Emperor's new clothes

Anyone functionally capable of enjoying my posts enough to actually read them is fully aware, all on their own, by the simple nature of comprehension, that the President of the United States is unwholesome. He is deficient in wisdom. He is disingenuous. 

Oh, dash it all, he's an idiot!

And I don't mean this in the charged up way that I might have said Reagan, or George W. Bush was an idiot. I don't mean this in the emotive, frustrated, our-political-system-is-broken way it is commonly spoken. I don't mean it complexly. At least not here. I mean it matter of factly, in the same way that the Earth is round. That the Beatles wrote catchy tunes. The Godfather was a well made movie. Maple syrup is tasty. Rainbows are colorful. I mean it as a point of fact, unadorned. The way myself, the Editor of The New York Times, and Mitch McConnell all mean that Trump is an idiot is wildly variant, and how freely we express it is equally diverse, but the basic, raw fact of it is bluntly shared. Of this I have no doubt.

Why do I have no doubt? 

Because it's true. Some things simply are. These are the elements we agree on so that we have the building blocks to discuss more subtle things. If I keep having to explain that the color of a cloudless sky in the afternoon is blue, basic discussion breaks down.

And this is the problem. This is where reporting and public discourse fall apart: How, day to day, does a nation discuss a President who is an idiot?

At work today someone casually mentioned something about political correctness and, as it ever does, it rankled me. Its meaning has been stolen to express some sort of idea that one can no longer say slightly racist, or sexist, or homophobic things without people thinking it means one is a little racist, sexist, or homophobic. But the true expression of political correctness is in how a random reporter for The New York Times, for instance, cannot say, or operate from the assumption, that Donald Trump, who is an idiot, is an idiot. This has a warping effect on the discourse. It alters the plainest of reporting. It sucks the air out of any information anyone is trying to convey, making the simplest things twisted and complex. It's a constant, intentional stripping of context.

Donald Trump is not an uncommon type of character, though elevated to wealth and the Presidency he seems to be. At the library I work at I deal with people like him regularly. They are bombastic, terribly sad, broken, a little funny, heartbreaking, stupid, and so absorbed in their own self interest they easily lose rationality and common sense. In the context of my job I like these people. Someone has to. But I suffer them. And I nurse them along. And they have no real power over me or anyone else in the library. But I do not forget who they are. I do not look away from their relentless delusion in their own favor to try to find something more complex. I don't have to. But if some newspaper suddenly felt they had to spend two years writing thousands of articles about them that very attention would twist the plainness of their tragedy. How many times can one say the sky is blue without going a little mad.

We've gone a little mad.

Possibly still with a touch of fever

I did pretty good with coming to work sick. I was miserable and tired. I went through eighteen boxes of kleenex. My coughing was overwhelming. And I worried terribly about infecting everyone, but somehow no one seemed to catch what I had at all. It was all my own personal cold. I struggled and I survived and made it to this week where I felt fine.

And somehow that was more difficult. Maybe it was the sheer quiet of the library these days. I had nothing to contend with and the days sort of shuffled along without much spirit. Or it easily could have been the ever-presence of my managers, who, while relatively inoffensive towards me lately, were nevertheless always appearing from out of nowhere like spiders or something. I thought they'd gone home hours ago, but no, they were just off in some crevice somewhere, biding their time, waiting for me to start innocently looking up videos of Messi or John Oliver and then, bam, suddenly they're there!

"Hi." I'd say.

I try to stay on friendly terms with everyone.

I feel that people are less inclined to try and eat you if you're on friendly terms with them.

What I really think it was is that while I was sick everyone at work, patrons, co-workers, managers,  were all really happy to keep a good ten feet away from me, maybe even a little more if they could. And while hooting and coughing and blowing and sneezing I didn't so much notice, when they all came back to their usual distance I was suddenly aware: The closer people are to you the easier it is for them to eat you. 

My brain on cat

I was working on our giant, musclebound, sometimes reminds me of Lenny from Mice and Men, automated check in machine. Kafka, the library cat was dozing in a nearby blue transit box, when, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a book. Someone returned a book! They do that a lot at my job. Aye, they do it so often that it erases a good deal of the pleasure of it. Nevertheless, since absolutely no text of any kind is allowed to pass before me without my reading it, I read the title: You Had Me at Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secret of Happiness by Julie Klam. 

