What a country!

I wish I had more to report. Work has been very dramatic lately, but ultimately good for me. My romantic life continues to be in the "it's complicated" category. I have gained two pounds, mostly from eating out at restaurants too much. And I spend too much on giltgroupe.com. So... nothing new in other words.

My dad came to visit last Sunday (he works in Jersey sometimes, so he was close by) because he wanted "to see what was going on with the Occupy Wall Street thing." You have to understand that my father went through the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and his youth will always be imbued with the excitement of revolution. Anything that smacks of it makes him excited. Of course, the result of the Iranian Revolution totally jaded my father (and many Iranians). He thought that the revolution was a good thing, but then--since the protesters had no leader or agenda--it got hijacked by religious fundamentalists and the state of Iran got even worse than it was pre-Revolution. If you know anything about history, that's always what tends to happen with revolutions. So, now, my father saw what seemed like a repeat of what he'd witnessed in his late 20s and he had to come to New York City to see what was going on. He hoped it would be different. That this time, it would work.

We walked South along Broadway arguing with each other. "This could turn into something," he said. "Now the U.S. government will listen to the people."

I am contrary with him, so I said, "No it won't. It's just a bunch of dirty hippies who have nothing better to do." I cringed a little bit. I sounded like a Republican. "Nothing will change. We're finished. They have no agenda. They don't know what they want. There is not a single respectable person down there. They spend more time making puppets."

We argued like this all the way down to Zuccotti Park. I was disappointed to be right. You could hear hippie drums from a block away. The park where everyone had gathered looked like a homeless encampment or the aftermath of Burning Man. Garbage was strewn everywhere; the stink of marijuana filled the air. Tarps covered parts of the ground where unwashed people took naps or begged for money. Cops stood around staring in bewilderment at the scene. Everyone's signs said something different. There was a table marked with "Press" where several people hovered with BlackBerries. And, everywhere, there were people like us just gawking, taking pictures with video-cameras and cell-phones in hand. Some kind of exploitative evangelist screamed something, hungry for attention.

My dad pushed his way through the crowd to a water jug where he poured himself a cup of water and exclaimed with magnanimity, "Can you believe this water is free?" He shook his head, proud of something, "Somebody is paying for this water. What a country!" He took a dollar out of his pocket and put it in the communal donation box. I complained bitterly that I wanted to leave, but he insisted he wanted to hang out a bit and walk around more. We walked through the melee, stopping occasionally so he could take pictures. "If this happened in Iran, all these people would be arrested and shot by now," he said. "What a country!" I shook my head and rolled my eyes, a portrait of another generation.