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| Talking it Over 80 x 80 cm - mixed media on canvas |
MY GRANDMOTHER’S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
On Thursday
afternoons
she met for
a few hours with the mayor
of our
small town, which was just starting to sprawl out
in
unpredictable ways. Maybe they talked
about
zoning issues? Sundays, after football,
a black and
white William F. Buckley, Jr.
performed in
my grandparents’ living room: slumped in his chair,
clipboard
on lap, stuttering polysyllabic obscurities
from behind
a sleepy aristo mask
basking in
the warm light of utter certainty. Not unlike a reptile
that sticks
the tip of its tongue out before striking.
“He’s too
English,” my grandfather complained
a little
later, referring to WFB, Jr., while plastering
self-made
barbecue sauce onto a pair of rotating game hens.
“He’s too conservative,”
corrected his wife. “He wants everything to go
…backwards.
He’s such a Tory he would have been
against the
American Revolution. His first loyalty
is to his
class, not our country.” Life wasn’t better
back then,
it was just life, but a lot more quiet. For example, what my
grandmother
talked about on Thursday afternoons at the Concord Airport
Holiday Inn has not come down to us.
