April 30, 2023

Dear Car Man,

I recall nature documentaries in which early life forms project themselves across ancient oceans. A cluster of tentacles within a cone-shaped shell is approached by a predator and retracts inward, in a gesture of self-protection. I feel my body contract in tension when I wake up at five in the morning, as it braces for the metallic orchestra of death you unleash daily at dawn.

I lay down on the mattress and my body tenses for impact - independent of my conscious will. I am like the sea mollusk, gathering inward in anticipation of the attack. When I used to be asleep at 7 AM, your Mustang hellfire invaded my audio sensory system, travelled down my spinal column and tensed me into a groggy awakening. This has trained my body to awake and to retract in anticipation of the assault.

We live in a time of hatreds, and yet these are vague hatreds based on nothing substantial, on gaseous ideas. The frothing hatred we see beneath the dumb red hats are the fruits of manipulation harvested by the cynical. My loathing of you is different. It is based on your treatment of me and of the others in this neighborhood. We have communicated and you have let me know that you know the effect that your amplified death clangs have on me and on others. Your indifference in the face of that knowledge is something that I characterize as evil. 

Granted, yours is a cheap and tawdry evil - a fraction of a blip in the the history of evil. But it is representative of the stinking puke that forms the core of that malady: a sociopathic inability to feel compassion or empathy for those you harm.

And I know there are those who feel that any guarding of hatred within is bad and to be avoided. I don't think I agree. But that is a topic for a different missive. 













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