I’ve been waking up earlier, facing the oncoming winter dark. It’s morning on the first Monday in October and 54 degrees. By tomorrow, they say, the rain will kick up again, and the nighttime temperatures will drop into the 40s, and probably that will become a new normal until the solstice season really takes hold.

***

One time I saw Matthew McConaughey of Uvalde, Texas, interviewed by Larry King. Old Larry was needling him a little bit about doing Cadillac commercials. Matthew didn’t like it. He said that he really believed in the product. Sure he did. I think reaching that point means your integrity is toast. Not that it makes him a bad person, or a worse actor …

But my respect plummeted even so. And no, Tommy Lee Jones, I don’t really think I want a reverse mortgage, thanks. I’ll pray for your soul.

By the way, Larry, I listened to you on the radio for years as a child, and I heard you shilling for the likes of Gold Bond Powder, over and over and over. Cast ye no stones, sinner!

***

We all be sinnin’.

One way or the other, a capitalist system pushes us hard toward selling ourselves off. Maybe it’s just our time being sold, for 13 or 36 dollars per hour. Or maybe it’s something more subtle, nuanced.

I have always and will always resist that with my creaking bones.

That resistance is the real underlying American way. You want to tax my tea, bitches? I’ll show your ass. I’ll fix your wagon.

But nowadays. Nowadays you need to get into the right school, to get the right job. Maybe you’ll work for the tea man, or the tax man, and be able to afford to live by the ocean, or even have kids, or at least dogs. You’ll need to vote in every election and choose between the red giraffe and the blue squirrel every time. Omigod that giraffe pisses me off so much.

You’ll visit harbors in Greece and Belize, but never will one leaf of Lapsang Souchong fall overboard ever. Not by your hands. Which are clean and even sanitized, because of this pandemic thing you know.

You are vaccinated. You are boosted. The Squirrel approves of you, and marks your performance review Outstanding.

You outstand.