Unraveling the String Cheese

I've been making a lot of quesadillas lately. I've never made ‘em much before, but events transpired that have sent me hurtling toward our culinary border to the south. Two specifically. #1, a recent Oaxacan cheese infatuation and #2, these Wagyu beef tallow flour tortillas that when done on the griddle with a little butter have an almost flaky filo dough lightness and satisfy like pastry, only flatter. As for the queso, it's basically a one kilogram ball of artisan string cheese that I get at this little Oaxaqueña grocer a few blocks away in my wonderful Latino, Korean, African American neighborhood.

Okay, I lied. I don't get the cheese at the little Oaxaqueña grocer around the corner. I buy it on Amazon. I don't support my local, hard-working immigrant brothers and sisters who this state (California) really belongs to, I choose comfort and convenience, and as one hand scratches my imperialist balls, the other clicks my mouse, and a day later I waddle down the stairs with a cigar in my mouth (looking like a capitalist boss from a cartoon in a 1930s socialist newspaper), open the front door and there is my cheese, packaged in dry ice and fresh as a daisy.

I also buy plant-based kitchen sponges, novels I don't read, oatmeal soap, Thorlo socks and all kinds of other shit. I know what I’m doing is wrong and that Amazon stands for everything I despise: Monolithic dominance. The snuffing out of local, independent stores and businesses. The illusion that having things instantly slows time down when it really speeds it up, and the ceaseless transformation of our once analog life into a phone assisted, AI generated, digital opiate of dehumanizing ease. But I don't care. Just bring me my fucking cheese!

Actually, that's not true. I do care. But this is the way things are now. The question is, do I get with the 21^st century program or scream, “No! I will not give in to the Bezoazation of the world. It is 1975 in my soul and it shall be 1975 in my shopping aisle!” As of now, I’m Bezos’ bitch.

Thinking about the man who has re-imagined how we buy stuff (The gall of him naming his consumerist empire after the world’s mightiest river and the planet sustaining rain forest that he and his ilk are scorching into oblivion) leads to me to an even bigger and more troubling macher*; the man who is re-imagining our country.

What do I do with Trump, whose actions, intentions and behavioral hygiene are in direct opposition to everything I believe? I hear all the voices saying he’s an existential threat to democracy, but what does democracy even mean to me? Am I supposed to feel some moral ache for how things were but are no longer? Some great allegiance to a country built on genocide and slavery? America, this bold experiment in self-rule. This safe haven and landing place for millions upon millions looking for a better life. America, home of jazz, blues, Whitman, and so much of the culture I hold sacred. America, whose influence and idiom have made me who I am. America. What do I owe thee?

I didn't expect this piece to go here. I actually sat down to write about quesadillas and the other yummy things I've been cooking lately, but on Sunday I did a reading in Santa Monica, and found out that Beyond Baroque, the longstanding home of poetry and literature In Los Angeles — A place I have read at and been to countless times and that LA poets and writers have depended on for over fifty years— had their funding yanked by Trump. I found this shocking, not to mention really disturbing, and it brought everything I've been reading, hearing and denying right to my doorstep.

These motherfuckers are not playing. They are nasty, heartless, soul-scarred thugs, and they have no use for art or beauty or black folks or brown or queer or any other variety of gypsy. Money, power, rage. That's their holy trinity. When I hear people say this is just like in Germany in the 30's, I think, take it easy, this is California, we're the fourth biggest economy in the world, they can't fuck with us. But clearly they can, because they just did.

If this is beginning to feel like a call to arms, let me put a stop to that now. I have no plans to call my congressman, donate money or sign a petition. I won’t be taking it to the streets, organizing the troops or fighting the good fight. I’m an addict. I need to guard my daily structure closely cause things in my head and heart can quickly veer out of control. I can’t afford to read the autocratic ticker tape and get tossed about by the news cycle. My great concerns are inward, and I will always put my psyche before my country.

A really wise person once told me “All ideology is just an excuse to express rage.” I have felt this myself when defending the principles I was raised with. I become intolerant as I preach tolerance, punitive as I decry a lack of compassion. It’s a mild form of PTSD. You see, I was at the March on Washington in a stroller. Raised in the hot molten core of the anti-Vietnam war struggle and though I am proud of my peace activist heritage, it brought no peace to the home front. I am distrustful of any political position that negates the beliefs and experience of others, no matter how misguided I may find them and always try to remember that I could be wrong, even when I know I’m right. I will not partake in this dark, binary, political shout fest, and consider myself a conscientious objector. But I am going to start getting my cheese from the Oaxaqueñas. Got to start somewhere.

• Macher is Yiddish for a big shot.