If you cross the borders and enter into this swamp-nation, you will instantly be transformed into a pitiless ideological zombie. You will be shouting at everything. You will be angry, sunrise to sunset, and then into the night. Even under your blankets and the ominous, blue glow of your phone, you will still be furious, your brain in terrible flames. Twitter knows this and is now trying to encourage civil behaviour, both by cancelling offensive accounts, and nominating “well-behaved” people for “Sainthood.” Sainthood is nothing more than a halo emoji that appears beside your name, but Twitter is hopeful it might catch on and help put out the still burning swamp fire. Here are a few of the people who recently received a halo emoji:

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Rachelle: Really?!!

Rachelle: Wow!! Having Lyle Lovett like one of your Tweets is amazing! That must be a real feather in your cap!

Rachelle: I’m proud of you, Pickle!

Rachelle: Yes, of course I do.

Rachelle: He’s one of The Avengers, isn’t he?

Rachelle: The Jewish one.

Rachelle: The one who could turn himself into a plane that’s also a tiger.

Rachelle: Oh.

Rachelle: I thought one of The Avengers could do that.

Rachelle: And that they embraced all religions, that they fought for freedom of religious expression and each hero represented a great faith.

Rachelle: Oh.

Rachelle: Well, I guess I don’t know who Lyle Lovett is then.

Rachelle: Hmm, a musician.

Rachelle: No, none of those songs are familiar to me.

Rachelle: Just before my time, I guess.

Rachelle: Not a dig, Pickle. You’re just a lot older than me.

Rachelle: No, I’d say 12 years is a lot. Anything double digits.

Rachelle: What??

Rachelle: He was married to Julia Roberts?

Rachelle: You mean the guy who looks like a scarecrow/funeral director is Lyle Lovett?

Rachelle: Wow.

Rachelle: It’s true, personality does counts for a lot.

Rachelle: And yes, it is almost as if Julia Roberts liked your Tweet!

Rachelle: Aww, that’s sweet!

Rachelle: Well, if I’m your Pretty Woman, you’re my little Lyle Lovett!

Rachelle: Yes, my power skating class is over and I’ll be home soon.

Rachelle: With the wings.

Rachelle: Extra mild. Sauce on the side. Extra wet naps. No carrot stick taller than the others. As always.

Rachelle: It’s a little bit of a serial killer kind of order, you know.

Rachelle: That was auto correct.

Rachelle: I wrote “You’re a sweet kind of order.”

Rachelle: Well, auto correct works in mysterious ways.

Rachelle: Through a glass darkly and all of that.

Rachelle: Yes, you probably will start getting ads in you Facebook feed for serial killer things now.

Rachelle: Well, they say technology knows you better than you know yourself, Pickle!

Rachelle: Oh, I’m kidding, honey.

Rachelle: You’re no serial killer.

Rachelle: In fact, you would be the worst serial killer in history.

Rachelle: Well, your allergies to start. Always blowing your nose and sneezing. You’d be detected straight away!

Rachelle: And then there’s your general physical and mental weakness. Serial killers have to be on the ball! I bet serial killers get 10 hours of sleep a night!

Rachelle: Ha Ha!! I know, I would kill for 10 hours of sleep, too!

Rachelle: But look, the fact that you could never be a serial killer is a compliment, not an insult.

Rachelle: I know, these are confusing times.

Rachelle: The falcon cannot hear the falconer.

Rachelle: It’s from a poem.

Rachelle: I think the falconer is the person who dresses the falcon when they go hunting. Picks out the outfits. Not positive.

Rachelle: Anyway, see you in about half an hour! xo

A crowded patio at night.

The man has sturdy legs and broad shoulders. He’s handsome and looks comfortable in his own skin, like he’s very good at whatever it is he does for a living and is used to moving fluidly through the world. Behind him, holding his one hand with her two, is a blind woman. She is stunning in her beauty, radiant, even. Looking at her it feels possible that a mountain stream had assumed the form and flesh of a woman and appeared amidst us like a miracle. Those of us who are watching her have no conscious choice in the matter. There is something that pure and commanding about her beauty.

