selfescaping

[selfescaping]

i went to law school to be a public defender and bob wesley gave me the chance to do that in my hometown. there are other ways to help people too. but for a brief time i had the opportunity to be a trial lawyer and a public servant.

it feels silly to write this here but you might understand how i feel. no one is perfect, especially me. i try to remember to be grateful. i regret not being able to thank bob again. thank you.

[selfescaping]

it’s not wrong that bad things happen, it’s wrong when we don’t care anymore. maybe it’s natural to just care for those we’re close to. we prioritize. but if people aren’t freezing on the street, they’re losing everything in fire. the strong do what they want and the weak suffer what they must, but it doesn’t make it right. the bargain we make with the conscience is to do what we can. maybe that is one way we can live with ourselves.

[selfescaping]

The orange light was fading behind me, but I wasn't paying attention. I was rushing from a meeting to a coffee shop because I was tired. Once I had the coffee in hand, I walked into the bookstore next door, trying to walk off being tired, and that is how I found out le Carré's Agent Running in the Field had been published.

The exhaustion was forgotten and I sat and read for a couple of hours. The old man had done it: he went out with one hell of a last yarn, and he lived to see it. It was personal and angry, and it was also tired and professional and intimate. When I lack wonder at the world and see only the rote banality of suffering that we subject one another to, I try to remember that there are still ways to do it your own way, as much as you can live with it.

[selfescaping]

it was safe. sticks and lines on a paper you could put away. it was a circus lightshow you could flip on. sad chords rang a bright sound, saw a whole life pass by. if you had something else going on, you could look away. there were no promises, you couldn't know anything for sure, but you didn't have to, so it was safe. branches cracked, water surged by, but it wasn't handholding, soulbearing, it was a story, and i don't blame you. it was safe.

[selfescaping]

bitter soul, bite with canines in burnt fields, screech of a creature searing overhead, i know why you'd rather be somewhere else, but i know what you forgot: it was too much, too fast, twelve strings in a dark room and the rhythm always changed. would tell you so, but i'm too close to the question

[selfescaping]

that dull itch below the skin, felt it again: when you look into a stranger's eyes and blink hello. the world you see is a vast, tiring universe. the dim lights are safer. glass is empty, but the ice makes it half full. i am at work, looking at deadlines with dryness; working the room, watching a sea of souls turn as i wonder how i got here.

[selfescaping]

nothing like phoebe bridgers echoing in the oriental market, staring at the crabs, they stare back

[selfescaping]

Every morning is a reminder that I haven't napped enough.

[selfescaping]

have seen a few very beautiful moments in my life. Ann in her wedding dress, lawyers standing with me ready to go to jail for my client, a nurse with a law degree who put aside bar study to work on covid floors, complete strangers who cried with me as we tried to rescue a journalist from kabul.

wish i could tell you i stayed with my clients in jail when they were isolated from their families. that i didn't hide when i could and took Ann inland as soon as i could. that the journalist's family wasn't left behind.

had the naive belief growing up that, when things were truly, fundamentally broken, these hidden helpers would surge from the depths of our weaknesses and hold things together for others to make better. but i realized too late that a lot of people have died and we didn't learn to compromise after all. a part of me is still irrationally bitter that they didn't save us. that we should have been better.

[selfescaping]

Men. There was probably a group at a tavern in Pompeii, just like us, ruining deep reflections with scenes of debauchery as fires raged nearby. I don't care for the show of power, but it is the betrayal of exhaustion that entices me to these gatherings of the tired, this sizable loss of meaning in those who have compromised to survive.

"I thought you were going to be a pretty good defense lawyer," Armand said. He caught me off guard, so I chuckled, "I underestimated how broke I was."

"You said it." He shook his balding head over the salad with the salmon, "Some months are lean. A lot of people don't save when they have to. They get in trouble and they call me."

I shrugged, "Do they pay you?"

"Until I deal with it. Can you help me when they don't? I'll pay you." I was always getting offered more money for more work. It was a trap, even if they didn't know it. "I value my time more," I said at last.

"Good."

[selfescaping]

know how you look, this blinding glass takes days at a time and i told you i'm fine. evening was something sweet, with ice, until you get to reach for the bitters and then it's slow, a neat scotch, a sip an hour. lights turning off across the island, and i'm closing the place out, going with wayne to another dive that's still open, and you know how it goes: i make it home alone, breathing slow in the dark. that was how it was, without you. now it is different. don't need drinks anymore, to feel the darkness all around, to look at this stranger i am.

[selfescaping]

in each act of life there was a message hidden somewhere. in childhood, it was a series of blink-182 lyrics that my future self could use to verify as a time traveler. in high school there was a terse email sent, that only i remember, a small tragedy in the collapse of a massive humanitarian effort.

and in one of my songs from six years ago, i am rambling about how i am not who i wanted to be, and i can hear my conscience now:

i am still not who i wanted to be. with the compromises i have made with myself to get here, i can live with it. until my hand is forced by something that is unjust. i tell myself i'll know it when i see it.

[selfescaping]

it was different when we were a team. it was in a movie, an artificial recreation of two people who used to be in love. but it wasn't artificial, because a million people saw that gaze and saw a broken family they knew. i know i did.

--

once every blue moon i am able to invoke the oath to act towards the lonely, rare direction of what is just. justice, truth, honor: these sounds are seldom heard, but they are the last refuge of duty.

so i can utter these words on the solemn occasion they can make the difference in a life. and i am silently grateful to see even the mere survival of these words still means something, to someone.

[selfescaping]

they'll stay: the day i resigned from a desperate effort to keep a lifeline going to hundreds of thousands, the first time a client was handcuffed in front of me, holding Ann's hand in the ambulance, the Cornish cliffs with the waves below us as we walked with the sunset. they'll stay with me until i die.

[selfescaping]

thought it was only two years. but then i was bad at math, or something more fundamental, because it was really four years. they had days where suns rose and set, a hundred thousand moments where someone loved me and i was there sometimes. the rest of the time i was in this fog, this ineffable haze that ensconced the field of view until it was who i was, wet with a still gaze, liable to disappear. that was who i was for four insufferable years. it is part of me now.

and that is why i can say unequivocally: sometimes it is good to remember how horrible you were. you get to lay in it, you bathe and lather and scream. then you do what you can.

[selfescaping]

there will come a point in time and space where it is past your line, the one you drew years ago. you have been moving steadily toward it for years, because that is what life does, you thread all the lines that come out of your mouth until you entangle yourself near those outer markers. then you're out there, in the dark blue. and in that moment, just know you have a reason to wake up. you're gonna want to see what happens next.

[selfescaping]

TO: Commissioner Jin

FROM: Fran Parker

RE: Homestead

Sir,

I am writing to you about the proposed homestead rules. They are bad. They don’t reflect our community. How many out of towners are going to come in and complain about our chickens? The livestock, our livelihoods?

We already have enough trouble as it is, getting by. Please reject these proposed rules.

TO: Commissioner Jin

FROM: Captain Marino

RE: Land issues

Good afternoon,

Our concerns raised in closed session remain serious. Predictive models indicate high likelihood of a major adverse event targeting critical infrastructure.

I understand resources are an issue, but this may not be a localized event. If the Board cannot provide adequate hardening resources I will have to disperse vulnerable assets to separate locations as a precaution.