W. Grey Champion
From the Moleskine
My Moleskine accompanies me everywhere, for the purpose of catching those elusive thoughts that bombard one’s consciousness and may or may not be worthy of elaboration. I have shared these musings on my blog, From the Moleskine, each week for many years. Originally a Google blog, I moved it to this website when my third book was released. In The Weekly will be recent reflections I seek to record and to share with readers. Described here are other headings, also updated weekly.
Dokusan: In Japan, dokusan is a private meeting of a Zen student with his master. For background, readers must see my book, Conjuring Archangel: Chronicle of a Journey on the Path, because the conjuring continues.
In the Courtyard: As my collaborator on the blog, my friend Anna reports under this heading from her frequent forays to the village. We often meet in the courtyard for croissants and hazelnut coffee from the French bakery.
The Carriage Lamp: Evocative of those bygone, romantic days of horses and carriages, Anna and I, Sherlockians both, will on occasion include original poems, either hers or mine. The most recent will be at the top.
Click on the titles below to read the most recent weekly posts. If you wish to be alerted to weekly themes, join the Friends of Grey by leaving your email address.
The Weekly
Third dispatch: The games
Here in the Imperial City the summer sun rises like a bloodshot demonic eye through a veil of smoke that has drifted down from a thousand miles away where Canadian forests burn. A benefit of smoke is to moderate extreme high temperatures, and while the air is often comfortably dry, a greater risk of wildfire hangs over us. Notwithstanding, denizens of the Imperial City are giddy with multiple gaudy distractions rolling out one after another from the despot to distract them from the destruction he wreaks. We have seen a Ferris wheel on the Mall, accompanied with a bogus state fair, and a mixed martial arts fight-night on the White House lawn. The emperor’s own contractors will repair the damaged lawn, hopefully not the same ones who ruined the Reflecting Pool. Then the most distracting of all, the soccer World Cup. Never in the nation’s history has this event caused the least ripple of excitement. This summer it was hyped beyond belief. No doubt even those brown detainees in the concentration camps were gladdened. What’s not to love? Next up, a Grand Prix, for which pavement around the Federal Triangle must be resurfaced in advance. So while the hoi polloi have been jostled, uncomplaining, over potholes and crumbling asphalt for nearly a century, now their new master gives them entertainment, beguiling them from the many foreign wars he pretends to win on their behalf - and a mile of smooth road into the bargain.
The talking heads will never keep up with it all, and so cleaving to the despotic intent, their media is saturated. Local news staff are heady with the chance to talk of nothing but games, assigning just one of the group, one with the most sober demeanor, to report the serious news. Even network personalities have been easily beguiled. Only on the public stations, despite having lost all government support, do we hear of perennial conflict in the Middle East that threatens to spread into world war. And so the demonic eye of the summer sun sets - so, so late - still bloodshot and veiled in smoke. Summer drags on and on and on, unrelieved, as we remain divided on the 250 year old American experiment, agreeing only on the verdict: it has failed us all. No matter, we will all have our turn at evacuating in the wake of wildfire or flood.
