Jibreel Still Watching Over Me

Big scare today.  I took a thumb drive to Staples to print out various documents I am going to need when I go to NY on Wednesday.

Something distracted me, and I forgot to take it out after I finished printing out my stuff.

Half an hour later, I was back home — when I suddenly realized the mistake.

Fuck!

This drive had all kinds of sensitive information on it.  I mean really sensitive.

So I tore down US1 at 70mph in loaded traffic (this was around noon today), ran in the parking lot to Staples, expecting the worse.

If anyone had taken it, they could have emptied out my bank account by then.

The glass doors parted, and despite the fact that the copying machine was a ways away, my aging eyes saw — instantly — that the thumb drive was still where I had left it, safe and secure

Phew.

I thanked Allah — of course, as I am a Muslim, despite my bad habits — and Jibreel, in particular.  He has watched over me all my life, especially during my many whisky-soaked misadventures; and despite my latent atheism, it seems that I’m still on his watch.

So my wife and I are now ready to go to our house in Westchester NY on Wednesday.  We will be staying there until the 20th of July, when we both fly back to angry, racist Florida.

I have some errands to run in Manhattan.

For example, I am going to apply for a NY Public Library card, which I will need to research my current writing project.

Meanwhile, a week from this Tuesday, my wife and I will be driving up to Madison, CT.

We’re already booked to spend a night and a day at Scranton Seahorse Inn,  after which we plan to mosey on to Deep River, where we will be staying at the tony Griswold Inn for a couple of nights.

Originally we were thinking of possibly buying a house around there, this Fall, if real estate prices drop precipitously from current ludicrous heights, enabling us to snag a steal from some desperate, over-extended COVID refugee.

But after recent events (see this and this), Deep River in particular, and Connecticut in general — a state with a long and sordid history deeply corrupt pols, high taxes and long winters —  is now out.

Even though I enjoyed owning a house in Greenwich CT for 5 years in the late 90s, I will not be returning to the Nutmeg State as a resident.  Too many tourists, too many menacing bikers, too many shekels floating about, especially in Chester, and far too many Trumpsters lurking in the tick-infested underbrush.

These fuckers are everywhere.

The recent spate of imbecilic, disingenuous Volksgerichtshof rulings by the Supreme Court of the United States, has sealed the deal.

Led  by a self-hating, miscegenation-loving, Gullah-speaking, alleged sexual harasser, this court aims to restore America to its rightful state:  a right wing Christian autocracy led by (mostly white) men.

Now my none-too-original theory is that poor, misguided Clarence’s profoundly twisted views on so-called Originalism are little more than a pretext for his deep-seated need for revenge against all those preppies and Ivy league graduates who looked down their enviably long patrician noses at him throughout a futile, life-long effort to become one of them.

The country is obviously hurtling toward either civil war (Northern Ireland style) or permanent Minority Rule — unless some kind of middle-of-the road, Independent, charismatic Presidential candidate emerges out of nowhere and wins in 2024, his tailcoats sweeping the Senate at over 60 seats and bringing about an enlightened House majority, too, for good measure — as a prelude to packing the court, putting to pasture all the octogenarians in Congress, and everything else we Liberals like to fantasize about.

But none of this will ever happen.

Instead, we get to witness, over the next two years, increasingly tedious manifestations of a Duck Dynasty, pale approximation of The Senile Decay of Anarchy.

In fact the only real question of our age is whether Nietzsche was truly influenced by Max Stirner, as well as the Marxist truth value quotient of the proposition that it is in fact Stirner himself who provided the intellectual justification behind the rancid ideas of White House toadies such as Stephen Miller.

This burning question, the hearing of which produces in some a sensation akin to getting attacked by fire ants whilst picking up dog poo on  St. Augustine Grass, is truly the defining one of our times.

No doubt.

That said, after my return to FL at the end of July, I will be jetting back (solo) to Westchester on Aug 6, to commence work on my writing project — which will entail numerous visits to the Rose Main Reading Room at the New York Public Library on 42 street, where I plan to pen revolutionary pamphlets deep into the evening, my manuscript lit by whale oil lamps.

Then sometime around mid September, after the start of NY Jets season, my wife will be rejoining me, and we will fly to Portugal to spend 10 days or so in Caldas da Rainha and its environs.

If we really like the place, then the plan is to set in motion the convoluted process of obtaining a D7 visa, which will enable us to reside in Portugal permanently.

In the meantime, I’ll be keeping a low profile, publishing only anonymously, until I can start to enjoy the comfort and safety of EU privacy rights.

That, at least, is the current plan.

Whatever ends up happening, I am reasonably confident Jibreel will continue to be there for me  — inshallah — to help me back up when I stumble or start to stray from sirat al-mustaqim.

He hasn’t failed me yet, so why doubt him now?