark room?