Election Day

Our country began it's withdrawal from the Paris Climate accord today, leaving an already inadequate effort at saving this planet to be done by...whoever the fuck would like to even try anymore, but we did begin selling $5,000 Swarovski crystal encrusted dolls.  The children of the uber-rich will, if nothing else, be able to drown in luxury someday.  This is a good system, everything's fine.

All I did was ride my bike to the local school - where my kids are in 2nd grade - and vote.  Out front, where both political parties hand you a sample ballot of how they'd like your tiny vote to look on paper, people queued up tentatively.

We are squirrelly in the voting line now, Americans.  In a rhetorically divided country, it's tough to stand next to your neighbors and vote your conscience while they vote theirs and not feel uneasy about the whole thing.  These are the same people with whom your kids play soccer or you played baseball or your grandparents are buried next to or...whatever.  So of course there is a real sense of community that you can feel.  There's a bake sale.  There are handshakes and hugs and how's your moms.  There's literally your mom.  But there's a chill too, something beneath the surface that's coming undone.

Hold me down, as Ani called it long ago.
I am floating away.

After I voted, I rode the long way home, down Reas Ford and then back up bleak house, across the gravel at the top, then down the fringe, the beaver dam, across maple and alder-lined single track all the way back up to Allen rd and home and back to...work?  Is that what I'm doing here?  Is any of this going to matter?

Before I finished, I stopped above the creek at the overlook, took a moment that I should take more often to pause and consider big picture.  What is it that I'm even trying to say?
Hello Birmingham, I guess.
If you feel that the vote you cast today lacks real consequence, just wait 12 months.  Our inadequacy today will feel like peanuts compared to our inadequacy a year from now, whatever the result.  And then what?  There we'll be again, together, sorta.  Voting.  Trying.

Drowning?

Hang on, Country.  I can't afford a crystal doll to drown with and neither can you.  I'll keep swimming if you will too.

Up, up, up.