She’s blinking awkwardly into the lights above the bar as the man explains the topography of the patio she is trying to navigate through.

“There’s some uneven ground here, and then a slight step up. You okay?”

She nods wordlessly.

As they pass through the thicket of tables and chairs and people, every set of eyes are upon her. Conversations are falling silent, heads are turning and imaginations are sparking. Everybody is watching, trying to enter into the mystery of her life, trying to understand the uncanny sense of relief– of hope, even– we all felt in seeing a person so unable to apprehend her own powerful beauty, a person so unsullied. She moves through us like a saint through fire, and maybe she feels our eyes upon her, feels the hunger and predation that haunt a bar like this, but maybe, perfect in her own wilderness, she feels nothing. She moves closer to the man as the level of spatial complexity increases, dropping one hand from his and letting it idle in the back pocket of his jeans.

And just beyond them a red traffic light sways above the intersection while a bat swoops down through the night and across the clear, crisp moon. Each person there wanting to tell her about the moon, the beautiful moon, and how hopefully we’d throw ourselves into that unknowable night, just to touch it’s face.

As many of you will have heard, I have started a weekly Podcast with Heidi, our Miniature Dachshund.

This is an excerpt from our most recent episode:

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Me: Before we start today’s Podcast I have an announcement to make. On our last broadcast Heidi made some remarks that were very hurtful to some beloved members of our community.

The appalling statements she made might even be considered an act of violence in and of themselves, and let me say unequivocally that we here at The Breakfast Club have always, and will always be, great allies to all of our friends in the SCBDB community. Your struggle is our struggle, and we will not tolerate any sort of hate speech, calls to violence or prejudice against you and those that you love. You are our family. We love you and stand beside you. I want to take this time now to formally apologize to all Squirrels, Cats, Birds and Dumb Birds who were wounded by Heidi’s words. We are profoundly sorry.

Although Heidi has been a mostly loyal dog to my family for nearly a dozen years, I simply cannot excuse her behaviour, and so she has been removed from the Podcast, effective immediately, and sent to live up in the country with my wife’s parents where she will undergo prolonged sensitivity training.

Taking her place will be Margaret Atwood, one of the supporting actresses from the hit TV show The Hand Made Tale.

Atwood: The title of the show is the Handmaids Tale, and I was the author of the novel upon which the successful TV show was based, not a supporting actress in it.

Me: Please don’t interrupt.

Atwood: You have more important things to say, do you?

Me: Nuts! Now I’ve lost my place!

Atwood: Yes, of course you have. A straight, middle-aged white man with no discernible talents suddenly adrift in a changing world. One day you wake up to discover that you’re not one of the good guys at all, but are actually an enemy of the people, an enemy to all those you never heard, saw or even thought about in all the decades you stomped so blindly through this world. Now that the shell of your status has been cracked open to reveal your mediocrity and fear, it must be so very difficult for you! And how have you responded to this sea change, Michael, to being revealed so nakedly to all whom you ignored? With hostility and defensiveness, of course, with a desperate attempt to portray yourself as a victim rather than a victimizer. So yes, I can see how you might feel that you “lost your place.”

Me: I WAS PATROL OF THE WEEK IN GRADE SIX!! I WAS AT THE BARRICADES KEEPING THE WORLD SAFE FROM TYRANNY, GODDAMNIT!! NOBODY CAN TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME!!

The film Mahogany was released in 1975.

It was a melodrama of it’s time, a rags to riches story in which Diana Ross fought to become a great fashion icon before giving it all up for love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra71dvxOVX8

It was not a critical darling. It was a one-and-a-half stars kind of movie, an enterprise that revealed that although Diana Ross was a great diva, she was not destined to become a great actress, and ever since, the movie’s been slowly dissolving into the past. I bring this up just to say that if you missed it, there is little reason to want to go and find it.

