tangledupinblue

As I waited for a car to pick me up this morning, I wrote the following entry, well scrivenered it actually, as it is nothing more than a line or two from the best song of lost love that I've ever come accross, 'if you see her say hello' off of the best album ever written and recorded,



I make a lot of recommendations, but this will always remain my standing request to anyone who reads my journal. Get a copy of Blood on the Tracks and listen to it at least a half dozen times.

Then tell me what you think.

Anyway, the quote I put in advance of my day, and which I followed with a slew of different emotawhoosees was

"And I've never gotten used to it,
I've just learned to turn it off
Either I'm too sensitive
Or else I am geting soft."

The reason for that quote was because of my first stop on the day. It ended up to have relevance to my bookends (unless something else comes around even later tonight to make me cock my head to the crickets.

The car was to take me this morning to my least favorite address in New York

283 Adams Street, Brooklyn.

Kings County, Family Court.

You all know my love-hate relationship with my pro bono domestic violence work. I can't stop doing it, and I can't sleep or think well while I do it. But today was especially bad. I'll tell you why.

I went down to meet with co-counsel from Sanctuary For Families and look over the file. The holding pens had, as usual, all the space to move of veal pens, all the dignity of slaughterhouses. The predators and their victims were of course, not segregated, leaving women who spent years trying to get the courage to file for orders of protection to spend their 5-hour wait for 3 minutes in front of an overwhelmed judge under the glare of a 350 pound coward whose every glance said 'you are so dead for doing this.'

Real nice.

The bathrooms smelled of piss as usual, stall doors off so that shitters were visible to the world lest they either fix in there or more than likely drag a victim (or a particularly displeasing attorney in there for a sidebar).

But the real problem was the fact that on Monday was that I was in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the second-highest court in the land for an oral argument on behalf of Pepsi Cola's Peruvian interests. Total on the table, probably high 9 figures, 10 figures with counter claims.

I'm not wildy exagerating that an arena football game could have broken out during oral argument and I would not have known.

So, billions on the table and you get chesterfield couches for the judges' clerks to observe.

Life on the line from a predatory 'lover' you get 3 minutes in a shithole.

I am thinking of a protest -- get blown up pictures of the interior of a second circuit courtroom and just stand outside family court and let everyone know what the federal government thinks of the lives of its consitutents vs. its special interests.

Put that way, the second part of the day doesn't matter so much.

Suffice to say that I like to cook for her, but it does make the merengue on the butterscotch pie melt a little slower when you just know somewhere in your heart of hearts that the woman you ought to be baking for is dining somewhere else in the world.

So wherever you are,

whomever you are,

there is a piece in the fridge,

and a bottle of Veuve.

This is just me tonight,

Just

Justin