investigator

Still on amazingly poor sleep schedule, 5 a.m. bedtime (I get in bed hours earlier, but simply cannot sleep). I am assigned to a case that went to trial today, so I couldn't come into work late. The brain goes first. Lots of near misses on my bike. I realized today that at this stage of sleep deprivation what is lacking in my thinking is nuance. It was extremely, extremely difficult today to compare prices for flights to Munich - I got lost in the permutations - I couldn't make decisions - I can't keep track of options - I can't weigh competing values . . . Likewise biking is getting on impossible. Nearly ran eye-first into some rebar rods sticking out of a pickup truck today because I wasn't paying enough attention. Crikey. I simply cannot hold anything else in my brain except whatever is immediately in front of it.

I got to thinking that this is what moral certainty must feel like. Let me explain how I got to this line of thought.  I sit in the part of the office where the receptionist would go if the judge had a receptionist.  Part of my job is letting people in when they buzz the chambers doorbell. There is tight security around here, especially these days since I work in Federal Plaza and Prezelect Obama's transition offices are in the Dirksen Building across the street - DHS SUVs are parked along every inch of the curbside across the street. Security is tight inside my building, too.  A couple of years ago, a white supremacist murdered an N.D. Ill. judge's husband and mother in the judge's house; a few years before that two marshals were shot and killed inside the courthouse by a criminal defendant attempting to escape at the end of his trial.  From my desk, I monitor three surveillance cameras. 

At the end of the workday today, a white man, about sixty-five or seventy, buzzed to get into my office. I let him in, because I let everybody in. I am supposed to weed out the shooter-looking people, but I'm not really trained to do that. Once a woman filed her papers upstairs and then came knocking on the chambers door begging the judge for help; she was Irish, her ex-husband was American, and he had absconded with their children months ago, and she believed the judge could resolve this matter before lunch on the same day. It was sad to turn her away, but the point of the story is that shooter-looking people don't often come to the door. Today the man I buzzed in made me nervous. 

Let me just interrupt my own telling of my story to say that this story does not end in horrible tragedy or violence or anything else except paranoia . . . like I said my brain is too stupid now to regulate what I'm writing so the narrative lacks coherence. The engine of this train is a violent whirring machine but the caboose, I promise, is just a smooth-rolling cruiser. I will get to the personal essay-esque reflection upon the thing, wisely reflected upon while one does another thing, shortly.

Anyway, the man who came in today wore a tan trenchcoat and kept only his right hand tucked into the front pocket of this coat while he agitatedly demanded to see the judge. He said he had an appointment. I told him the judge was not in the office (he wasn't), and then I invited him to sit down. He had some sort of six-point sheriff's badge embedded in a leather patch clipped to his chest, which didn't make me feel any better since I am suspicious of urban law enforcement generally. His eyes were small and blue and his face was covered in rosacea blooms, or was just ruddy. I imagined he was of Irish stock and because of that, my hand inched closer to the panic button underneath my desk. (The button summons the marshals immediately to the office. They come with guns drawn. I know this because the outgoing clerk told me this story: he had spicy Thai food sitting at his desk, got the runs instantly, bolted to the chambers bathroom, knocked the panic button on the way out, and listened from the toilet as marshals charged into the office demanding to know what had happened to the man who pressed the panic button.) 

The man sitting in front of me was not a shooter. He was there to visit my judge. He was garrulous and pushy and he sat in the row of chairs in front of my desk and said to me, as I scrolled lazily down a Westlaw screen, "You're Chinese, aren't you?" Since he was visiting the judge, I could not be my rude self. So I said, "Yes, yes I am."  "Nee how maw," he said. "What a nice accent you have," I said. "I have three Chinese granddaughters," he volunteered. "Oh? Why?" I said. "My daughter adopted them from China. Wushing, Dong Ling and . . . something else. I love that name, Wushing." "Well, too bad I got stuck with a name like Mandy," I said. "You're not from here, are you?" he said. "I was born in San Jose, California," I said. "I'm from West L.A.," he said. 

We got to talking, and I told him I went to school out on the East Coast. Why? Because I was seventeen when I made the decision and I wanted to be as far away from my parents as possible. He said, "There are plenty of good schools out in California. Except for Berkeley." I said, "What's wrong with Berkeley? It's a great school." He said, "Yeah, but they're always trying to overthrow everything. Start a revolution." I laughed politely and said, "I agree with them sometimes." He said, "If they want to start a revolution, why don't they just leave the damned country? It's the greatest country in the world. I love this country. If you want to change it, leave it." I said, "Well, I think a lot of good has come out of young people trying to change the world. But I love this country too, and especially after what happened on Tuesday." He didn't hear that last part, which was probably good. I said, "We should not talk about politics because I barely know you, and I think we'll probably disagree about a lot of things."

He continued talking about politics. I asked him what he did. He said he was an investigator in the U.S. Attorneys office. "Since you're a lawyer, you should become a U.S. Attorney. Or anything is fine, as long as you're not defending the criminal scum."  He was wearing a badge because there was a funeral today for a cop who had died on the job; he was shot in the head seven years ago and lived in a vegetative state until last week, when he finally died. The man sitting in front of me opined that the person who shot the cop should get the death penalty, except that moron Ryan made that nearly impossible in Illinois. I should have shut up, but I am feeling very true American (a.k.a. amenable to civic discourse), so I said, I understand why in some cases, like the one you're describing, people feel like the death penalty is necessary. But those are the easy cases. The hard ones are where you have confessions extracted by the Jon Burges of the police force and you have lawyers falling asleep and you have inmates being exonerated after twenty years on death row.  He said, "That hardly ever happens. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the guy leaves something behind. A hair. A fingerprint. You never hear about people getting exonerated anymore, with DNA being what it is today." I kept up the argument with him until the judge stepped in and shut us up. 

The judge and the man vigorously shook hands. "Happy birthday," the judge said. "Happy birthday," the man said, "Happy Marine Corps birthday." I said, "What? It's your birthday?" The man looked at me like I was an idiot. "It's the day the Marine Corps was founded. You ever heard of the Marines?" he was sneering, a little bit. I said, "Yes, of course." He said, "Well, you wouldn't even be here if it weren't for the Marines," he said, "You'd be speaking Japanese somewhere." I thought this was a strange thing to say. "I guess we would all be speaking Japanese," I said. He and the judge went into the judge's office and I changed into my jeans and biked home, nearly impaling myself on rebar. 

I suppose this exchange was sort of unpleasant. It really wasn't as unpleasant as it seems in the retelling. Up until the end, we were being civil. I felt very proud of myself for engaging with an obviously very conservative man and not hiding my opinions, because usually I tend to clam up or nod politely, even if I disagree. I've been socialized as a woman! But BO has me thinking this week that it's my right as an America-loving American to let my point of view be known even if I'm worried its outside of center, so I was happy to chat up an unpleasant man about unpleasant topics.  

I guess the point of my story is that I am trying to liken the state of mind one achieves by sleeping only 32 hours in seven days (I counted!) to the state of mind one inhabits as a person who wholly believes in the infalliability of his own beliefs. Both are a form of insanity. Good night!