Dolce far niente

My night so far, so sweet and idle. Listened to a neighbor practicing an oboe part in some orchestral piece I thought it might have been Tchaikovsky--which might have been the power of association acting on me living among Russians as I do. And still the night is young. I could a little later take a walk, stroll down the boardwalk to where The Beach Boys are scheduled to be playing at the bandshell as the headline act in Old Man's Band Night. Or I could sit at home and watch The Runaways (from Netflix) and eat coffee cake with it as I had planned. What do I feel like doing? I'll ask--I'll answer--at the moment, neither. Right now I feel like making marks inside a notebook with my pen, marks responsive to a speaking voice inside my head. Somewhere up above and just behind the eyes, I think, I believe it's coming from...

Have you been reading this series, Top Secret America? Dana Priest, top journalist, bar none. There I sat, at work, when I should have been reading Les Misérables, reading this series instead and receiving so clearly the picture of life in these top secret office parks that go on forever on top of what used to be farmland, where all day and night thousands and thousands and thousands of temps sit wearing headphones through which come voices of people who might be plotting to HURT US or something; along with, for instance, 45 minutes of me laughing hysterically at my sister's phone imitations of Mira Sorvino and Rabbi Schneerson.

The point being, the voice I hear as I write, the voices coming through wires into highly cleared ears--what's said is said, what matters is how it's edited. The other point being, What are those people defending down there in Top Secret America? Other than their firms and their own Life Styles? Defending the freedom to make lots of money and buy suburban houses and "vehicles" and drive to impenetrable workplaces to do unmentionable things on the taxpayer's dime--yes, I think so? Yes. They are defending a life that feels sweet to them. Now would they defend it on the barricades, to the death? The last point here being, how much, how infinitely much, it is to be hoped that they don't start to feel any need to, considering what their version of a toppled omnibus might be.