The End of The Con

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

It starts in the dark
As soon as night falls
One by one
Two by two
People say their final goodbyes
And depart to their cars
Leaving behind the knots of conversation
The groups of friends in
Convivial talk

It’s all “Yeah, work tomorrow”
And “Early flight.”
Or “Long drive.”

Groups close around their absence
The other members making the most
Of a final reminiscence
A last joke
A shared meal

Then in the night, while most sleep
One by one and two by two
With their bags
Their stachels
And that special picture they purchased
More leave.

There are spaces now in the parking garage
But they won’t be filled

In the morning
Vast colorful groups gather in the lobby
Last hugs
Last goodbyes
Luggage piled in carts
The hotel exhales them like a gasp of breath
Till there are only, mid-morning
A few trailing remainders

Leaving behind dark places
Where there were reunions
Echoing silences in spaces
Filled with light laughter
And the business of cleaning
And making it
As though we’d never been

And we go
Friends just now so close will return
To being far away
Uncertain flickers on a screen
Emails, comments, online chats

But we take with us
Like close held secrets
The certainty that
They live and breathe
And no matter how odd we feel
How little we fit in
With the world at large
We’re not one of a kind
And not alone

45 thoughts on “The End of The Con”

  2. I hope you enjoyed your visit to our fair city. The traffic can get surprisingly bad, but I still love it. Take care of your health and keep on keeping on.

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  4. so Iran fires missiles at US base and the price of oil drops like a stone. The stock market is up and US bonds are way up. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Let’s hope it continues,

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    1. People are assuming this is Iran is making a symbolic attack and will then quietly mind it’s own business for a while. We’ll see.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. it’s been “fun” seeing people refer to Iran using Pournelle s Iron Law, though they’re calling it the irrational regime hypothesis, which I don’t like because the regime is entirely rational, they just have different goals — which are evil but not irrational.

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      2. Iran was supplying Russia with some drones and missiles.

        Iran should have had material in inventory that was not immediately used, or was not capable of reaching as far away is Israel without, say, pulling in Jordon more actively.

        But if Israel has a free hand to work towards blowing up those warehouses, some would feel that there is no sense waiting for that.

        If the Iranian regime fails, people may have more important things to manufacture than missiles, and it may be possible to mop up a lot of the surviving active lunatics.

        We shall see, depends on what the psychological situation actually happens to be.

        Nuclera program aside, the US strikes may be more psychological than real.

        Whereas the Israeli strikes may have hit conventional warfighting and/or regime stability fairly well.

        If the Russians and the Democrats both think it is bad, it has a chance of being quite good.

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    2. BGE, I think what you’re seeing is another Trump Effect: “Iran won’t sell oil? Eh, Uncle Sam’s got plenty, and we’re open for business. Drill, Baby, Drill!”

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          1. By stopping before the snake gets beheaded, we invite another snakebite.

            We guarantee it.

            Trump wants to be a peacemaker, and the deepstate fed him the needed bullshit to achieve another unfinished war. Not “peace”. “Regroup, rearm, and resume”.

            I have little doubt that if the Iranians rise to overthrow the weirdbeards, they will be stopped, at all costs, by the deep states of China, Russia, and the USA.

            Mister President, cut the heads off the f(HONK!)ing snakes.

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            1. Now who’s blackpilling?

              My take is this is the same class of maneuver Trump 2.0 has been pulling all along. He’s the best rope salesman since that snake won the fruit contract. And all his enemies beg for more rope.

              The evidence so far is that Trump has identified a leakproof team for important stuff, and that’s the best news I’ve heard in 25 years. I frankly thought we’d never see it.

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                1. We shall see.

                  We stopped on the verge of toppling the mullahs. Hard for a regime based on terror and control to justify obedience to a regime when someone else is running amok in the neighborhood sacking government buildings and thugs at will.

                  Why spare the Mullahs the result of FAFO with Israel, especially the ultra-heinous barbarity of 7 October 2024? What does America gain by preserving the folks that have been murdering Americans since 1979, that announce daily their plan to wipe us off the map, as soon as their human sacrifices result in obtaining the power to do so?

                  They already are saying they forced us and Israel to quit. of course they are lying, but they are still there to lie, yes?

                  A few more GBU-57s, a couple of loads of GBU-15s, four to six total planes worth, and the biggest threat of -actual- nuclear war would have been …. gone.

