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November I've developed into quite a swan. I'm one of those people that will probably look better and better as I get older, until I drop dead of beauty. - Rufus Wainwright (via Catherine Wheels) Sometimes I wonder why we make note of these made up ideas of time. But being done with October feels good. I don't know why it was such a stinky month. Autumn is my favorite season. And I don't know why I'm feeling happy to arrive at a moment in time that feels like such a precipice. I am though. Maybe it's because soon all the campaign hammering will stop and we will know what's next.
Saturday night was noisy in the neighborhood and I didn't sleep well. I kept going back to bed all day Sunday but I can almost never sleep in the day. I could barely keep my eyes open during 60 minutes, which was not necessarily a bad thing. I went to bed at ten with a head full of Melanie Klein and at that point couldn't sleep at all. Ah, well.
I'm going to take my voter information pamphlet (and when I say pamphlet you should picture a volume the size of a thick magazine) (lots to vote on here) and study up. Some things are a no brainer.
So here we go. In the words of Amy Goodman, the count down to the show down. And I have this strange calm. Like when you've been pushing a muscle for to long and you finally relax. For just a moment you feel more relaxed than you ever have. And then... Did not want to get out of bed. Did not want to turn on the radio. If I could spend the day with my head under the covers I would.
Having given voice to all that, it is entirely the wrong attitude. Since our election four years ago was hijacked by a hyper media, corrupt state officials, the supreme court and our own apathy this feels like the election in which we take back democracy. All those forces are still at play.
I'm tired of feeling afraid when I walk into the polling place. It shouldn't be this overwhelming. The system needs work. The electoral college should be the first thing to go. If I think about how much money was spent on this election I will end up back in bed. Amp has a few great posts but I can't link to specific posts there. I seem to be stuck in frame set. He mentioned what the Democrats did in Oregon. Democracy? We need a big change in how it all works.
But today I'll walk over to my polling place and cast my vote. My tired and terrified vote. In one way or another, this is the oldest story in America: the struggle to determine whether "we, the people" is a spiritual idea embedded in a political reality? one nation, indivisible ? or merely a charade masquerading as piety and manipulated by the powerful and privileged to sustain their own way of life at the expense of others. -Moyers I thought I might take a book to the poll because there was so much talk about long lines. As it turned out there was only one guy in front of me. But there were more people there than I normally see and when I left there were six people in line. I came home and made tuna salad.
That's really the way it is. First the drama. Then lunch. I did actually crash for about twenty minutes. Slept hard until awakened by a loud fly buzzing around the room.
Turned on the TV. Turned off the TV. Read for awhile. Turned the TV back on. Made coffee.
As news of the first few states came in my stomach began to turn. I kept reminding myself that these states aren't the ones to watch. It's too early. Keep breathing. But. This is so intense. The good news: America is a divided nation. Despite the pundit hand-wringing over this fact, it is a positive thing. Nearly--nearly--half of the electorate rejected Bush's leadership, his agenda, his priorities, his falsehoods. From Eminem to the chairman of Bank of America to 48 Nobel laureates to gangbangers who joined anti-Bush get-out-the-vote efforts in swing states. Nearly half of the voting public concluded that Bush had caused the deaths of over 1,100 American GIs and literally countless Iraqis (maybe 100,000) for no compelling reason. Nearly half saw the emperor buck naked and butt ugly. Nearly half said no to his rash actions and dishonest justifications. Nearly half realized that Bush had misrepresented the war in Iraq as a crucial part of the effort against al Qaeda and Islamic jihadism. Nearly half desired better and more honest leadership. Nearly half knew that Bush has led the country astray. -David Corn Recently, in my comments, I was accused of taking my emotional temperature too often. This morning I don't have any emotional temperature. I feel bloodless.
I went to bed at 11:00 after a manic evening of reloading the CSPAN map every two minutes and channel jumping around the news channels. I was back up at 11:20. Back at the computer. I did sleep. Until 5:00 when I woke up having a nightmare.
So.
Punch drunk.
Bloodless.
