Well, this is kinda strange, but I think everything will be all right.
After years of carping, bitching, whining, hating, excoriating, and denouncing anything that has to do with the corrupt soul of American governance and policy (especially the traitorous, cowardly Democratic leadership in Congress), and after undergoing a complete transformation of personal consciousness regarding the things that really matter — on my good days — I actually feel happy to be heading out to vote tomorrow. It’s the damnedest thing.
The last time I felt even remotely like this was in ‘92. Finally I had a chance to vote for one of my own, so to speak, and even though I thought Clinton and Gore much too conservative and conventional, they were still my guys. I could have been them (with tons more money and sense), and they could have been me, at least in part. I was voting for my generation, and I wanted it to count…
It was an unusually warm fall that year in Maryland. On election day, the sky was overcast, the air was damp and still. We lived in the country just the other side of Still Pond, about seven miles or so on a quiet two-lane road from the polling place in a community center in Kennedyville. I wanted to remember that day by doing something different, so I rode my bike to vote. My clothes got wet with sweat, and when I got there, I know I must have reeked. That didn’t matter, though — all the way home I felt really good, because I’d taken part in something big that was also important just for me. To this day I refer to Bill Clinton as “my boy,” though if the truth be known, I’m rather tired of him now. I think we’d get along just fine, though, outside of all the politics, if that were possible.
Here in Llano Quemado, it snowed all day long today. There’s half a foot of fresh powder on top of snow and ice that’s been here for a couple of months. By the time the sun went down, it was winter wonderland all over again, and tomorrow night the temperature will drop below zero.
Anticipating all this, I scored three-quarters of a cord of resin-charged piñon on Sunday. My current wood guy and friend charges $150 for that much. He owns half a mountain and cuts the wood from his own forest. A wildlife survey found there were 1,100 elk on his land, and sometimes when he drives up there, they run a hundred strong alongside his truck… I know, one can hardly believe these things, but I assure you it’s all true, and soon he’ll take me up there. You need to know this because it adds to what the firewood means. It’s full of resin because he cuts only beetle-killed trees. He actually takes as much of the whole tree home as he can to cut up, down to the smallest branches, leaving no burnable waste up in the woods. What I’m trying to say is that this is special fuel. You throw a couple of chunks on top of the coals in the morning, and usually they start right up. I hardly ever use kindling, since the fire runs pretty much 24/7.
Now, of course, the woodpile has disappeared again under a blanket of white. It’s pretty, but I have to take a broom outside to find my firewood. I was just out there to uncover enough to bring in for the evening. There wasn’t any wind at all, and I didn’t feel cold except for where the snow got into my crocs. (Okay, I’m lazy…)
In the midst of these conditions, our car died over the weekend. We only have the ‘87 Ford F-150 now, like a regular ranch family, but we won’t be using it tomorrow. When we head off to the Talpa community center to vote — about a mile and a half away — we’ll be on foot, by choice. Walking in the snow on a quiet rural back road, we’ll go past fields, a river, scores of barking dogs, horses, cows, a few nice homes, and several bombed-out trailers. If the sun has come out by then, it’ll all be fairly spectacular on the one hand and ridiculously ordinary on the other. Just a couple of people, walking down the road to vote. I don’t know how my wife will vote, but I’m voting for Obama.
This isn’t generational. Obama’s about as old as a lot of my current friends. (The older I get, the more imperative it is to meet them younger.) One’s own kind are easy to acknowledge, great shuffling beasts who sniff each other once, flap a little wattle, and instantly know everything. My younger friends are like me 15 years ago, no longer kids but still immortal, full of energy just slightly poisoned by regret — enough to give it flavor — and making plans without a ticking clock. I suck it up like a vampire of love. I need this stuff to keep my own hoop rolling down the road.
Hillary won’t do. I know her, remember (sniff and flap). Obama represents the new. That’s all I care about. The old is utterly, forever discredited and damned. All I have to do to figure this out is look in any mirror. To hell with me, to goddamn hell with John McCain, but cast a vote for change and joy. I want to ring a gong and make a statement. The last ten years have been a horror and grotesquery, and now our world is dying. What else is there to do but go on record as siding with the unknown, with all the invisible potential straining to bust loose every second? I still don’t care too much about what Obama may believe, but I think he’ll wield a helluva broom.
I want to do the most damage to the frozen past. I want to live for now, for everyone, and go for broke.
Comment by John K
1 February 5, 2008, 4:30 am o'clock |
Good luck, John. I’m not buying it.
Comment by Fred
2 February 5, 2008, 4:59 am o'clock |
John,
Have you seen this?