                  Unless something new is applied to the regime to constraint, have we achieved anything except delay?

                  What victory did we achieve? Who surrendered? To whom?

                  We sure showed them! Why they wont -dare- keep doing what they have been doing since 1979.

                  Do please explain. The Mullahs could not possibly stop Israel from defeating them. So how, exactly did stopping Israel for them win this, for whom?

                  See it now?

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                  1. We sure showed them! Why they wont -dare- keep doing what they have been doing since 1979.

                    “We gave you a chance to end this now that you’ve seen the size of the hammer. Oh well, can’t say you weren’t warned. This is not the UniParty you’re used to. Bye.”

                    The longer you let people get off scot-free, the harder you have to clamp down.

                    We’re going to see that domestically, too. But I think we’re done waiting.

                    Liked by 1 person

                  2. Iran has already lobbed missiles. Israel in process of retaliating but pulled back at Trump’s request. Guarantied Trump asked Israel and threatened Iran despite how he initially commented on it. Iran oops again. Publicly Trump might seem neutral. Privately? Cheering on Israel.

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                  3. Because it will be a hell of a lot better, from our perspective, for an enterprising colonel to take over than for the final blow to be seen as foreign.

                    Liked by 1 person

                    1. Isn’t the guy that overthrows a tyrant kind of by definition an even more ruthless bastard? Although possibly not as batshit crazy as the ‘Supreme Ayatollah’.

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            2. Yeah, the cease-fire has got all the Talking Heads crowing about Peace For Our Time like the last 45 years of history never happened. Iran will keep a cease-fire until they see an advantage in breaking it, and not one minute more.

              Negotiating with enemies that can’t be trusted is Stuck-On-Stupid! The Iranian regime and Ham-Ass use cease-fires to prepare for their next atrocities, nothing more.

              Iran will only respond to the Dallas Korben negotiation technique.

              “Anybody else wanna negotiate?”

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  5. Sarah, I did not know you were a poet.

    I use the term broadly, because it doesn’t rhyme … but maybe that’s just me. <grin>

    Sorry I didn’t give you a proper goodbye. The one I gave Dan will have to stretch for both of you. Until next time.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I can’t rhyme in English for some reason.
      I was published in poetry first. Chapbook at 14. ;) In Portuguese.
      No, I don’t know if any are extant. I don’t have any.

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      1. Well, I prefer to read verse that is at liberty (although not libertine).

        I was told once, or read maybe, that it is easier to concoct rhymes in the Romance languages. Don’t know whether that is true or not, with my difficulty in reading plain simple text in those.

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        1. I’ve heard that too. My guess is that it’s easier because they have all those similar, systematic word endings for verb tenses, which is a minority of words but could make a big difference. Our language is much better suited to alliteration (and its natural rhythm is something very close to iambic pentameter, fwiw).

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          1. It’s not that. It’s the regularity of accentation makes counting syllables easier. I can’t hear where the accents are. I can memorize it. (BTW that’s what’s wrong with my speech, if you listen. And it’s a deafness thing. I literally don’t HEAR the emphasis.)

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  14. As someone who is becoming a marginally competent meeting organizer (just held a 3-day one for 300 two weeks ago), I fully understand where you’re coming from. It’s empty, fills, crazy, lively… and then empty again. And then pack up and go home.

    And then have the banquet staff say “oh, we still have more food you paid for in the back.” (which was slowly devoured on the trip home, thanks to the miracle of a 12-volt freezer).

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  15. Pingback: Instapundit » Blog Archive » LIBERTY CON IS DONE FOR THE YEAR:  The End of The Con.

  17. This was beautiful. And it made me very sad, like I missed a family reunion and there’s a few of them I might never see again. I would love to go to one of these. Not so much for the con (there’s a couple of good-sized ones within a couple hours’ drive that I could go to and don’t) but to see all of you guys who have only ever been flickering words on a screen. Speaking of which, I did get to meet a couple of Huns IRL a few weeks ago, so I know that at least some of you are real. (Hi, Sunny and Sintra!) They were every bit as kind and interesting as I’d imagined, and it’s a shame we didn’t have more time to sit and talk.

    Anyway, if I ever win the lottery, I ain’t saying nothing to nobody…but there will be signs.

    Liked by 1 person

  18. I used to make my departure the latest I could on Monday, because I didn’t want to miss out on any last minute meeting with folks. Only this year people were gone so soon. I was the last one there as attendees of another convention filed in.

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