I'm walking down a grassy lane with someone that I do not know. We come to a circular area lined with low brick walls and the grass is tall and very green. The sun is low. I have never met this person and they do not have a face.
I am in a gymnasium, sitting not on the bleachers but on the stairs leading up to the bleachers with a group of people, some of them faceless and some that I vaguely recognize from high school. I am myself, my bluebacked copy of The Sun Also Rises is with me. I'm slightly dazed watching the teams compete in tug-of-war. I am aware that this feels like a school event, not just PE. I am suddenly on the gym floor to take up position somewhere along the rope, but I stop and am somewhere else. By the time I come to it has almost started and I take up position on the wrong side of the rope.
We're all in a gaggle after the game and I'm standing there. I realize there is a hand on my back, a feeling that I'm allergic to when it's someone I don't know, and I step forward and turn to see who it is. The person is a friend of mine and they tell me I'm drunk. I look down at them and wonder how they imagined they were going to hold me up and I say, "not nearly as drunk as I am going to be." Then I leave.
I stumble across the gym floor and I come upon a guy I knew in school, much bigger and taller than me. We were never friends and I don't remember his name, but I say to him, "we never hung out did we" and he shakes his head and I say, "it's because I was a dreadful bore." He nods. I'm trying to remember his name -- was it Tanner? Someone who went by a last name that is lost to me now. I never had a want to hang out with them.
I continued on across the gym floor discombobulated. A crowd of people running at me. I realized it was perhaps hundreds of short men in pink leotards, running in a cascading and converging diamond formation, and I was in one of their negative spaces. As they swallowed me a strobe light began and I saw flashes of them frozen in time but moving all the time and all around me and I heard their steps very quiet and powerful. I became dizzy and started to crouch down but as soon as I did they all vanished.
I was no longer drunk when I stood back up and I climbed the stairs of the bleachers which were still full. I went to a high level and began working my way through the crowd. I took out my phone and it slipped from my hand and I watched it fly down. It smacked someone in the head. They turned and it was John and he looked about like he did back then, like a bit of a Henley-wearing cowboy with his wavy hair.
I worked across and then down and he handed me the phone. I keep walking down the bleachers and when I get to the bottom someone stops me and says I look like them. I look at them and do not think this is true, they are shorter than me and fit with short black hair and brown eyes and they are wearing one of the leotards from earlier, but it is sort of a dress. They don't look like anyone I know. I say, "I'm a bit taller than you," though trying for a kind smile. They grin a bit and stop slouching and they are quite a bit taller than me and this gets a laugh out of me. I say their dress looks nice. The person compliments my jacket and I thank them and go on.
I cross a hallway and I have an intense memory of having crossed this hallway with a cut up knee when young, having careered across the floor and into a folding chair and been told to go see the nurse. There are orange, blue, and green striped tiles on the floor that look like they were set in the 80's. Across the hallway in this world is not the nurse's little office with its beat up grey cot. It's the cafeteria, or at least where you would make your "order" which is unlike any school cafeteria I've ever been in. I asked what they're serving and they say pizza with sardines. I say that's alright.
Of all that, the pizza with sardines is what finally made me wake up on my couch around 6:30 AM Thursday. Like most days this week, it was the third or fourth awakening of the night. I am not big on dream interpretation though sometimes it is awfully tempting. What most strikes me is what I said about being drunk, since I have been so watchful of any drinking. But dreams have no signs or portents, only wishes and confusions.
I wrote last week's post very early in the week. Then the rest of that week and this week happened. I'm not sure if you're watching the news, but there's not a lot for a federale to be thrilled about. Much of my work 'paused' -- a euphemism for vanished. Constant discussions about silverware. Then, especially the last few days, rumblings of a gigantic reduction in force. That is government speak for 'pack your shit and get out.' Sometimes I hear 10% sometimes 30%. NSF supposedly wants 50%. Basically amounts to a good chance of me having no job. Hard to imagine being able to stay in DC if I lose it.
People are sending me "watchlists" published by far-right groups (NYTimes, NBC). I haven't seen one for my agency yet. My gut reaction was to go update my LinkedIn and really spell out every bit of equity work I ever did and then set the profile to public, just to see if I could get into a good, clean, fight. Though of course that would not be practicable or give me what I'm looking for. This is clearly an intimidation tactic that seeks to get good people doing good work out of positions that enable them to do good.
The lack of good sleep has some other consequences. Earlier this week I rather bit someone's head off in a meeting. I do not feel bad about it and my concerns were right and well said, but I noticed that I was worked up and I noticed that I was feeling angry and somewhat betrayed. It is pretty rare for me to get angry. We're less than a month into this. I need to balance myself out.
One of my conflicts right now is that I consider complying with certain executive orders to be harmful to people. So my choices are -- have no involvement in the work that surrounds this compliance, or by involving myself try to mitigate harm as much as possible. But is it possible to involve yourself in mitigating harm without still being a direct contributor to that harm? I don't know. Counterpoint: if no one that desires to mitigate harm is involved in the implementation, what is the capacity for harm then? I do trust the people working on this stuff, but my trust only goes so far. And it isn't far enough to divorce myself from it completely and make myself feel better for having not done anything about it or to it.
Sometimes I wish someone would tell me that I'm doing the right thing. Or the wrong thing. I've found trusting myself to be very hard over the last few weeks.
Frustrating, frustrating.
One of the things that is bothering me most in my work is what Snyder in 'On Tyranny' calls conceding in advance or anticipatory compliance. "Well, we know that the EO says this, so we must change this thing before we're ordered to." The hope is that by changing it before an order, the change-by-choice is less harmful than the change-by-order. I don't think I subscribe to this theory. I wrote about that in my review of Snyder's book last weekend.
Maybe it will all mean nothing by the time this post gets published, or by the time I set down to write next week's post. Perhaps I will be culled in a big RIF and be updating my resume and competing with my coworkers for jobs in the so-called-glorious private sector. Yuck.
I'm aware that this tone is a pretty far-cry from last week's. There is not much I can do about that. I can tell you that I still believe what I wrote. I would like to still be able to pay my rent while believing it. Still, I will keep showing up to work and doing what I can. I am keenly aware that I need to find some volunteering or something outside of work to give me some little sense of contribution to society, though. I want to feel like I'm doing something that matters.
-Thomas
Other Reading/Writing/Watching
Most things I read/watched didn’t have a review this week, but if there’s a link, there’s a review.
1/30/25 — Documentary, HISTORY CHANNEL’S THEME: A HISTORY MYSTERY, Defunctland (5/5).
1/31/25 — TV, TWIN PEAKS & TWIN PEAKS THE RETURN, finished watching all of the TV episodes. (5/5).
2/1/25 — Book review, Queer by William S. Burroughs (3/5).
2/2/25 — Book review, On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder (5/5).
Book review, “They Just Need to Get a Job”: 15 Myths on Homelessness by Mary Brosnahan. (4/5).
2/3/25 — Movie, FARGO (5/5).