Last year the trees were a hideous, ghastly white. It was always winter and never Christmas.
This year everything is red. It is perfectly natural that the trees are red. The trees are red (the Internet says) as a handmaid’s cloak. Do not think of blood. Keep walking.
Has anyone seen or heard from Scott Pruitt? Don’t look startled. Has anyone seen or heard from Jared Kushner? Do people even remember that there is such a person as Jared Kushner? Then what does his voice sound like? Can you remember ever hearing it? Keep walking. Look straight ahead.
You are all right. Keep to the path. Walk between the trees. Keep your face relaxed.
Do not look down the hallway, where someone appears to have been dragged a great distance and there is a wreckage of tiny red needles. It was only the grabbers. Let it be. Clutch only your White House Christmas ornament. You may hear something that is not quite a heartbeat. Walk on.
Outside the White House you will hear the great murmuring, the women in their hats, crying, “Mueller shall deliver us.” The litany goes up. The supplication echoes. “Mueller is coming to change everything. Everything will be Revealed. Nothing will be suffered to be hidden. The trees will crackle and burn in his magnifying glass’s purifying flame.”
Do not listen to the forest’s derisive laughter. Keep to the path.
Staffers have wandered into the forest and not come out. You must count the trees as you pass them to keep to the right way. The angles are—I do not know how to put it—they are wrong.
If you keep walking and do not count the trees as you pass them, sometimes you will come across Jeff Sessions making a pair of dainty shoes, working his tiny hammer and adze so deftly that you can scarcely believe your eyes.
Or you will happen upon the hut deep in the forest that stands on chicken’s legs and plays Fox & Friends. It wants you to come in. It has a cooking show. Don’t go in. It is not a cooking show. You know what it is.
Deeper still in the scarlet wood, Matt Whitaker awaits in a chalet made entirely of Muscle Milks. Standing sentry is the Rat King. He will ask you to dance. He will ask to appear on a panel at your festival of ideas. You must keep walking.
You must count the trees carefully. The eleventh tree is a Mistake. Do not look at it. Do not let it enter your imagination.
If your eyes alight upon the tree, transported, you will stumble upon the Mueller indictments in a clearing, cold and still. But it is not their time! At your footstep they will unseal, scream, and become dust before your eyes. Then it will be only stillness. You will be alone in the forest, and no one will come for you.
Keep to the path.
November 28, 2018
Lock Her Up?
Do you remember where you were on this day?
ALL THE BELLS CLANGED IN every port, in every steeple of every church. As the somber knell rang out over the entire land, President Trump sat motionless at his window, gazing out over the countryside.
“You know the penalty, my lord.”
He nodded. He knew the penalty. That was why the bells tolled.
All the flags slid all the way to the bottom of the staff. A velvet drapery was placed over every statue, even the good ones he was annoyed the states were trying to replace. Around the neck of every ox, a small bell rang mournfully with every step.
What could the nation do but weep?
In the towns they began to rend their garments. The plowmen at their plows doffed their soft caps and threw them to the ground and trampled upon them. The valleys were still, and the glens and dells, but if you listened you could hear the faerie folk lamenting, and a mournful tinkling as many tiny bells began to ring out. The oceans halted momentarily in their rise.
All the shoes everywhere were placed into a pile and burned. All the books, too, but that was unrelated.
Limo drivers began weeping and could not continue. Limo passengers unclamped their chains of pearls and let them spill to the ground. In the gas station coffee shops, disgruntled voters telling reporters they felt left behind fell silent.
The city streets were empty. A child whispered a question to his mother and was quickly hushed. All the mannequins in the shop windows were denuded of their Christmas garb and clad in solemn black. Times Square was dark and still.
“It’s time now, sir.”
President Trump did not turn from the window.
She had done it, the one unthinkable crime. Even she, his only daughter (except Tiffany). The most awful crime a person could commit. Indeed, there were no other crimes. The one thing! The one unforgivable thing!
She had sent government emails from her private account.
If justice were to remain in the land, any semblance of justice, she must bear the punishment. They must begin the chanting.
“Couldn’t we just . . . decide we didn’t actually care about this?” he asked.
“Impossible! We cannot be safe until all such evildoers are eradicated!”
Ivanka waited, surrounded by her handmaids, her head shrouded in a veil, for the sentencing.
He turned with a heavy sigh. “Lock her up.”
Across the nation, from rally to rally, the chant joined the rolling of the bells. He did not watch as they led her away.
November 20, 2018
My Book Report on
The Mueller Report
After many months of intense effort, Special Counsel Robert Mueller produced a report. And people definitely read it.
I ENJOYED READING The Mueller Report, a book that contained 448 pages, each more exciting than the last, as well as more than 1,000 footnotes! The book was published in 2019, meaning it is relevant to our times, and it contained many themes and symbolism, which I will explain in the
