Day 194: Turtle Envy

I don’t know who reads this thing. The Web is slower than ever. Still, I’m trying to get my site and blog listed for what they’re calling “enhanced access” so you can reach it. The expense isn’t the biggest problem. The new Digital Code Of Conduct invites censorship and expulsion—after they get my money.

The authorities are afraid people will post irresponsibly.

We need Americans to march out of their hidey holes into the streets – naked, sick, frightened – and shout at the evil bastards who are exploiting our misery to grab more power & wealth at the expense of innocent and honest, unconnected folks.

HAPPY AMPHIBIANS AT LIZ CHRISTY GARDENThat sort of thing, ya know? We just can’t have it here.

Are any leaders out there using their power to help people? Are they all bent on wrapping us in fear—turning us into human tacos to be gobbled by an insatiable state and its corporate partners?

If you’re still reading this, please let me know how your communities are dealing with the repression. I can no longer reach lots of blogs I’ve come to rely on for unmediated information. The fog thickens.

To dispel the murk, I took a long walk with Anna through the East Village. Tompkins Square Park looks about as bad as it did when I first moved here. People are camping under a sign that says their buildings burned down, thank you very much. The lawns have been torn up, presumably for graves. Or are the soldiers of RAISE digging up corpses? We didn’t stop to ask.

Anna and I wandered past countless shuttered shops down to Houston Street, where we turned west because it felt safer. When we passed Second Avenue, we realized we were at a spot we’ve never discussed, but which it turns out we both love: Liz Christy Garden.

Created in 1973, it’s considered the area’s first community garden. Stone paths wind past a busy little turtle pond under a cypress tree. And it’s supervised by cats.

We expected the spot to be closed. But one of those remarkable creatures—a masked volunteer—was tending the greenery as we peered through the fence. She and her companion waved us inside.

It didn’t take long to unwind in there. We kissed to the sounds of trickling water and of tools turning earth that cares nothing about influenza and injustice.

Day 195: The Beat Goes On

Anna is now a certified bird flu survivor, having tested positive for H5N1 antibodies. She’s pleased to have been assigned to a sprawling shelter for prospective foster children. This sounds like a temporary orphanage, but it’s more complicated.

There are enormous numbers of little kids whose single parents died of flu. They’re being warehoused in elementary schools that serve as dormitories—and theoretically as schools, if staff could spare time to teach them.

Anna’s excited about caring for them. Tomorrow she will hand out her daughter’s favorite toys, which we’ve rescued from Anna’s ransacked apartment. I’ll rise in a couple of hours to help her carry them, brightening the lives of about 50 children.

THE YEAH YEAH YEAHS’ KAREN O IN BRAZIL (Richard Phillip Rücker)I’m delighted she feels useful so quickly. Her spirits have improved, though she remains frighteningly close to fatigue. Her little form needs to rest.

Of course I’ve argued fervently against cooperating with conscription. Anna opposes it in principle, but she’d rather not stay home and mope. Her mind and heart disdain longwinded reasoning—and hopelessness.

It’s not that she aspires to sainthood. She’s a brilliant schemer when she finds it necessary. She’d make an exceptional criminal. Sneeky never takes his eyes off her.

Anna has revitalized this apartment. The air reverberates with strange foreign sounds, or the music of bands I barely knew, like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ ferocious, squealing logic or the Kills’ Cat Claw. I’d always figured Fiona Apple for some fluffy princess; I live to learn and love, she to make a Mistake and rhapsodize about it. There’s always room for Gene Clark: Anna played No Other last night—prime kissing music.

Happily, I've found a car to borrow. I'm going to drive Anna to my mythical bungalow on her weekend break, hang out with her in the autumn woods for two days. If it's warm enough, we'll picnic and tumble amid red and gold leaves in a forest glade. I want to help the sun paint that broad smile back on her face. She deserves it, needs it.