The e-mail I got this morning from The Nation reminds me of what Joe Hill said before being murdered in 1915 by a firing squad in the yard of the Utah State Penitentiary. "Don't mourn, organize!" As the day moves along and I read blogs, listen to the radio, eat my eggs and toast, emotion surfaces and then falls slips back under the layer of shock.
Kristina said something smart about grounding in the physical world. I've been taking pretty good care of myself through all this. Given that my appetite and sleep patterns have been whacked. Last night I made chicken, acorn squash and micro greens for dinner. At another time in my history I might have smoked and drank my way through the evening. This morning I did some much needed yoga.
Liberal people often tell me that they don't watch TV. Then they wonder how people could have voted for Bush. Watch some TV tonight. Look at the way culture elevates meanness and ignorance. It won't take much. Ten minutes of a show or two. A few commercials. All those people we like to think are so stupid are coming home from jobs in which they make not enough money to pay the credit card debt they built trying to feel better about their lives. They are too tired to read, or think, or help their own kids with homework. They watch TV. And they are fed a toxic idea of power and beauty. They are fed fear of their neighbors and the rest of the world.
John Kerry, in his concession speech, said we wake up winners simply because we are Americans. I find no reason to take pride in that fact. Neither am I ashamed. Because being an "American" has never been about being one thing. The definition of that word and the meaning of that identity has always been static and rarely positive in terms that I would endorse. For me it is rather like being a member of a family that behaves badly in a small town. I do feel a need to apologize. And a need to explain why we are the way we are. At the same time I feel that there has always been a dissonant America. There have always been people who didn't move in lock step with the agenda of greed and domination.
Yeah. I am feeling like dreams of my political youth, which almost seemed to coalesce in the early days of the Clinton presidency, have been crushed by the much more simplistic agenda fed to an exhausted, frustrated and disenfranchised population. I'm not willing to use words like moron and boob (what would Des Femmes make of the use of boob as a slam? ) because I've worked in restaurants with too many good people who didn't get ideas like internalized oppression. Don't tell them that they don't understand their oppression. They're living it. I'm not sure it's about having starch. I think its about knowing how to frame the debate and then ... framing it. We lost control of the frame. So to speak. We lost it to huge amounts of money. We lost it to our own need to allow people to have their own opinions. We lost it because the other guys are framing it with lies.
We are not one nation. Clearly. We don't wake up in the same nation. And really, in some ways, I hope we never do. Difference is good. I'm not interested in common ground. I'm not interested in uniting. I'm interesting in finding the ways in which we can all get a little bit of what we want. The one nation I'd like to wake up in is the one in which we all have homes, food, jobs, health care and dignity. After those basics are handled we can talk about the rest.
So. Anyway. Now what?
Cyndi has a good idea.
I've been thinking and thinking about it. I think it's a great idea. And I'm a bit obtuse about the market. Willfully obtuse. Maybe it's time to get smarter.
And then there's the what to do about my writing question. Some of the blood is flowing back into that part of my brain. I think I'll be able to post more often than I did last month. I had two pieces of writing rejected by The Sun, which really hurt because I love them so. For years I've intended to use the Reader's Write prompt and send it in and I have not. Maybe if I had they would know me and my writing. Anyway. It is something to try.
Amber has a cool project. Timely.
Some how I have to get my art and writing and politics and on and on into motion. Some how. Despite this machine that wants to mold me and everyone else into an obedient corporate servants. It's the same question that's been nagging at me for such a long time.
What to do?
And please. It is a some what rhetorical question. Not that I'm closed to suggestions. But these kinds of changes are never simple. And I am working on it all. Yeah.
Well.
Ya know.
Miguel linked to someone who linked to someone who said,
Yeah.
Deep breath.
My emotional temperature has been up and down and back up. Dru pointed to a comment thread in which there was mention of the push for Gay marriage as the reason for the way things turned out. I was only mildly irritated by it until I heard it three or four more times. At which point I was beyond rage.
I burst into tears a few times.
I laughed out loud a few times.
Yeah.
Well. On the morning after the morning after I am listening to the radio and reading blogs. There were votes that were not counted and that it was close and maybe it was another stolen election. I'm glad there are people working on all that. I think we need to keep talking about that. I think most of us are so anxious to move on and get past how bad this feels that we don't want to keep poking at it.