I make no judgement against this book. Indeed I could conceivably decide to read this book seeing as dog books tend to have a much higher rate of quality than books about any other animal, certainly better than books about cats. But we've covered all that (here), and it was not what was running through my mind when I saw that book. What leaped to my mind when I read the title You Had Me at Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secret of Happiness was:


I would rather be sad like a cat than happy like a dog.

Kafka still home for the holiday

I try not to provide too many stories here about kafka the library cat. I like the stories just fine, and they are very easy to write. I only need to pay attention to kafka, pick and choose among his most charming moments, and then tell you what happened. But they are very quiet, and light, and need to be mixed in to my weighty themes with a careful and steady measuring hand. However, having kafka home from the library, visiting my house while the library is closed (and for a few days after as well), is such a delight, and he's such a presence, that there is only so much resisting I am capable of. It is one thing to take enormous pleasure in seeing kafka plow heedlessly through a display of holiday craft books in the middle of my workday at the library, yet think of other things to write about when I have full time for writing late that evening. But it is another thing to sit here doing the actual writing while kafka bats my sea of blog notes around and generally cavorts through my workspace. The other subjects that I anticipated working on keep getting pushed aside. He just sort of walks into the blog whether I have invited him or not.

I wondered how kafka would be different away from all the people and the large space of the library, but he isn't very different at all. This cat has always carried home in his paws. He likes to sit on top of the refrigerator instead of above the Agatha Christies. He socializes with the sofa instead of with the people in the magazine area. He is everywhere and nowhere here in 700 square feet just as he is everywhere and nowhere in 74,000 square feet at the library. I expect him to disappear in a huge library, but seeing him here I understand that when he does that he is truly disappearing, not just hanging out somewhere I am not. I never really understood the Cheshire cat as a cat before kafka, but, as normal as everything seems around kafka, I find it harder and harder not to imagine that he slips between worlds, that he can get up off my keyboard (yes, I had to pull it away and type on my lap) and stroll right into my computer screen. And as easy at it is for me to go upstairs to the kitchen, he can step out of your screen, wherever you are, say hello, and wander off.

Kafka home for the holidays

My library closed for two days due to Christmas. Several of us decided that, because of this, it might be better for kafka, the library cat, to go home with someone, someone who is doing nothing for the holiday, someone who loves kafka, someone who has several cans of sardines in his larder, and someone who writes so winningly about kafka's exploits that he should never be too far out of reach of them. Who could this person be? Me! So I brought kafka home with me for a 5 day holiday.

I worked Monday night and when it was time for my wife and I to take kafka home he was out cold on a space in the shelves of the Mystery section. I picked him up and he purred heavily, but remained completely limp. Indeed kafka never woke up through all the tumult of our trip home. And yet, the moment we crossed the threshold of my small house kafka woke up. I set him down. He stretched and yawned and wandered off to explore. After ten minutes he came to me and looked at me as if to say "Wow, this is your whole house?" or "Entertain me." or "I know you from somewhere don't I?" or "Feed me." or "I am pleased." or "Hi dear buddy, what's next then?"  Cats do have their inscrutable side, and it behooves us to respect that. Rather than pick one of those possible expressions above, I like to try as well as I can to understand it all as some strange kaleidoscopic version of "all of the above."

I pet kafka for awhile. I gave him some sardines. He went off on his own. Later, I went down to do some midnight writing in my basement studio. After I was down there for a few minutes I looked up. Kafka, with his usual penchant for unusual curling up spots had crawled into the trusses of my house and was sitting there, ensconced in the strange joints of the walls and the open ceiling of my basement, watching me.

And so I wrote this.

Christmas tradition post

Because today is Christmas I have decided to post a, well, I suppose it's a bit immodest, but a charming Christmas blog post post I wrote here many years ago. Maybe you'll like this post as much as me and we can make this a kind of Christmas tradition. This post is from Christmas 1993:

Hi, beautiful weather we're having. I have decided that because today is Christmas it might be nice to share a sort of classic Christmas blog post I wrote back in 1958:

Howdy folks! Well, the sheep are in the barn and I'm all settled in at my Olivetti and I was just thinking that it sure would be keen to pull out of the old blog files one of my favorite Christmas blog posts. It's one I like to share every year as my own little Christmas tradition. Our lil time machine's gonna take us back now to 1932.

Well you can bet times are hard around here, oh boy that's for sure! but I'm not giving up on Christmas, no siree! I got some of my old Christmas blog posts and I thought it would be fun if we pulled one out from happier times...


