Change. Progress. Hope.

I imagine that the rain held off until our moods were oil coated and resistant.  The earth needed quenching but our spirits were swollen and untouchable.  They say that water and electricity don't mix; I assure you that yesterday proved old precedence wrong.  The dark skies threw torrents to the thirsty ground while supporters charged with storms of conviction held their melting posters, held determined faces, held beliefs and hope like sturdy soldiers.  Like the smell of doused streets, the murmur of Americans permeated the damp air.  Even a person with no knowledge would have known that something big was occurring.

I went ahead of my friends to secure seats at the coffee house across the street from campus, the same place I've gone a hundred times to study and hang out on perfectly average days.  The street vendors and organizations held most everyone's attention until about 5:30 pm, but by then I had already draped cardigans and umbrellas and placed Nalgenes and any other marker from my bag of tricks on vacant seats so they would look taken and I wouldn't have to straddle an entire corner of Bongo Java with rabid eyes and a snarl to repel the crowds.  It wasn't long before my old roommate and her posse arrived.  We had our seats and time to kill and coffee and Cookies for Change right outside the outdoor patio.  Several times we remarked that it felt like New Years Eve, like a countdown should be in order for the event and the potential for change and our hope for change.  The people rolled in like waves and the rain fell in waves and goosebumps came in waves.  Everything felt too big to true.

My journalist friend had a break and excused himself from the circus in which only a press badge gets you entrance.  He didn't have much time, nonetheless he took a seat and we talked about his very entertaining and informative election blog and how he had received a REAL, LIVE ticket to the Great Hoorah.  Though my account is far less official than his and I didn't have a badge of any kind, just a hot tea and dry seat, I was there and I'll tell my babies about it, and no matter what accessories or adornments I was lacking, this is history.

There eventually was a countdown because we had exhausted ourselves and built a hype in our cores after two hours of waiting and watching the police guarded streets and the feather-shaped flags of red and blue whipping occasionally in spotlights and weather.  The street booths shut-down and their sponsors found seats of their own.  The floor space filled up first and then the front patio, the stairs leading up to the patio, the sidewalk leading to the stairs, and then left and right, as far as they could stand and still have a peek at the projection screens.

Browkow began.  Our biased group of Obama supporters cheered untamed when Barack made his way across the stage, so much so that McCain's first appearance was lost in the sea of opposition.  I was jealous not to be in the actual audience of the debate until the hoots and clapping wrapped me up in something more organic and bigger than myself, communal hope and fiery passion in a coffee spot that felt as much like home as campus every did. 

In fifty years I wonder where we'll be as a country.  I wonder how these days will affect the kids I haven't even considered conceiving and how my adulthood will be molded by the rebuild of all that is crumbling.  I wonder when and how the war will end, how I'll be able to afford the utility bills this winter, the gas for my car.  I wonder what this extra degree will amount to in a job market sinking like silt, and I think of how uneasy this state of our country leaves me, yet I know without a shadow of doubt that even my worst hardship brought on by the government is so weak compared to so many.

A time and place for all things.

I wouldn't even know where to begin if I indeed had the time to spill forth all of the thoughts I'm warring with in my head and heart. I've stepped on some toes this week...some regretfully, others unknowingly. There are those things I wish that I was brave enough to exclaim loudly, awarding them the legacy of resounding echoes, and others I wish I had never uttered [or otherwise communicated]. at all. I've wanted to hang up in mid-sentence - Oh! the temptation of an effortless flip of wrist. I've wanted to [and may or may not have] shed tears of absolute frustration...or was it a mere imbalance of hormones? I've been tempted to shatter fragile things, and indulge in the gluttony of gentle affection, and not to honor obligations.

I'm not perfect and I hate that.

There's this passage in the opening paragraph of Hornby's, How to be Good that I've just recalled. It's both sobering and reflective of the human condition [and it's how I feel right this very second]. Sometimes terrible thoughts are thought and things are said or done, or not done or said, and you can't believe the moment has just transpired. Regardless of preference, it's done or lost, and you are the doer or the loser or the thinker or the "bad guy." Maybe it matters, maybe it doesn't, but it's You for better or worse:

"Even though I am, apparently, and to my surprise, the kind of person who tells her husband that she doesn't want to be married to him anymore, I really didn't think I was the kind of person to say so in a car park, on a mobile phone. That particular self-assessment will now have to be revised, clearly. I can describe myself as the kind of person who doesn't forget names, for example, because I have remembered names thousands of times and forgotten them only once or twice. But for the majority of people, marriage-ending conversations happen only once, if at all. If you choose to conduct yours on a mobile phone, in a Leeds car park, then you cannot really claim that it is unrepresentative, in the same way that Lee Harvey Oswald couldn't really claim that shooting presidents wasn't like him at all. Sometimes we have to be judged by our one-offs."

Some like it hot. (Some apparently like it cold.)

I'm freezing at work. Literally. In mere moments I will waft into the slumber of hypothermia never to wake again. A rigid form of mindless key punches and legs crossed in feminine professionalism left in my place, which brings me to this: why doesn't refrigerator contain the same "D" as it's shortened version, fridge? A million dollar question. Anyone with the answer gets...a popsicle. I dunno, I've got cold on the brain.

It rained today, briefly. Just enough precipitation to make the consistency of air a little more like that of syrup. But rain nonetheless. I almost required a moment of silence for the phenomenon we have not born witness to in ages. It was the talk of the town - that quick sprinkle.

It seems that I will either freeze in this office or parch outdoors, and I'm beginning to think that the idea of autumn is a farce all together.

I'm failing miserably at the photo-a-day project now that I am officially four days behind. It doesn't seem to be all that critical to the continuation of life's cycle and maybe it should be celebrated as a sign that I'm beginning to give more meaning to my hours than I did in the throes of Summer's Apathy. I'll try to catch up, because I said I would do it.

For the sake of something positive: Living Wage meetings begin again next week! Yay! for fair wages! I've also got my fingers crossed for some involvement in a refugee replacement organization this semester - Yay! for the evacuation of Sudanese refugees!