I don't accept a lot of how this looks. It is true that many people in this country voted for Bush. It is true that when you look at the big red states and surrounding clusters of blue we look like a country full of dopes in the middle and the south. But I think that's too simple. If you look at the numbers on a state by state basis the numbers are close. I don't accept the idea of a conservative mandate.
There is no doubt that the next four years will be difficult. There is no doubt that this dubious notion of morality exists and that there is a vigourous conservative Christian coalition. But I want to keep resisting ideas that divide things into simple and alienated terms. And I don't want to be in such a hurry to feel better.
I found myself working pretty hard to keep my emotions from becoming overwhelming all day yesterday. I am too often overwhelmed by my emotions. But I'm certainly not interested in not feeling. There are reasons to be sad. There are reasons to be angry.
The electoral college map is an example of how ideas can be sold. People aren't that easy to color code.
I never feel fully competent when writing about things like this. I often feel like I'm not being clear. And that may be because I don't like to take the big stand too often. I like to keep the notion of complexity in play. Part of complexity is that there are moments when things get simple and I have and will take a big stand now and then. I often feel like I'm jumping from the macro view to the micro view and trying to stop and every point in between.
What I can say with confidence is that there are a lot of great people doing a lot of great work. I think a bit of despair is inevitable and not such a terrible thing and I like the idea of us all gathered for a plaintive wail. If you're wailing, I'm wailing with you. And then we can make a joke and have a giggle and make some plans. In my dream I had moved into a small house with Eminem. He hadn't moved out yet and the place was a mess. For some reason I knew I couldn't clean it up in a hurry. So I would clean a little bit and then watch TV or sleep. He seemed to be OK as long as I didn't go to fast.
I woke up. Made note of the dream with no small amount of wondering what it could be about and turned over for a bit more sleep. I went right back into it. He had painted graffiti on a wall that I had painted. It was nice graffiti. Words from poems and parts of sentences he thought I would like.
Uh.
Hmm.
I'm still wondering if the stolen election news will build. Bruce linked this Palast article. Cyndi linked this. Democracy Now is talking about it. It's in the paper. I just wonder if we can keep the focus and make some noise.
My friend Tom sent e-mail that he had gone back to blog writing. Which I thought was a great response to all this emotion. Karen forwarded an e-mail from this guy in which he said:
People are struggling and some of us are trying to move forward, some of us are trying to question what happened.
And the governor of the state of California continues to act the bully.
The other day I was writing and I was concentrating really hard. I noticed I was cold but I've been having such a hard time writing lately. I didn't want to stop. Finally I broke the trance and got up to close the windows, at which point I realized it was raining. Really hard. Weather in SF is always curious. Sweater cold one minute. Tank top hot the next. The last few days have been cold and rainy. Apropos.
I think I've blogged about this before but I make this soup based on a Portuguese soup. I had rainbow kale that was going limp so I used that, red beans, chicken stock. There are more layers you could add. Meat. Onions. Herbs. But I was in my toss it together mode and the beans and greens are a lot of flavor in and of themselves. I had that with some red wine. It was a deeply comforting meal. took the chill off.
We're gonna need comfort. I've gone from spiders to lizards here. Perhaps it's the season. Perhaps the lizards are eating the spiders. For the past twelve hours, there has been a beautiful little green anole perched on the cat food bag in the laundry room. S/he (how can I tell?) regards me curiously, cocking his/her head whenever I approach...but doesn't scurry away unless I make sudden moves towards him/her. The kids and I observed back last night. Cole said "Hello, little lizard." Monk said "I'm going to go into the other room, little lizard, so there will be one less person in here making you scared." It occurs to me that it's not a bad thing that Monk is convinced he is, as he says "a RE-PUB-LICK-IN!"...the world could use some republicans who are sensitive about the mental/emotional state of little lizards. - Dru I just turned on the TV and Lucille Clifton was reading this poem.
Picture the smile on my face.