Wait! Wait! Sorry. It's me. From the present again. I'm looking this over and it just keeps going back further and further, like a hall of mirrors. Each Christmas post just references an earlier Christmas post. There's the 1880s, 1820's, Revolutionary War era, the Renaissance, the Dark Ages. Ah, here we go. If we can just get back to before the birth of Christ there's an actual charming original blog post! So, here we go, I think this one is from about 60 b.c., though that's not what we called the years back then!

Romae dies iustus a. Aut quid non feriatum, sic putavi plenum tantarum amant scribere. Romani quidem est. Re publica bene facit. Praesent vehicula hodie turbidae cum omnis imber. Populus servo semita in luto library. In elit felis, et sibilaret ore ad omnem qui id sequi quasi doen't luto. Sic amicitiam non sciunt cur usitas sibilabit cattus, sed plerumque in tabulis festinat atque transire indigent. Cum Claudius: quid diceret. Dixi: "Odit luto. Sternutatio Ipsa eum" quod parum sicut feles excutit. Et subsannaverunt nos, et dedit nobis Claudius cat sordido vultu! Accepit, abiit sentiat.

kafka's kart

Some part of me thinks that if kafka could talk he would insist that I never spell C-words with a K when continuing from his name, like "kafka's kart". But kafka, a cat, cannot talk. That, curiously, does not mean I am free to contravene his requests and requirements. It means that the collective discussion is cast completely clear of his concerns. Kafka does not care. Contradistinctly, of course, one can never be correspondingly completely confident correlatively with a cat.

Which brings us to the cart.

As mentioned in an earlier post my library recently acquired eight shopping carts. They are of a size suitable for a small to medium sized shop at your local grocery store. What they are suitable for in a library is slightly more mysterious. These carts are sturdy, well made, and presumably purchased using something more than spare change. So far they tend to just sit there in their little parking area, unwanted, and making early indications of being a waste of resources. A complete waste, really, and yet, kafka seems to like them. Two days ago I found kafka laying placidly on his side in one. He does like to get in things, though these are of a design that made me wonder how he even managed to do so. I wondered briefly if someone picked him up and put him in. But the act of leaving him in the cart seems malicious, and kafka seems to have a very good eye for ill intent and for avoiding those harboring it. Plus he is a balletic leaper and certainly could have flowed up into the upper level basket if he were driven enough to assert the completeness of his domain. But seeing him in one of the carts does not mean I had time to interact with him there. Believe it or not I was quite busy with work, and when I looked again later, when I had time, kafka was off on some other business.

Today, though, he was back in a cart. I had some time and so I said hi. Then, seized by either whimsy, the flow of things, telepathic suggestion, or all of the above, I proceeded to, cautiously, very slowly at first, wheel kafka around for a bit in his cart. He was like a little prince. He sat up, and as I wheeled him around on a circuit of our main floor and for a visit to the teen librarian he was constantly admired. Some people pet him. He seemed unusually dignified, even for him. His sitting posture was regal, upright and perfectly balanced. He did not purr, or become affectionate at the petting, but rather seemed to take it all as his due, as a matter of ceremony.
 
At least, that's my story for it. We're talking about a cat here. I could have dreamed it all.

Cat jealousy

The library cat, kafka, belongs to himself and to the Library. But I sometimes get jealous of all his other friends. Though I am perhaps most responsible for this cat, many people have taken him on as someone to watch out for and take care of. Yesterday I found kafka with an old man in a corner of the newspaper area. I have known the man for many, many years. He is rough and a bit ragged, always striking me as one of those people on some edge of homelessness. I don't think I have ever exchanged a word with him, and I've never seen him check out Library material. He had laid out large sheets of newspaper in front of him, presumably not the library's, and was hand feeding kafka sardines, with those newspapers protecting our carpet. There was no shyness in kafka as he ate, and the two of them seemed peaceable together, and settled, perhaps even practiced, in their exchange. That jealous part of me wanted to find something officious, or something wrong about it. Sometimes it is hard to tell if we are succumbing, or being responsible. 

I crouched at a respectful distance.

"Those are water packed?" I asked.

The man nodded with a strange shyness. I nodded back and returned to shelving. Actually, I was a bit jealous of them both.