I’m glad I safeguarded Ric’s kitchenware when his neighbors started looting his possessions. The thieves acquired well-deserved bedbugs, but I rinsed off any pests as I salvaged his pots, pans, dishes, and cutlery. Ric joins us in spirit when we dine. My home cuisine has improved immeasurably since RAISE made me the surrogate for hundreds of hungry New Yorkers.

Day 196: ‘Constitutional Cancer’

Not to get too Biblical about it, but this War on the U.S. Constitution began as the War On Terror, itself descended from the War on Drugs, which had followed the Cold War, World War II, and the War to End All Wars.

The current hostilities follow the legal shortcuts pioneered in the 1980s and expanded in 2001 and thereafter. America’s Founding Fathers never countenanced a justice system that allows the state to seize your property before you’re convicted, depriving you of funding for a lawyer to mount your defense. They never envisioned letting all Americans be considered potential ‘enemy combatants’ because some politicians feel like it.

THE STATE IS HUNGRY: SATURN DEVOURING HIS SON (Goya, 1819)These are struggles ordained from on high. They feed the state as it purports to fight an invisible enemy, engorging the police and bureaucrats and military with special resources and rights at our expense. Even as they fail to achieve anything useful. Check out Goya's painting of Saturn chewing his son.

Will the state’s overreaction to 9/11—compounded by the high fever it has sustained from bird flu—kill us, the tiny cells that enliven the body politic? A cytokine flood has Americans pleading from their rooftops for food and freedom.

A spark of hope emanates from the band of Senators who stood together yesterday to demand statistics from the Attorney General about how many Americans have been rounded up and what is being done to them. The politicians come from both political parties, from left and right, and some of their rhetoric pumped my pulse.

“Freedom is not a virus and draconian laws are not pills our system can automatically flush away after a fever,” said one. “We flirt with constitutional cancer,” warned another.

Sure it’s just talk. There aren’t enough of them to approve any bills, and anything they ever passed would be vetoed. But let me dream. As long as people talk like that, and I can read their words in the mainstream media, I breathe a little.

People want to know how I can meet Nina tomorrow while I’m living so happily with Anna. Happiness is a terrible thing to waste. I’ve been blessed with an upgrade.

I once fell in love with Nina and she fell apart. I was hurt plenty, but I’ve tried not to take it personally. I still care about Nina. She’s a good person who needs help. I hope to be useful. And I’m certain Anna will understand because we are happy and she is strong.

Day 197-8: Help—Please

This is a note from the woman known here as Anna. I hope one of you can help me figure out what happened.

I am sorry to have to tell you Blogula has disappeared. I came home from work yesterday to find the door on the floor and the apartment looted. His iMac and papers are gone, so it might have been an official raid. All his protective stuff and cash and food are missing, too, so it could have been a big burglary. Whoever did it would have needed a truck.

Where is he? Why would robbers take him away, too? Where’s Sneeky? Even the cat food is missing.

He was supposed to meet his old girlfriend for coffee at 3 pm, but I doubt she kidnapped him. The door was removed by the kind of system the police used when they raided my apartment. When I called the local precinct, a detective asked me who the missing man talks to and who would want to harm him. No cops came to view the mess or take a statement about the break-in.

His nearest neighbors are both dead. No one else heard anything. A couple shrugged and looked away. Two block residents saw a lot of police cars parked here yesterday.

I’m scared for him. If you know anything, please write his business email. If you know anyone important in New York or Washington—anywhere, really—please get help.

Day 199-200: Please Join the Hunt

Anna again. Thank you all for your concern. He really is a good person.

THEY LEFT THIS PHOTO OF HIS BIKE. NOW THEY’RE BOTH GONE.I wish I had good news. His disappearance has been reported in a lot of blogs and even on a paper’s website. We launched an online petition to make the New York Police Department account for eyewitness reports that the police took him away in handcuffs three days ago. A man just released from custody says he thinks he’s positive he saw him in jail with his face banged-up.

The neighbors still saw nothing.

Thank God for the Internet. Please help in any way you can. Sign our petition and tell your friends about it.