I needed that poem. In the midst of all the election post mortum there is a bit of (cough) news today about how fat people are making the cost of flying higher. (Via BFB although it's all over the news so I've been hearing it again and again.) I mean ... don't take me there. Not this week.
And. Also. Back to the idea of the electoral map as a rhetorical tool. Elayne posted a great map. If I titled my posts I would title this:some of my best friends are Christians.
Just to be clear. Because really, it's a time for clarity.
I posted the link to Elayne's maps (which has been expanded since I did) because of the map where the country is broken down into smaller bits. There were maps like that on the news Tuesday that broke states into voting districts by color. While it may be true that more southern and middle states were more Republican, the big red and blue swatches of the electoral college are too simple. I listened to a panel on CSPAN doing a post mortem district by district and my head was aching with numbers that I couldn't contain.
And then there was the comment I left over at Dale's.
All week I feel like I've been arguing for complexity one minute and a bottom line the next. And that's the way it will be for a while. Because it's all true. There is an extreme right. And they do worry me. And they are well funded. But. They are people. I mean look. Nothing is that simple. Guess who doesn't support the war.
Anyway. I try to hold notions of complexity even when I'm being simplistic. How's that for double speak?
Sigh.
I did an exit poll on Tuesday. I don't remember the word values being on it but I'm sure if I saw it I would not have checked it. It is too vague. Add the word family. Family values. It is still rather vague in my opinion. I think about one of my radical lesbian friends. What was she doing on Tuesday night while I obsessed in front of the computer? Helping her son with his homework.
My strongest impression from the weddings was how straight many people looked. Being an aging hippie chick I remember when we used the word straight to mean conservative. And the weddings were filled with what I would call conservative values. There were more babies than there was camp. And, for the record, I loved the camp. There was dignity. Is this the group the Democratic party wants to blame?
I heard a woman saying something about how the traditional view of marriage has worked so well. Since my parents were divorced when I was three months old and my father never paid more than three or four months of child support and went on to be married FIVE more times, I'm not feeling it. This morning is difficult. I had the idea for the post I wrote yesterday but it took me a very long time to write it. I was looking at the pictures. Thinking. Feeling.
I spent some time looking through the blogs and listening to NPR, which is my typical Saturday morning. I'm reading lots of great writing. Lots of passion and energy. Lots of heart.
And then it hits me.
I'm so sad.
I don't think this is a big, bad deal. It seems obvious. It's a reaction to the political world, the way things are articulated, the limits of my own ability, the crash of a week of trying very hard to keep a focus going. In some ways it is my default emotion. It's the way I feel most of the time. And I know that people don't want me to feel sad and worry when I'm sad. I don't want people to feel sad. I worry when people are sad. I'm tempted to write the laundry list of reasons for why I am and most often have been sad. But. Some of the people who read this blog know me and some know me better than others and it's a tape loop that I really don't want to run just now. It's a tape loop that is always running.
Having sadness as a default doesn't mean I don't know happiness. I do. And I relish it when I feel it. So it isn't about me feeling sad and that being a bad thing. It's just about talking out loud about it.
I remember days spent dreaming. Dreaming of the things that would happen. The way it would be. Lots of dreaming. Lots of letters from teachers saying I was very smart but I day dreamed too much. I dream too much. I don't do enough.
OK. Well. Yeah.
I wanna go have a coffee with a friend and talk. But my friends don't live the kinds of lives in which I can just have that impulse and call and have it happen. My friends have jobs and kids and partners and hobbies and therapy sessions and body work and previously scheduled time with a friend.
And. Honestly. I don't talk much when I'm sad. My throat is tight. My eyes are full. And it isn't like there's a way to talk about it. It is what it is. It may be best to just feel through it.
But look. I can type. So I am. Because it feels like it's the one thing I can do. Most of the time. I can put words on the screen. On Saturday I watched Together. I cried through the last half of the movie. Which is not to say that it is a sad movie. It's a sweet movie with lots of laugh out loud moments. In the end it's about people coming through for each other in surprising ways. That's a theme that always gets to me.
When I was young I couldn't cry. My throat got so tight it hurt. Even if I was alone. In the last five years or so I cry a lot. It feels good. Especially when you need it and I needed it on Saturday.