The maturation of kafka

As kafka the Library cat bursts quickly through his weeks of adolescence, I can only conclude he is turning out very well. He is going to be, already really is, an excellent cat. Protected and domestic, he has his cuddly moments. He makes friends selectively, but easily (to become kafka's friend you need only to patiently desire with your whole being to be his friend. This technique works splendidly with most cats). He is fluidly at home in the Library and has developed the curious and enchanting habit of curling up with thick paperbacks clutched in his arms. This at least must partly explain his preference for the Sci Fi/Fantasy section which is full of these books that are thicker than they are wide. He purrs gently and often, is easily amused, and thoroughly self entertaining. But in addition to all his civilized qualities, kafka is also the wild animal of the stacks. He is a hunter and a prowler. The one pure beast among us. As the only touch of wilderness in the most civilized of all places, a Library, kafka is like a small oasis pond in a great, vast desert. Perhaps this is why so many patrons at first think he is an illusion.

"I could have sworn I saw a cat in here." They say to me. "Is there actually a cat in this Library?"

"How would you feel if there were a cat in this Library?" I ask back. 

"Happy."

"Excellent." I say. "Join the club."

No cat news blues

I have been very eager to bring you the latest update on kafka, the Library cat. Unfortunately there has been nothing to report. No, seriously, there has been so nothing to report that I feel compelled to tell you how very nothing there is to report.

A few days ago though there was plenty to report. Young kafka, who everyday seems to be just a tiny bit less a kitten and a tiny bit more a cat, was not so long ago cutting his usual wide swath. On Sunday kafka mauled the thin skin of an old lady's forearm so thoroughly as to leave a couple guitar's worth of claw marks, including, when I arrived on the scene, at least three of which were trickling blood. I was almost violently sick with worry about what kind of trouble this could bring down on dear kafka's future. Fortunately the old lady was a familiar of cats who chuckled warmly at her savaged arm and considered it to be a kind of punctuation to kafka's affection. She suggested she had perhaps played a bit too rough. I was fully in accord with her, but am aware things could have gone very differently. Perhaps we can say kafka is down to eight lives.

And speaking of the peculiar nature of cat affection, on Monday, kafka sweetly presented the Library service desk with the generous and savage gift of a headless bird. Though naturally appreciated it raised the mystery of where kafka, who everyone thought had never been outside, got it. Young kafka's resourcefulness appears to be revealing in deep layers. Monday night, kafka, who is a bit of a gourmand, was reported to be eating a fish in the teen room. When we went to investigate, kafka had disappeared. He remained unseen all through Tuesday until, concerned, I tracked him down to a canvas bin, where apparently he had curled up and settled down for an quick nap that has now lasted for at least two, but possibly more than three full days and nights.

Actually, I'll go check on him right now. Don't expect too much.

He's purring. I pet him and he's quietly purring in his sleep. Still in the canvas bin he seems untired. I don't think he could possibly be tired unless all the sleeping has worn him out. To tell you the truth, I think he's just sleeping for the fun of it. I understand.

kafka caffeine

It is a bit of a cliche and a bit of a cartoon truism that cats like milk. In my interactions with cats I have never had any experiences to call these sources into question. Cats like milk. Nevertheless, I have read that cow's milk is not terribly good for cats and so I have never given kafka, the Library cat, any milk. That doesn't mean he hasn't had any. The cat kafka is inclined to take what he likes if he can. But a cat has a more limited array of tools at their command when they occupy the world of people, and so, sometimes in order to take what they like, something extra must come with it. In young kafka's case, the extra was espresso.

In the early afternoon at the Library I was preparing a milkier cappuccino for an afternoon spiritual lift, and, because one of my colleagues seemed in need of one, I was making a cappuccino for them as well. I drew the two shots of espresso, steamed the milk, and assembled the drinks in my giant white latte mugs. I set one down on one of the break room tables and took the other out to my co worker. While out there I got caught up in some Library business and it was quite a while before I could get back to my drink.

When I entered the break room kafka had his front paws perched on the rim of the latte cup, which was wobbling, and he was steadily lapping up the warm frothy mixture of espresso and milk. As he looked over at me the slight weight shift caused the cup to flip to its side. There was no torrent of cappuccino onto the table because this small cat had managed to consume a large portion of a generous beverage. Still, a small, pale brown river turned the tabletop into a landscape and wetted kafka's paws. He sat down and licked them clean, and then we just looked at each other.

You may think, from these accounts of kafka in the library, that we are always regarding each other over some disaster, but no. As often as not, when we encounter each other, in pretty much any situation, we just look at each other. We grow quieter and quieter, more still, and then, usually at kafka's action, it's over. So we looked at each other as we often do. And after awhile of looking at each other I wondered if all the caffeine would have any strange effects on such a small cat. Then, without warning, kafka leaped prodigiously, balletically, from the table onto me. Using tiny needle claws and a bare dusting of cat magic he was almost instantly perched on my shoulder. He balanced and collected himself. Then he rubbed the side of his face three times against my cheekbone. I could feel the wetness of the cappuccino on my face. I smelled coffee. Then, without further notice, he jumped to the ground and was gone, off into the heart of the library where he conducts mysterious deeds. I barely saw him leaving before he was gone. I picked up the cup, wiped down the table, and made myself another cappuccino.