Nevertheless, when a pair of friends asked if I’d like to see it with them last week, I jumped at the chance. I’ve known both these movie-going women for over thirty years now and the sheer improbability of that– that we would travel such great and impossible distances through time– and still be connected, was a kind of miracle to me and I would have gone anywhere they asked.

It feels important to note that when the movie was made the three of us were all just children. Not one of us would have yet reached the age of ten, and the worlds we inhabited then were as small, beautiful and mysterious as marbles lost in a forest. The movie, regardless of it’s failings or virtues, was an extraordinary time capsule that opened up all around us in the popcorn dark of the theatre. It was impossible not to see ghost-images of your own life as the frames passed by. Perhaps a snatch of music would summon my childhood cat, or the shape of a car would remind me of a family trip, a dress, a friend of my sister…And to be called back to those lost spaces and allowed to just float there for a few hours, to drift along this underground river free from the obstacles, complications and mortal apprehensions of the adult world, was a glowing, holy thing.

And then the movie was over. We chatted for a moment on the street, and then the three of us headed back into our current lives, each one likely marvelling at the forces that charted our days and brought us together again, compressing time on this autumn night so far from where we started.

Since last we spoke many have fallen and I have come to understand numbers.

I have learned that I can take a punch, if it’s a glancing blow. My punctuation comes and goes, since last we spoke. I have forgotten lyrics and come to believe in angels. Received dangerous information of a sexual nature. Realized the only ones I really like are the kids. I don’t want them to work. I want them to stay as they are, perfect things, almost perfect, running and happy. The light is always moving within them. Since last we spoke there has been chanting and a kind bus driver with flowing grey hair. Music and fires, and an Elvis impersonator, but no UFO’s, although I hungered for them.

Since last we spoke, black cats and the possibility of ghosts. Vitamins dissolved into water and planes crashing all over the world. Into Jungles. Into Oceans. Into Mountains and corn fields and unknowable bodies of water. The weather, so much weather has happened since last we spoke. The hurricanes! Like buzz saws they cut across the oceans. Memories. Memories were forged and lost. Driving easy through the streets, late, windows rolled down. That’s The Way I Like It by KC and the Sunshine Band blaring. Head out the window like a dog, hopeful that more of the world might pour within. I lingered over you, since last we spoke. I wanted to be nude with you, under a dirty sheet in a borrowed house. I wanted to climb a tree and become all of the leaves. Since last we spoke I remembered your eyes, the way they changed and became lonely. The way they stayed lonely. I have eaten too much bread, since last we spoke, and walked impossible fields that lay like green blankets before deep water. I have used the Instant Pot and ridden my bicycle with no hands, but I have not changed my mind about Dolly Parton, since last we spoke.

In my imagination “The Internet” descended from the deep reaches of the universe and settled upon our planet like a mist. We began to interact with this powerful and mysterious entity without any real understanding of how it was going to effect us, or even if it was going to effect us. Most of us just assumed it was going to make things better, amplifying potential in a good, rather than harmful way.

However, it hasn’t exactly worked out that way. The astonishing gifts we’ve enjoyed have come with tremendous penalties, the primary of which might be a massive, unacknowledged mental health crisis.

I don’t know about you, but I have never seen as many declarations of anxiety and depression in my life as I now see on a regular basis online. It’s not at all uncommon for me to have multiple chat windows open at once, each one a conversation with a friend in crisis. This is highly subjective of course, and that people now have the means and social sanction to communicate their feelings might be something to celebrate, or, as my intuition suggests,  it could be something in the disembodied interactions we’ve been reducing ourselves to that’s causing this articulated spike in mental health problems.

It seems that the more we inhabit the abstracted realm of The Internet, the more certain we become of our beliefs. This is highly ironic to me, because we all know that amidst the spin and swirl of disinformation, fake news and uncanny algorithms, we should be as skeptical of claims to truth and certainty as we’ve ever been.

Take the White Power symbols that have been in the news.

