Poem for Friday, National Harbor, X-Files

Suffering the Unattainable
By David Dodd Lee

Large sea turtles and some whales
will outlive us, water a manifestation of wind in

      another dimension.
I had to use the shovel to hack at the wood, had to grab

a hatchet, down deep in the hole. The oak pitched around
like a ship’s mast, or I was no longer alive; perhaps I was yet

      to be
all over again, though I kept recalling your name. The verdurous roots.

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As predicted, we got snow overnight, and though it was not nearly as much as my sister Nicole got in New York or my friends in Pennsylvania, it closed local schools and backed up local roads. So we got a later start than we had expected getting Daniel to the Gaylord National for MAGFest, though it was a nice ride with the Potomac River dramatically frozen past the shores and the stone circles of the National Harbor complex. When we got home, Paul went into the office (he had worked from home in the snow in the morning) and I did a bunch of cleanup chores put off while the kids were here, the most ridiculous of which was unpacking our wedding china -- yes really -- because we decided it was ridiculous we weren't using it at this point instead of keeping it packed away in case some day we have formal dinner parties.









After dinner we watched the first episode of the new season of The X-Files, which we'd missed the night before at the movies with Daniel. I don't know what to say about it except that Chris Carter is a massive troll, whether or not the revelations of this episode prove to be true (given that they negate not only the events of last season but things that have been shown or implied for more than a decade). Fake news jokes are one thing, but when you start a season by showing how the moon landing was faked, you better either be preparing to reverse course and cement everything your viewers thought was true by the end of the season or be prepared to have both old and new viewers abandon your franchise, leaving you only with right wing conspiracy loons as your legacy. You get one more week to stop screwing with fans!