Sarpedon

 

May 31, 2022

Sat beside the French Broad, trying to write (not writing), trying to memorize madrigals.

A lone turkey hen roamed the garden for most of the day. You almost never see them alone, but there she was, sometimes perched on the back of a lawn chair, sometimes in the shade, sometimes in a low branch of the maple, sometime walking her slow jerky way in the full sunlight. I refrained from going to the garden, to give her the solitude she appeared to crave. I made up stories. She wanted just a few hours away from the press and urgency of the flock. She reveled in maybe the first solitude she had ever known, thinking such thoughts as she had. The looked strange, dinosauric roaming out there in the familiar space. She was holy. 

Police dishonesty about their own transgressions was never at issue. Uvalde confirms that they are liars whenever self-justification is required. Police cowardice can, after Uvalde, no longer be denied. It’s not necessarily the fault of the individual cop, for their training instills in them the notion that their first duty is to their own safety, their goal to get their own precious selves home safe at night. Many citations of the Supreme Court finding that officers are not required to endanger themselves for the sake of others. All right. One sees the logic. But the rest of the logic is that where there is no responsibility, there is also no authority. I think of Sarpedon’s speech about those favored and rewarded by their society. No risk, no honor. The time of thinking of the boys in blue as heroes, or even as agents of order, is over, until by some all-but-miraculous reform it comes again.