#Brexit

For some reason, I can’t get this hashtag out of my head, as if I really give a shit about Twitterspeak or the new reality of our global language. I can’t escape it. It’s a headline, a statement, written in the worry lines between your eyebrows, it can’t be erased by nonbelief in it. What it means for us here across an ocean and across a massive continent is vague and negative. Markets tanking and the undeniable connection between income inequality and nationalistic isolationism. Now the people that made colonialism a high art are acting the victim to a sort of immigrant colonization. Hypocrisy abounds.

This all running through my head while walking to brunch, a peaceful stroll through North Seattle to one of those nose-to-tail Pacific Northwestern foodie restaurants. The detachment is real. All this distance closed by instant news alerts to my phone, accompanied by innumerable articles of financial prognostication. My future holds firm. My future is salmon rillettes and poached eggs. My future is fair trade coffee with irregularly shaped sugar cubes. My future is sunlit and scented with flowers.

We (my wife and I) walk through the city as unspoken meditation. She smells every accessible rose as I wonder at the unexplainable beauty of the dahlias. We smile at the man with his terrier, the lady with her son, the couple walking as haltingly as us, stopping at the roses or taking pictures of the dahlias.

Crossing the pedestrian bridge over Ravenna Park, we theorize on the true origin of our fear of heights. Our bodies tingle with that fear. I think it comes from the thought that all it would take is one second of insanity for me to chuck myself off this bridge. Just the smallest lapse in sanity puts me dead at the bottom of the park. She agrees, while inching away from the railing. Thinking it makes it too real and we change the subject.

We talk abstractly about an independent Scotland, a reunified Ireland, a lonely Wales strapped uncomfortably to a suicidal England. It’s abstract because our investment in understanding the full breadth of it is minimal, top-soil deep. The shallowness of our understanding doesn’t stop us from thinking of the novelty of that new situation, us having no dogs in the race. It is abstract but relative to a very real problem we face here. Their Boris Johnson is our Donald Trump. An idiot electorate away from the very thoughtless nationalism that is affecting the UK. Us vs. them. The true dichotomy (rich and poor) misunderstood as white and not white. The more obvious delineation wins out for those who can’t even pretend to read headlines. Somebody is to blame and he can’t look like me. It’s so easy to hang the woes of our society on the backs of immigrants. Too easy.

We talk about beer and Game of Thrones. We talk about my new job with my standing desk. We talk about the food we’ll eat later, then we talk about the food we’re about to eat.

#Brexit #brunch #farmtotable #DumpTrump #GoT #summer #fearofheights #londonvacation #StillBernie

We eat brunch and talk about vacationing in Ireland. The frighteningly narrow roadways and unbelievably gorgeous shoreline. The people, the B&Bs, the attention they pay to American politics and the appropriate worry they attach to it. The Guinness and Jameson and absolutely ancient stone landmarks. Cows and painted sheep and all the various articles of woolen clothing. And rain.

We walk home just as casually. Our conversations follow no order of importance. Britain votes Leave, we eat brunch, Jon Snow lives on. Post it to Facebook and then wait for the next thing.

Life goes on.