He is a devoutly conservative executive who loves Washington hotel lobbies. My recent meeting with him was another primer in self-honesty like a third coat of house paint. “The mirror, the image, and the man” was calculatedly ambiguous. He loved Asian food, quarter horses, classical music and the joy of plotting tactics for gaining control over events and people – a shape shifting of power. The manipulation of money was the come to Jesus’ tool. And he speculated what a memoir might achieve in dollars and cents. Between the lines was the wish to reinvent the textures of chance – to live well beyond merely existing, but it wasn’t for the soul’s journey. It was a building to be designed with precious imported stones, metals and wood with organic water features but for whom, while taking a call from his Wall Street investor and a financial advisor concerning his account in the Cayman Islands. Was I a potential ghostwriter?
***
I listened to a free-lance journalist I’d been waiting to hear from in months. She was still alive, working in the Middle East and experienced things that took remarkable courage, her language skills came in handy. She learned how to melt within the mass while still retaining her personal integrity amid conflict. She knew that if she woke up the next morning there were no guarantees that she’d be still alive at the end of the day…so she decided to ply her trade, write the best she could, making revisions as she better understood the messages conveyed. Each hour of each day was a living memoir of the person she encountered. Armed and targeted emotional battles have a purpose, employed by those seeking an advantage and applied to the man, woman and child searching for shelter, food, and peace. The use of fear has ancient roots. The roots bare its blood-stained teeth towards those who know there are no guarantees while the power brokers seek to manipulate the people wanting advice, to throw up their hands to them while they emphatically state, “I know what’s best” and then filling their accounts with greater wealth. Disinformation, chaos and lies are tiresome as is fascism and oligarchy. And, one old woman in sadness asked my journalist friend, “what if there’s no eternal salvation after all these years of pain? What was all this for?”
***
And yesterday arrived with a change in the title of my memoir to better reflect my life with words revised that more accurately resonate with the reality.