As you may be aware, the symbol that you always thought meant “OK,” might now mean White Power.

This transition took place about a year ago on 4Chan, where it was conceived as a conscious lie. What I mean by that is that it wasn’t a White Power sign. The intent was to take an existing symbol and change it’s meaning, thus confusing the public and media and further eroding the idea of public trust.

Regardless, once this meme was in the blood stream there was no way to know what the use of the symbol meant. Did the person know it was a white power sign? Were they just saying “OK!?” Were they making a joke? Were they communicating racist ideology?

The first instance of this that I saw was of White House Advisor Zina Bash during a Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

Based on this image, people thought she was a White Supremacist.

Bash is of Mexican and Jewish heritage, and this photo that was widely circulated was a high resolution screen capture of a video, so she was in motion, not in a fixed, posed position. Claims that she was communicating a racist message seemed to me ambiguous at best. But people I know, like and respect saw this photograph, and others like it,

as crystal clear evidence of racist intent. Where I saw nothing but ambiguity, they saw none.

It felt like looking at the Neckar’s Cube, like some optical illusion was at play and the mechanics of our brains were prohibiting us from seeing the same thing.

There was simply no consensus on what was real. We were living two different stories when looking at the images. Where I was looking at what was directly in front of me, my friends were looking at circumstance, or perhaps subtext, seeing this single image as part of a much greater and evolving narrative.

Perhaps I am antique in my thinking, but when I see stories like these, I look for a kind of “courtroom proof.” If I have doubt, I am unwilling to prosecute the reputation and livelihood of the person being judged, even if they might still be suspicious to me. Maybe that makes me unwilling to act, and if so that is a sin I will one day have to answer for. Regardless, online a “thing” is true if it has momentum, if it supports the continuance of a passionately held belief, not if it meets some “clinical” standard of proof.

As our shared sense of truth and morality fall away– and disagreement leads to suspicion, if not flat-out contempt– we fearlessly share our certainties, but shamefully keep our uncertainties sheltered within, anxious that we’ll be attacked rather than supported by those whom we would love, and that, well that’s making us all feel a little jumpy and untethered.

These are the text messages I received from my wife Rachelle the other day:

Rachelle: I’m not sure I think that’s a good idea.

Rachelle: Look, if you’re putting a pretend cast on our three year-old boy’s arm in order to attract the attention of celebrites at the Film Festival, you truly are a horrible father.

Rachelle: Because you’re using him as bait!!

Rachelle: You are exploiting a child.

Rachelle: Yes, even if he agrees to “play dress up for daddy.”

Rachelle: Jesus. Don’t ever, ever make me type, “play dress up for daddy” again.

Rachelle: Really???

Rachelle: That was actually your tag on Lava Life?

Rachelle: That is maybe the creepiest thing I have ever heard in my life.

Rachelle: I think I might vomit.

Rachelle: No, really. I cannot continue this text conversation.

( TWO HOURS LATER )

Rachelle: Really??!! You got Hugh Jackman to sign Jones’ fake cast for me???!!

Rachelle: That is the best thing you have ever done in your life.

Rachelle: Way better than that prank you pulled on the restaurant manager!

Rachelle: No, it was a good prank.

Rachelle: Yes, a really good one, I don’t think he saw it coming at all, but this, this is HUGH JACKMAN!! What did he smell like? Did he like what Jones was wearing? What did he write to me?? Jesus, did you touch him, did you put your hand on him at any point? What did he feel like? Did he talk to Jones?!

Rachelle: For the love of God, just try to remember what he smelled like!! Try. Try as hard as you have ever tried at anything in your life.

Rachelle. I know you have seasonal allergies and it diminishes your olfactory sense, but just concentrate, goddamit, what did he smell like? Was it the ocean? Was it the moon and stars? Was it roast beef and pumpkin?

Rachelle: Really?!!

Rachelle: Roast beef and pumpkin, I knew it!!

Rachelle: I don’t know how I knew it, I just did.