Cheers,
~Fred
Comment by K.J. Webb
3 February 5, 2008, 8:31 am o'clock |
It’s rather like falling in love. The heart has been broken so many times, you ask yourself, is it worth it to give this thing one more shot? To join up with something bigger than oneself, lose control of the agenda, lose the perfection of isolation? You ask the question, but the heart goes Quack, and you find yourself falling all over again. Good luck, amigo.
Comment by John H. Farr
4 February 5, 2008, 9:25 am o'clock |
Well K.J., that’s not quite right. I’m not “in love” with Obama. It’s what his candidacy represents. I have no faith at all in the political system, not a whit — which is perfectly all right and not distrubing to me in the least — and I don’t think Obama has much chance of changing anything directly. But voting for him, rolling with this wave, could be an easy way to help something larger happen that ultimately has nothing to do with politics.
Voting as a spiritual act. A ritual.
Except as I noted in my latest post, it doesn’t look like I’m going anywhere today. Oh, the irony. I know not even a jackhammer to the skull would get you to admit the existence of non-physical reality, much less that everything you think you touch and feel originates in consciousness and not the other way around, but that’s what this is all about for me.
The truth for me these days is that the “enemy” is in everybody’s souls. By grappling directly with the forces of evil, we ensure their viability, and if we “win,” then we become the bad guys. I see it in my own life every day. You have to catch the projection leaping out of yourself. It’s a stunning revelation.
This is very hard to put into words. Some of you must think I’m either a nihilist, a woo-woo salesman, or just lately, a starry-eyed Democratic voter.
— and a big HAHAHA to that, my friends — but something else is going on in the world at large, and that’s why I decided to vote again.
There IS a “wave” that’s gathering, and I want to add a little push.
Comment by Tammi
5 February 5, 2008, 12:11 pm o'clock |
I am riding that wave with you, my friend!
I still recommend that you read: The Mayan Code….by Barbara Hand Clow…it talks about all of this…even why the Bushites are here on a spiritual level….they were a part of the grand “universal” plan to push us to the edge (and over)…to wake us up.
It is a GREAT read!
Comment by K.J. Webb
6 February 5, 2008, 12:55 pm o'clock |
“Jackhammer to the skull”? Not suggesting I’m a tad stubborn, are you? It’s a moral failing of mine, I admit it. The spiritual is a closed book for me. My heart is seldom heavier than when SPIRIT (as a German deep thinker like Hegel would put it) is trying to move it to do something it don’t want to do standing here with its two feet on terra firma. –I’m just teasing you, old codger. I like Obama too, whether or not he’s the latest wrinkle on the face of the zeitgeist. McCain? No, let’s not go there.
Comment by John H. Farr
7 February 5, 2008, 1:09 pm o'clock |
Actually, the jackhammer bit is rather an inappropriate metaphor because it’s so obviously physical.
“Closed book”? How very droll. Have you never had an out-of-body experience?
Comment by K.J. Webb
8 February 5, 2008, 2:04 pm o'clock |
I liked the jackhammer. Don’t take it back! “Closed book” is a cliche, however, and I do hereby take it back. We’ll let the elusive spirit reside in the jackhammer if it can’t otherwise worm its way into my head. The funny thing about talking about inner experience (for example, the out-of-body sort of thing) is that you and I could have had roughly the same kind of essential experience - the ding an sich - yet would have processed it differently, given our divergent characters and life-experience, such that for you it became a doorway to another world, for me just a trick of the mind. Nope, my friend, unless like St. Paul I’m struck down on the road to Damascus, I won’t ever see the world in that way. Don’t deny, just don’t believe - my general attitude. The world is more beautiful, more tragic, more intense, without numinous paraphernalia.
Comment by John H. Farr
9 February 5, 2008, 6:56 pm o'clock |
Well, you leave me almost speechless, which is surely a boon.
But I think I know what your role in my life is, Kenny me boy: you’re here to draw the overarching, preachy, hypersensitive, guru bully jerk right out of me where I can see it.
Not fooling me any longer, though, you wily bastard. Heh. You can’t possibly believe that crap.
Comment by K.J. Webb
10 February 5, 2008, 8:00 pm o'clock |
Nicest thing anyone has said to me in a long time. Just add “slippery” and “amoral” to “wily”, and you’ve about nailed me. We’re both a bit cracked (in only the best sense of the word, of course). Must of been something in the water in Abilene did it to us. Certainly wasn’t the school system, the culture or the climate…. Keep on truckin’ and keep on preachin’, old pal.