Rest in Peace, Sweet Bounce

Bounce (left) & Miki (right)

 Bounce died tonight.

 I took her in earlier today because she had not eaten in  three days, left her at the clinic and waited nervously all day for the doctor to call me with a diagnosis.

 At about six o'clock tonight she called to tell me they had found a large tumor in her belly and the black in her stool was no doubt blood from that tumor. The doctor didn't hold back. I went in on her advice, called Taku on Facetime so we could both sit with Bounce for an hour, and be together, the three of us, when the doctor came in and put her to sleep. The reason for the speed was the possibility that pain and discomfort of hemorrhaging could come at any moment. I wanted her to die at home but decided not to risk it.

I thought the news of Trump's election was the worst news I could imagine. Today's event pushes that horror down to Number Two. I'm writing this still in shock and agony.

My heart goes out to Taku. Last time he went to Japan to visit his mother, a year and a half ago, Miki died. This time it was Bounce. I wish the gods had the decency not to play with irony like that. Their cruelty can be unspeakable. 

Taku and his mother were on the Shinkansen on their way to Kyoto but we were able to connect via Facetime, so he and I could spend some time with Bounce before she went and participate in the procedure of sedating her to sleep before stopping her heart. It was a time of silent screaming for both of us.

The gods would no doubt argue we should not forget that they gave us fourteen years with these creatures, who seemed to be put on earth for the purpose of drawing out every ounce of love we had in us to give. I've remarked before that I didn't know I had so much affection in me.

I can't put into words what these two little girls meant to me. I don't even want to try; any attempt would be at best a not-even-close approximation. At least we got to shower Bounce with affection for a year and a half of bonus time. And shower we did. Spoiled her rotten. Got up in the night to let her out, picked up after her accidents without a hint of complaint. Taku cooked her chicken and rice meals that we might have served at the table, but went to Bounce once she turned her nose up at canned dog food. Kibble has long been completely out of the question.

I used to ask myself all the time how is it possible to love a little four-legged creature this much.  And what on earth did we do in a previous life to deserve not just one, but two such objects of affection?

That was back in the day when I expected the world to make sense.

Now I simply celebrate the fact that life can be so good to me.

Through a Glass Darkly

The unthinkable has happened. The citizens of the United States of America, faced with the option of continuing to slog their way toward a more perfect democracy, chose to throw it away instead. They put a proven narcissistic liar back in charge of the country. Instead of struggle, they chose chaos.

It's not the first time in recent memory this has happened. Weimar is not ancient history. There are many still alive who can remind us of democracy's greatest weakness - that it can use the power of the voting booth to enable its own destruction.

If people in the 1930s had not merely skimmed Mein Kampf but taken it to heart, they would have seen the death and destruction of millions of scapegoats that was to come.  And anybody in 2024 who fact-checked the "eating the dogs and cats" story about the legal-immigrant Haitians of Springfield, Ohio, can see the parallel in scapegoating.  

Many supporters of the newly-reelected president insist we have guardrails that prevent such evil from taking root here. Only a conviction that one must never submit to despair keeps me going this morning as I worry about the ability of Ukraine to stand up to invasion, the possibility of wholesale deportation of millions of parents of American children, and the likely appointment of two more justices to the Supreme Court inclined to protect the Leader rather than the rule of law.

I worry about the possibility of installing a man who denies the effectiveness of vaccines to head our healthcare institutions, about the ongoing influence of Christian nationalists who insist non-Christians have no place at the American table, about the opponents of presidential policy who are being labeled scum and vermin.

Waiting for the results of the election was like waiting for the results of a biopsy. 

I went through that before being diagnosed with a fatal disease. I know that may have something to do with the fact that I see this election through a dark lens.

But I know, also, that I can't predict the future.

Things may turn out all right.

Secret of the River - a film review

One of the things about Trump's habit of trashing Mexicans that gets under my skin is not the obvious racism, which is disgusting enough, but the fact that it flies in the face of my personal history of encounters with Mexicans. I live in California and Mexicans are everywhere. Overall, I have not just a different view of Mexicans from Trump's "They're sending rapists and murderers..." horseshit, but a very positive one. I think of Mexicans as super hard-working people always looking for a chance to laugh. A colorful lot. Loud, much of the time, but more because of exuberance than annoying. Think of mariachi music. Trumpets, more than violins. Ai, yai yai yai! more than la la la. My bias, I'm trying to say, is a positive one.  My list of Mexican friends and acquaintances is broad enough to include artists and intellectuals, architects and doctors, as well as just plain folk who send their kids to bilingual schools like the one a block from my house, but along with Germans and Japanese and Brits and Canadians and Argentines, I list Mexicans among the folks I am essentially at home with.

So I was not surprised when a friend recommended a Netflix series to me that takes place in a small town in the State of Oaxaca and I immediately got carried away with the sweetness of a friendship between two young boys thrown together by tragic circumstances. 

Manuel is sent to his grandmother's when his mother gets sick, and meets Erik, a boy his age, who is tasked with showing him around and making him feel at home. A not particularly unusual place for a story to start.

But where the story goes from there is anything but usual. It turns out that the context for this story is the native Zapotec community of Oaxaca. In particular the Isthmus Zapotec community, and even more particularly the community of men whom the Zapotec folk consider a third gender. Suddenly, we're talking not about the kind of Mexicans who form cartels and become drug smugglers - Trump's view of Mexicans - nor of the "Cucaracha" singing Mexicans that I expressed a fondness for, but an unusual segment of the Mexican population associated with pre-Columbian Central America who have evolved a culture that makes space for a cross-dressing minority called Muxes.

Secret of the River is divided into two distinct four-episode parts, the first when the boys first meet at the age of nine or ten, and the second twenty years later, when Manuel returns to the village to try to repair broken relationships. I won't spoil the plot line; the story is engrossing and you should experience the twists and turns for yourself. Things get rough at times, the good guys are a bit too good and the bad guys a bit too bad at times, but in the end, I predict you'll be as charmed as I was by the child actors and the character of Solange, a Muxe, who becomes a mentor and protector to Manuel who, even before the age of ten, is showing tendencies of not being comfortable in his skin. 

The dark side of Mexico - intense machismo and homophobia, corrupt police, child-abuse and sex-trafficking - is also present. This is not a socialist realism fantasy. But if you are open to taking in a hitherto unfamiliar view of Mexico and another way of dealing with the  current challenge of what to do about the T in LGBT, this movie is for you.

I give it a 5 out of 5. It's probably a 4, but I'm a sucker for cute kids.

photo credit