We’re all trans. Even Trump. Even Harris.

We’re all going from here to there never stopping long enough at any one station to not want anything to ever change, always transitioning.

We’re all transitioning.

I’m transitioning. I’m getting old. More and more it’s becoming my first thought when I wake up in the morning. Especially on the mornings after Culley Jane and I hike the rim of Hidden Mesa, the next morning my body tells me that I’m getting old.

My second thought is that I want to transition into a body that’s easier to move. The Gundry Diet and Tylenol help.

Trump was here last week, to Aurora, Colorado, where I live now, retired after years of busting my ass in the transportation industry, translocating freight around the country.

I’m married to a transliterate. Culley Jane can translate Spanish (or French, or German, some Italian and even a few words of Russian) into English so my circle of associates is transoceanic.

I’m transpolitical – a Roosevelt Democrat and a Lincoln Republican. I wasn’t raised that way. Dad worked in the town’s factory where Kingsford Charcoal Briquettes were made. He was a union man. A Democrat. He even voted for Stevenson even though he liked Ike. We were a union family. A Democrat family. Our transcendent identity was strictly Catholic. Our political struggle was against the Republican bosses who owned the factories, dined at the country club, went to Protestant churches and lived on the other side of town.

Dad is 96 years old now and to this day I think he would consider disowning me if he thought I would ever even consider voting for a Republican, like rooting for the Bears against the Packers.

But during the 60s I began to transgress. Like the wandering Jew who jumps the Fence surrounding the Torah, I began to transgress.

Maybe it was because I was the oldest of an oldest that I felt like it was my job to break trail for my younger brothers and sister. Dad had gone to the South Pacific. I had to know where the iron ore freight trains went at night after disappearing into the woods surrounding the town. I took off from the northwoods where my family had lived for generations.

At the time, we were on our way to the moon. Before I went to college and decided to become a writer, I wanted to be a scientist. I was good at chemistry. I was fascinated by the transuranic elements. I listened to the Beatles on a transistor radio.

Since college I’ve spent my life translocating.

My favorite book about economics is Polyani’s 1941 classic The Great Transformation. (Remind me to write about Karl Polyani one of these weeks.)

It’s a writer’s job to know where words come from. It’s amazing how often arguments leading to hard feelings simply come down to differing definitions of a word. In the 17^th century, half of Europe’s population perished because they could not agree on the meaning of the word transubstantiation.

Etymology makes words transparent so we can see down into their roots where it’s easier to locate common ground.  The prefix, “trans,” comes from a Latin word implying motion “across” or “through” -- like transpectral is across wavelengths of light, or translucent is the passage of light through a medium.

I googled how many words began with the prefix trans. There’s hundreds and hundreds of them… transfiguration, transplantation, transubstantial, transillumination… and on and on.

When I heard that Trump was coming to town, I decided to attend the event in a skirt holding a sign:

TRANS IS A PREFIX,

NOT A NOUN

I figured that everybody could agree on that, even die-hard Roosevelt Democrats and Lincoln Republicans if they’d made it through the fifth grade. I hoped it might spark interesting transmontane discussions on either side of the police line and give me something to write about for this week’s Thursday’s Columns.

When I told some friends and family what I was going to do, nobody thought it was a very good idea. Some thought it invited danger. My Lebanese friend said there’d be roughneck truckers there who’d want to beat me up. I told him I’d bring my Million Mile Safe Driving Award from the American Trucking Association to show around and everything would be great. He shook his head like I was crazy. Culley Jane didn’t try to persuade me not to do it, but showed no enthusiasm, making it clear she would not join me.

In the end I didn’t go so I have nothing to write about this week.

--30--

I Hope For What I Do Not Expect

I hope for what I do not expect.
My efforts are clumsy & isolated.
I hardly know what to do.
I approach normal transactions distrustfully.
I offend people.
I rarely get mechanical tasks right the first time.
Traffic & internet instructions cause me anxiety.
Tho I don’t compete for the usual prizes
I’m rarely anywhere near relaxed clarity.
I work for wisdom, justice, sanity —
not just safety, sanitation, plenty, belonging.
I hope my efforts become more effective —
that I become focused, that I coalesce, & emerge.

I’ve been in trouble all my life
& hope I can continue to be in trouble a while yet —
but that I emerge from merely coping —
part of a coalition such as never yet existed
based on understanding nowhere in effect now.
I hope & work for what I do not expect.