Freedom(0)/Fascism(1)
Later tonight I'll be changing back the blog's colors. My homage to the election is over, the election itself a failure (for democrats) and the world no more or less safe from the tyranny of American Imperialism than it was yesterday. Jesus Christ, I knew there were a lot of rednecks, cowboys and social conservatives in the states but I'd hoped there weren't THAT MANY of them.

Still, my reaction to the subject amounts, at best, to an "oh well." I figured this was going to happen. Secretly, in a deep part of me that loves conflict and craves revolution, hoped it would happen. I'm of the opinion, honestly, that things in this country (and likewise, the world) are going to have to get worse before they get better. I think Kerry would have been such a mediocre president as to have simply kept the pot simmering for many more years before it finally boiled. If anything, Bush and his cabinet are a catalyst... a terrible, burning acid but a catalyst nevertheless. I say let Monkey Boy handle his own mess and if he fails, let it become more and more crystal clear what an absolute fucking idiot he is. It's time for a little civil disobedience. I call down the gods of social revolution.

That, however, is my response only directly to the electoral results. If you ask me about the cross-country state bans on gay marriage, I'm livid. I think it's disgusting to discriminate against love and deny benefits to couples and partners who for NO GOOD REASON don't deserve it. What the hell happened to a separate church and state? Hoo boy, and if you ask me about the (distant) possibility of a draft, I'll tell you just what I think.

They'll take my man over my dead fucking body.

This war has gone too far. I've opposed it from the beginning and I continue to protest against whenever I have the chance. Resolving the mess that is the Middle East has been made an American responsibility. We're not going to be able to set up another pawn in Iraq and move on. It will take years and years and years of money, resources and soldiers. I'm hoping it doesn't degenerate into more outright invasion but I'm going to assume the worse. And should that happen, I want no part in it, for myself or my family. This war is wrong. If it comes to a draft, in any form, I will seriously consider giving up my citizenship or going to jail in opposition.

I was grateful to spend last night in the company of many good and close friends. I cooked a kickass pasta and alternated between watching the polls and taking time-out in the solace of my upstairs bedroom. If the world is in tumult around me, at least I have the blessing of being more centered and spiritually fit than I've ever felt.

A big part of last week's rabid breakdown (Thursday) is, I think, this stability I've been experiencing. As usual, with my "ups," the "downs" are worse. And because I've been so far removed from frequent drops in confidence, my emotions were heightened in severity. Right now, I'm not used to that "black" state of mind I've had so often before.

I think I'm glad I hit the wall on Thursday. It allowed me to see that I'm NOT immune to freaking out and going downhill. I had to think long and hard about what triggered my freak-out and what I can do this winter to maintain a positive mindset as the days get darker.

First, I think what blew my circuits was my design class. I want so badly to excel in that class but the fact is that I fall somewhere in the low-middle of the skill range. I'm not a designer. I'm gaining good insight into design but as far as creativity goes, my inspirations are coming up short. The problem is that I can't be visually creative when I'm stressed and/or busy. I've just never learned that skill. So when the prof in this class pushes for a quick turnaround, instead of churning with ideas, my brain just shuts off. More than any other time, when I don't feel like I have some creativity, I feel like a failure.

I'm not sure what to do to prevent myself from walking into another mess like that again, especially come thesis crunch-time, but I expect that if I stay centered and present and maybe read a little passage from The Power of Now on and off, everything will turn out fine.

I wrote the poem below over a year and a half ago, the winter before going to Japan, after a rather surreal dream and a few prophetic conversations (this was during my "Cassandra" phase). For some reason, a line in the last stanza popped into my head when I was running this morning. It has, indeed, been almost five years since event (breakup) to which the poem refers. And though I absolutely could not have foreseen my life evolving into what it has since that February, I'm pleasantly surprised. So many things have started anew, in ways different than I might have imagined. It's nice to see that even in moments of self-fulfilling prophetic doom, the truth of our relationships with the people around us can evolve into something that exceeds expectation. Maybe there's hope for this mess of a world after all.

Swans & Ducks
{A homage to last night's dream}
You named me by so many metaphors
but still never learned who I am;
I can see the future.

It's all packed into crates and boxes,
the remnants of an aging house.
Locked bureaus left out in the rain,
lamps that won't turn on.

My sisters sorting through mementos,
memories of a twilight grey.
She told me, in the dream, that I would never leave
and I knew she meant I could not be free.

Five years, I said, then we can start again
You held me and I cried
It's easy to love someone when they're going away.