My last few posts have drawn two comments that I felt were misunderstandings of what I wrote. I began to wonder if I hadn't written well. I wondered that at that time I was writing. There is no doubt that emotion plays a part in how measured I can be when I'm writing. I make every effort to be measured and I think I've been writing a lot about my personal struggle to hold onto a sense of balance and keep an open heart in the face of an election that makes me feel furious and grief stricken. Since that message may not be clear, let me say it very clearly. I am struggling to maintain a sense of balance and an open heart in the face of an election that makes me feel furious and grief stricken.
I remember this in the days after the 9/11. Because in my MFA program I was meeting lots of new people, I was braced in my communications with people. I remember so many moments of feeling cautious and feeling the need to be clear and informed in my opinion. I also remember what a relief it was to talk with people with whom I knew agreed. I could be sloppy and rhetorical and just dump the feeling. Get It out of my system and then go back to the business of trying to learn what I needed to know to make my points.
Right after the election I read things on blogs that made me cringe even when I agreed. But I also read people giving voice to the powerful and difficult emotions brought up by this election. I watched people doing what I felt I was doing. Moving through the cycles of emotion and trying to tell the truth. And I watched people who didn't seem to care about how they said what they said. They just gave voice to their rage. And I think they have that right.
I'm generally interested in keeping the conversation going. I think I do work really hard to have a tone in my communications that allows for people to disagree with me and still holds the line on what I'm trying to say. I may not always be successful. And last night as I watched the news and saw the film of soldiers kicking doors and heard the rationals for the invasion of hospitals my desire to be fair and have an open heart began to dwindle.
I am always suspicious of broad brush hyperbolic ideas about what's going on. Things are rarely simple. And. Also. Too. I have my opinions and a need to say things in a big, over blown, wound up, emotion driven manner. And I take comfort in that kind of writing sometimes. So it is a struggle. And it probably should be.
Yesterday I couldn't even come up with a post because I was lost to the extreme. I chose to remain silent.
Last night I was trying to cope with some feelings of being misunderstood. I thought about James Carville and Mary Matlin. I sometimes wonder how they manage to have a conversation that isn't a fight. They are both centrists in their parties. But they both have the job of articulating the agenda of their parties.
Whenever I fill out one of those what-is-your-blog-about things I say something about it being what ever I'm thinking about on any given day. I often think about political things. And I think it's pretty clear that I am not a centrist. I did not vote for anyone this time. I voted against someone. I'm sick of that. I'm sick of feeling like there is so much at stake. I don't really think that the extreme right is who voted this guy in. I think it was them and a lot of other more centrist people who generally like the economic polices of the Republican party and/or don't think it's a good idea to change leaders in the middle of a war and let's face it, Kerry wasn't that compelling. And then there's the morals stuff. I think it's pretty clear where I stand on all of those issues. Of great comfort to me was the conversation I had with my extremely conservative mother who does not agree with me on the issues but doesn't think the government should tell people how to live.
Maybe I'll start thinking more about recipes. Or write little essays as I walk through the world. Or what ever. I've always tried to write to where the blood is flowing. I try to be mindful of the blog world and link to other people who are writing and posting beautiful art. I try to be balanced and open hearted. And sometimes I fail. Maybe it's a time for just sayin what you feel and not worrying about how you get it said.
I wanted to point to some new art that Craig did because I am such a fan of his art. And I find that I am worried that the art speaks too strongly about things. And I find it more troubling that I am spending one minute worrying about that. Because it is glorious and exact and as I listen to the rational for the ramp up in Falluja in preparations for the installed democracy I find myself thinking about one of his pieces.
I'm not sure how to keep a tone that makes sure anyone who reads me will feel like I am balanced and have an open heart. Not when there is so much at stake.
And then I come back to that feeling I had as I watched the movie. The movie has nothing to do with politics. It's about family and music and destiny and class and it's about how people come through for each other in surprising ways. People do come through for each other in surprising ways. These are peckish times. I don't think we have to agree with each other about everything. But we do need to keep talking. And it may not always go well. |