Cat in stack

I heard a rustling in the far reaches of the Mystery section and strolled over for a look. Our newest addition to the Library, kafka the cat, still more of a kitten, but on the borderline, was batting about a thickish paperback. We made eye contact and I think both of us were quite pleased to see each other, though, of course, I can only be sure of my feelings in the matter. After kafka's regarding of me, pleased or not, he took one more idle slash at the book, and embarked on a short tour of personal grooming. That last swipe was one of those deliciously refreshing cat moments where they seem to so keenly express that their moral universe is entirely autonomous from our own, and, on average, probably slightly better.
 
I petted kafka, one soft cat, and picked up the book. It was neatly eviscerated, flayed curiously, as if it were a small rabbit, and kafka was keen to peel back just the top half of it in a weird display of mangler's virtuosity. I was impressed. "Good kitty." I said, petting kafka some more. "Good kafka." The book was ruined, but I wasn't put out. We've got just tons of books here, but only one cat.

Box in library

I arrived early at the Library today to be told a crate had been delivered for me. I am in charge of supplies at my Library, but things usually arrive in mundane boxes and the supplies tend to get spontaneously sucked into the Library ecosystem rather than directed to me personally. Nevertheless this was a crate, made of wood, and so specifically notable. It was made of rough planks of the sort you might find in palettes, sometimes gapped, sometimes smooth, and sometimes warped and furry. Every join of it was assembled and held together with screws and then reinforced with even more screws. It was festooned with screws. It was addressed not with corporate mass produced stickers, and computer generated labels, but with someone apparently having much fun with a wood burning set, the sort of thing that might be popular in creating a sign of the family name to nail onto the front post of a country home. The wood burning addressing was, unlike the traditional country home plaques, done with a deeply unschooled hand, and though readable, was childishly crude, and thus slightly charming. My name, my Library name, and a roughly accurate address were burned in deep, and deeply uneven, black grooved lettering on two sides of the box. Small sounds seemed to be issuing from the box.

In my experience there is no emergency and no special, unusual task at my Library for which we have at hand the proper tools. However, once you involve three or four of your co workers in a search, or if you merely look long enough yourself, you can usually find, bizarrely hidden, or in a wildly different context, the appropriate tool. Barring that, you will find, in the ramshackle place any large Library becomes, a roughly useable facsimile or substitute for the item you need. We found both. A Phillips head screwdriver was finally tracked down to a station of the book repairers (are many books screwed together these days?). However, the screwdriver proved to be annoyingly tedious with the plethora of screws, which were all small and at least partly stripped. Something vaguely resembling a crowbar, which may have been a slab of metal from some ancient boiler, was located in the garage. Prying the wood apart turned out to be the more expedient solution.

With two planks up I was able to get a look inside. At first sight there seemed to be nothing but straw and shreds of newspaper. But almost simultaneous with the animal smell that rose up, was movement. A small cat, really a kitten still, was inside emerging sloppily from sleep. I scooped it up. I interrupted its nap. It regarded me with irritated interest. It was a he. He wore a black collar with a hammered medal medallion that read "K."

I order supplies from administration. They send things to me in an erratic fashion. Something as simple as pens, or library cards, can, for no particular reason, take months of ordering and multiple requests, but at the same time nothing ever seems to be, in particular, off limits. My three month old request for "Cats (1), gray or black" seemed to have surprisingly paid off.

I got the cat a bowl of milk. My understanding is that you're not supposed to give cats cow's milk, but the cat seemed to like it quite a bit. I pet it. I called it Kafka. Then I had to go to work on the phones. The cat didn't mind. He seemed to have quite a few things to take care of already himself. He went off. I watched him admiringly. He walks like a drunk cat, but teeming with mysterious confidence as he does it. Two people almost tripped over him or around him, but he paid it no mind. Clearly he is not one of those cats who is fast, but rather one who controls the movement around him to express himself. I think he may be the sort of cat who can get done whatever he wants to get done if he ever decides he wants to get anything done. Nevertheless, I think our mice problem may be over. 

Not that we ever had a mice problem.