New(s)

There is a war raging in the basement of my apartment building. In the resident gym, there are four television screens. For a long time, they were always the same. ESPN, ESPN-2, Fox News, and a glitchy CNN, where the screen was always frozen for ten seconds at a time. A couple of weeks ago, this changed. They started switching the channels, then switching them again. These channels are unable to be changed by residents, so the building management must have been involved, either due to resident complaints or because they get bored. The screens cycled through various channels of varying blandness. C-SPAN, C-SPAN2, blank screens, the Roku home screen. Canadian news, Spike TV, Turner Classic Movies, History. Now it has settled into what appears to be a stable equilibrium: two screens display the same nature show at slightly different times, followed by two screens showing the news, one being Canadian and the other CNN on a 36-hour delay (without any glitches).

Given what’s been in the news these past few weeks, this means that two have been peaceful views of animal kingdoms, while the other two, well. War. On the left, an egret’s feathers get blown majestically in the wind. On the right, war. On the left, a crocodile attacks a baby wildebeest. On the right, war. Chimpanzees crack coconuts. War. Flamingos switch their feet. Still war. Another crocodile, another wildebeest. There’s nothing they can do. 

People love “news” because people love new things. Our brains are designed to search for abnormalities. We like making sense of the strange. We want to learn about and be aware of things. What things? Everything. Back then, a predator on the horizon. Now, we simply want to understand the very moment we are in. Thus, news. It must be constant, it must be ever-churning. It is undoubtedly addictive. Any time you are not reading or watching the news, new news is happening, and where are you? 

Lately I’ve been finding myself in foul moods without knowing why, then remembering, oh. The news. I know, there are much worse things happening than a bad mood. But the mood is here and that is fact. I feel it in the air waves. And I find these sad, angry feelings keep urging me to validate them. To seek out more news. The worst news. To confirm the worst fears. To spiral and spiral and spiral. The problem is that some news is not new at all. Sometimes there is a very old story and there is no easy answer because if there was, someone would have found it by now. And yet. 

So it was nice to spend a weekend in St. Louis, where nothing new has happened in decades. Eerie but in a new way. A city devoid of people. We were walking around the most famous downtown area on Friday evening and it was deserted. Completely empty. Yet we were in good moods. The emptiness was a relief. 

Throughout most of our St. Louis trip, Seth wore a very old shirt. It was given to me by a friend and I gave it to Seth and now it has holes all over the shoulders. Its sleeve cuffs have ripped off. Loose threads are everywhere. Once upon a time, I liked this shirt. It’s red and thermal. But now he wears it as a joke. The joke is, can you believe this shirt? Can you believe someone can actually wear this shirt? 

He wore it all weekend and for two days after and on Tuesday, I was in one of those moods. One that had nothing to do with anything, but everything to do with everything. It was one of the moods where you know it’s there and yet can’t get rid of it. Seth tried. He bought flowers and they were beautiful, and yet. He was wearing that ratty long-sleeved shirt. The holes in his shoulders just kept getting bigger, exposing the t-shirt beneath. I put my fingers in the massive holes and threatened to pull. “Do it,” he said. I pulled and heard a ripping noise. “Do it,” he said again. I pulled and tore it all the way down his left sleeve. Then the right sleeve. Then down the chest and I kept pulling, and he helped. Together we ripped it until all that was left was a pile of shirt-shaped rags on the floor. 

In St. Louis, we took the tram to the top of the famous Arch and right when we got there, a storm rolled in, stealing our view. We saw the entire storm come in and take over. We could see nothing else. Our window views were clouds, then water. The winds made the arch lurch. I thought of rubbled buildings and how if this arch fell, there would be no hope. It didn’t fall. A very old sign said it could withstand winds up to 150 miles per hour. But who am I to trust a very old sign? It was jolting beneath my feet. I sat on the floor, hoping that would make me feel more grounded, six hundred feet in the air. 

The storm began to fade when a bell rang. It was time to return. But before we did, we had one last glimpse of the city. St. Louis in all its empty glory. Finally we could see. 

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I’ve had a couple recent publications. First, a short story called “The Flood” in Farewell Transmission:

Then, an interview with DC local Len Kruger about his new book, “Bad Questions,” which won the Washington Writers Publishing House annual fiction award. It just came out and is really funny and affecting, I definitely recommend reading it!

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Cats, who don’t know anything about the news, and husband, wearing a better shirt: