Orwellian Moments of Guilt

Tonight I got the impulse to drive 100mph to Barnie and McNobles and buy Orwell's Down and Out In Paris and London. I don't know why I was looking for a book; I'm only half-way through Sedaris and 15 pages into Heller's Catch 22 (Yes, I'm reading two books--slowly, mind you--at once.) I was looking for Orwell's book about his own poverty as well as Graves' King Jesus. There were too many stacks of Da Vinci this and Da Vinci that and so the latter was MIA. They didn't even have Grave's Goodbye To All That, for Chrissakes. They used to have Graves' autobiography, back in 1995, back when I first got attracted to disillusionment, but too much time has passed since then; Anne Rice and Dan Browne have too much to say nowadays--fuck 1918 and those old war poets, those black and white photographs of dead men, survivors of WW1, pushing up poppies (not in Flanders in some gray English cemetery) they have nothing to teach us about wasted wars and the greedy military industrial complex! As I was checking out, the woman asked if I wanted to donate a book, another copy of this book, to a shelter for poor women and children. I looked down at the book, the black and white photograph, out of focus showing a bobby under some sad bridge. I gripped it tightly and got a whiff of guilt; I stared at the sad checkout lady with the puppy dog eyes. But I said, "No thanks." Down and out people need to find their own damn down and out books. I found mine; they can find theirs. When I worked in a shelter, they had Oral Roberts to read. I think he's better to get them out of there; Orwell may force them to stay in the shelter waiting for another classic. --------------------------- I found out today that I am the finalist in this contest. I'm honored that I made the cut; I mean I have no PhD; I am no 2:18 marathoner; I don't work in an inner city school lifting up the downtrodden; I don't fancy myself as an altruistic champion of whatever. I'm just me--livin' in McWorld, driving a hypocritical largeass truck in the middle of a sea of Philashit n' Streetblimps, fightin' the yentas and doing my part to push the (censored for economic reasons) further into the black: chart by pretty chart. I'm the little man in a Cyclopean world, but I'll put my best 1000 words forward and maybe I'll convince the panel to understand that a man down and out in McWorld can best tell it like it is in the most misunderstood continent--the land where the majority live below the poverty line, where those that run fast also live hard.