Fog

"The weather varies between heavy fog and pale sunshine; My thoughts follow the exact same process." 

— Virginia Woolf

The pea soup is finally starting to lift out there.

Wishing I could do the same with my addled old brain.

I was supposed to be starting a deposition in a few minutes, but I cancelled it when the other side engaged in the time-honored lawyer play of dropping hundreds of pages of document production the afternoon before the deposition was scheduled to start. I was in a mediation yesterday and had no way to review all that beforehand. So we'll do this some other time.

Why this funk? Over the last few days the realization has sunk in that I'm ready to quit litigating altogether. I'll make a lot less money, most likely, but I alternate between panic, paranoia, and despair pretty much all the time, and have lived in that state for the nearly thirty years I've been going to court. Only a handful of litigators my age are left in the game, either because they need the money, love turmoil and conflict, or realize they'd drink themselves to death if they didn't have something to do (I've heard all three reasons offered by different folks). If P and I tone down our lifestyle a little and this administration doesn't gut our retirement accounts we have enough money to get by. I've grown to hate conflict. That last reason could be a real concern, but I'm not saying I'll quit working, just that I'll be doing something different. So yeah, maybe it's time.

Oddly enough, Dolly Parton's death has also fueled this emerging feeling that it's time to be something other than stressed and unhappy all the time. She was 80, which seemed ancient to me at one time but isn't that far down the road for P and me now. Why spend these last few healthy years together doing something that makes me miserable?

Well, alimony for one. But that's in the home stretch now.

Turning to the bigger picture, the world outside my office window brings nothing but bad news. We're in a trade war with, wait, Canada? Are you kidding? We've become a pariah on the world stage in the space of less than two years, not to be trusted and without the leverage that soft power gave us over the last eight decades. He's threatening to tear down the Kennedy Center if he can't have his name on the facade. Our immigration courts have become a Kafkaesque parody of due process. Lawyers have been denied continuances for the death of a parent the day before a deportation hearing, denied permission to appear remotely when 8 months pregnant and medically unable to travel. These aren't real courts, of course--they are adjudicative bodies of the Department of Justice, so the cruelty of the executive branch is on full display.

Yesterday a good friend of mine lost the Republican gubernatorial primary in Oklahoma by a couple thousand votes after Dear Leader started verbally accosting him. Decent people seeking high office on the R ticket are such an incredible rarity now, running off a guy like him is a real loss for that awful state and for our country.

Maybe the worst news of the day was the release of a study showing that at least 25%, and likely many more, of those who've played in the NFL will develop CTE. I gave up on the Saturday game long ago--the story last week about Lane Kiffin recruiting former NFL players to come back to college to play for LSU is just another symptom of system that no longer has any of what once made it a lot of fun, even if all that amateur student athlete stuff was mostly an illusion.

But I'd hung onto the Bills, and found myself on hot July days dreaming of smoking a giant brisket on a cool fall Sunday with the leaves turning outside and Josh Allen on the big screen. They gave us a sense of belonging and of community during this period as sojourners.

Now I don't think I can enjoy the game, knowing that so many of these young men are being destroyed before our very eyes with every big hit on the field. In a way, the NFL did itself a great disservice when it allowed HBO to create the Hard Knocks reality show, following one team from preseason training through a grueling season. The viewer watches them sit at the kitchen table eating cereal with their wife and kids, gets to know them as people and not as gladiators. For all the talk about thugishness in the sport, one finds out they're mostly nice guys, grateful for the chance to escape poverty and despair, living in a nice house in a nice subdivision. But at what a cost. It's the American way, however--we don't give much thought to the price paid for the things we've grown to love in life. A writer in the NYT this morning drew an analogy to his enjoyment of a bacon cheeseburger, only possible by ignoring the slaughterhouse killing that made it possible.

What a ramble. See what I mean? I don't want to live in my own head. Time to dive into some work that may provide a distraction from all this gloom.