Rachelle: Yes, sometimes my friends and I talk about that sort of stuff.

Rachelle: Really?

Rachelle: You truly want to know what my friends think you smell like?

Rachelle: Jesus.

Rachelle: Okay then.

Rachelle: Ottilie said she thought you smelled like the interior of an old airplane, one that still carried the ghost smell of crappy sandwiches and cigarette smoke.

Rachelle: Well, if you don’t believe me you’ll just have to ask her yourself.

Rachelle: Just out of curiosity, what do you think you smell like?

Rachelle: Really?

Rachelle: I have to say, that was a very unexpected answer.

Rachelle: Was Hugh very concerned about Jones? Did he want to know how he “broke his arm?”

Rachelle: Okay then, “fractured his wrist.”

Rachelle: Hit by a pitch?

Rachelle: You told Hugh Jackman you hit our son with a hardball?

Rachelle: Jesus, Pickle.

Rachelle: NO FUCKING WAY!

Rachelle: You got him to sign, “Rachelle, play dress up for daddy, love Wolverine?”

Rachelle: OMG, that is the sexisest thing ever, wait until I post a photo of that in my Annex Parents group! That’ll knock Vivian off the front page for a day or two!

Rachelle: And did you touch him? What did he feel like? Was there any give, or was it all rippling, equine power?

Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback who sparked a player protest movement by taking a knee for social justice during the national anthem, has just signed on as the centrepiece of an advertising campaign with Nike that will last until 2028.

I have mixed feelings about this.

It might be inevitable, but I always find it distressing when activism is transformed into product. A recent and particularly ham-handed attempt at this occurred when Pepsi used Kendall Jenner as an instrument to co-opt the symbolism of the Black Lives Matter movement in an effort to sell soft drinks.

The ad was a failure in just about every way, but it was particularly stupefying to watch one of the most privileged people on the planet try to show us that drinking Pepsi was actually an act of resistance, and that protest itself was more like going to a really sexy block party than say, having a fire hose turned on you.

No matter, Colin Kaepernick stands on different ground, and everything I have read about him suggests he’s a good and sincere man, one who has quite clearly been denied an opportunity to work because of the way he has been expressing his political beliefs. There are rational, if unappealing, arguments on both side of this issue, but his activism, and the price he’s paid to for it, and the money he has donated to it, seem real enough. So real, in fact, that although he hasn’t actually played football for over 2 years, his jersey is still amongst the top sellers.

Nike, who not long before they signed Kaepernick, extended their deal with the NFL to supply them with uniforms and equipment for the next eight years– at a price in excess of a billion dollars– saw an opportunity to have their cake and eat it, too. The NFL is a monolith, a powerful institution that is comprised of almost 70% black players, players who are almost certain to suffer lasting and severe brain injury as a result of their jobs.

It’s a gladiatorial spectacle that has always exploited it’s workers for the benefit of gamblers and billionaires, and as wonderful as the game might be, the league that governs it is really kind of evil, and in spite of Nike’s deep and longstanding partnership with the NFL, they want to be seen as a white hat corporation. When we see that swoosh, we’re  supposed to think of commitment and excellence and fighting against the odds. We’re supposed to think of character.

Nike doesn’t want us to think about how they enable and profit off a violent and dangerous sport that cares little for the combatants,  so they hire the iconoclastic Kaepernick to sell shoes to us, thus “seizing control of the narrative.” Nike now pays Kaeprnick for his activism. In the old days, people would say they bought him. And so, with Kaepernick as the face of Nike’s campaign, we are to believe that they are the Rebel Alliance and not the Death Star.

We are to believe that Nike is about civil rights, not sweat shops.

Anyway, I don’t begrudge Kaepernick a single thing. I like his protest and I like him, and I hope that the fortune he has now earned makes him happy, and gives him an opportunity to further his activism and do whatever the hell he wants. He has earned that. Just don’t believe that Nike “has seen the light.” No, they’re just presenting the face they think we want to see, while keeping their own concealed.