voting third party
(or, why yes i am a godless commie bastard. or a pantheist sorta-anarchist. or just a dirty hippie. whatever.)
why i am afraid to vote third party in the presidential election:
’cause when i told my mom i was thinking about it she said:
“i thought it was okay to vote for Anderson in 1980… Reagan took MA by 4500 votes.”
and
“look at Florida in 2000, for that matter. Bush won by 437 votes and Nader got 18000.”
and the idea of another four years of a republican administration–or, oh my god, sarah palin as president when mccain keels over–is enough to make me want to scurry up to canada. but i kinda like living here in portland. so.
why i want to vote third party:
because i am afraid to!! i mean come on! that is pretty ridiculous. i feel like the spirit of democracy is not in choosing the “lesser of two evils,” but in casting a vote for a candidate who represents your views on the issues that matter to you. i have occasionally pined for a preferential election system of some sort, but i think that that would quickly become just as frustrating as the two-party system we’ve got–people would vote for the extremists to swing the vote towards the relatively moderate candidate of their choice. ugh, it’s depressing. i realize that all i’m doing is complaining that politics are political, but, you know. i don’t have a solution.
anyway, i feel like the right is very right (you guys, the republican candidate for vice president thinks that creationism should be taught in schools), and the left is… well… pretty freakin’ moderate. these things are NOT leftist: wishy-washy support of “civil unions” and “domestic partnerships,” lip service to “alternative energy” (”clean coal” is an oxymoron) with not much talk about transportation infrastructure solutions and such–instead promising to “Get 1 Million Plug-In Hybrid Cars on the Road by 2015″ (more cars of any sort is not the solution), refusing to acknowledge or even discuss that terrorism is a symptom and not the disease.
don’t get me wrong–i think that obama would (will i hope) be a good president. maybe a great president. but i feel like, since the 2000 election when gore lost arguably “because of” the votes that went to nader instead, the democrats have assumed that those of us who would vote green (or whatever) are too scared of seeing someone way worse than the democrats in office to “throw away” our votes. i don’t want to vote for them just ’cause they assume i’m too scared not to (even though, uhhhh, that may be true). i want to vote green to demonstrate to the democratic party that if they really want my vote, they will have to demonstrate that they care about the things i care about. they are so busy wooing undecided and moderate voters that they are ignoring their theoretical party base–and sliding further and further right as a result. if obama gets every liberal’s vote, he and his campaign are gonna think they’re making every liberal happy, and that’s not true.
anyway, polls show obama with a 9-point lead in oregon, which has gone to the democratic candidate in the past five presidential elections, so i’m probably safe “throwing away” my vote.
also, i can really get behind cynthia mckinney and the green party platform, which is a nice bonus.
give & take
i had a great day today. i invited a friend over for dinner and made us both acorn squash soup with sweet red pepper puree. first i filled the kitchen with smoke and burned the bottom of one of our pots. then i broke a bowl. made a mess, splashed soup everywhere… and laughed it off. the soup–made from a recipe for butternut squash soup, and with at least a couple other substitutions–was, after all that, pretty delicious. we ate ’til we were stuffed. there’s leftovers in the fridge.
this morning i rode to the theatre one last time (for this show, anyway). it rained. i haven’t replaced my fenders for the season–i need to buy a new pair ’cause the old ones were melted in a fire–ooooh what a summer it has been–and the rain soaked through my rain pants but i had a spare pair of pants (seriously!) in my amazing everything-but-the-kitchen-sink bag. draped my jeans over a chair and packed up props. came home, got cozy, bought groceries, talked to my mom about the endless possibilities.
i am really racking up possibilities these days. today i am simultaneously excited by these possibilities and just simply happy with my life as it is today. my messy backyard. the library four blocks away. the roadways-not-improved criss-crossing my street. the sound of the washing machine. my cat asleep on his favorite couch. the photos tacked up on my wall, so many good things in my past:
it is nice for a moment to not think too much about all those possibilities. to just, well, be here now. the rain, the soup, the friend, whatever.
last night i biked home at midnight singing “fly me to the moon,” except i don’t know all the words, so a lot of it was “da da da daaaaahhh.” it started to rain a mile or two in and instead of stopping to pull on my rain gear, i decided i couldn’t wait to be soaked through. unfortunately it didn’t turn out to be that kind of rain, and i arrived home just a little moist. my housemate and my cat on the couch. kepler (my cat) looked up at me over the arm of the couch and blinked slowly. i turned on the tap in the bathroom sink for him to drink from.
from this show, i have: a small paycheck, $25 to spend at powell’s from the cast, one helluva caffeine dependency, and an african violet that i will try my darnedest to keep alive, at least for the next week and a half or so before i leave town.
a few days ago, someone used an email list that my aunt (who lives in san francisco and who taught at new college there) put together months ago to announce a dance performance that she choreographed, to announce the death of a new college graduate named kirsten brydum. i didn’t know her or anyone else on the email list (which eventually devolved into pointless pettiness and a dozen “please take me off this list” emails, anyway), but because of the link included with the email, i was able to read some journal entries she wrote for her friends and family, which was a real, thoughtful pleasure. i am sorry for her death and for the way she died, but grateful for her faith in people and for the way her life was able to touch me today. small serendipities, i suppose.
one of the first few people to reply to the email list signed her email “take/give care,” and the same day, one of the actors in the show (a really fantastic person who i am so glad i was able to meet; i hope we work together over and over if possible) picked up my notebook and wrote a note on a blank page, “stacia– remember when you are in hawaii to give of yourself freely–as much as you take–or should i say receive–that’s a better word. open yourself to the beautiful universe and invite it in.”
so that is what i have been thinking about these small quiet days. what i want to give–for now i just mean in small interactions–versus what i want to take. when i focus on what i want or need to give, what i want or need to take becomes what i’ve pretty much already got. i mean that sounds so cliché and saccharine… and i am trying to write in vague terms rather than in intimate detail because that’s how i roll lately, but i’m not used to it yet and i’m still learning the ropes. i feel like life has been asking me lately to be so self-centered–or at least i have been letting myself believe it’s “life” and not my self-centered self–but it’s pretty stressful to be the center of the freakin’ universe. ok and life’s finally changing and moving on. i think i’m only a few days from being done with dealing with the insurance company. left with a lumpy collarbone and a big chunk of change. here we go: possibilities.
amy hempel: how [do] we know that what happens to us isn’t good?
or:
o heart weighed down by so many wings.
–joseph hutchinson
anger & impotence
this past saturday afternoon i biked to the theatre as usual. on the way, two things happened. first, i was nearly doored on se 42nd ave between holgate and gladstone. i was riding as far to the left in the bike lane as possible, to avoid the door zone, but some dude swung the door wide open right in front of me and despite my caution i was about two inches away from getting nailed. why are so many bike lanes in portland narrow and painted right next to parked cars? i don’t know.
maybe twenty minutes later i’m riding through the pearl district on nw 12th ave. i’m taking the lane because it’s lined with parked cars and i don’t move much slower than traffic when there’s so many stop signs and traffic lights. it’s fine–i turn left at nw johnson after stopping at the stop sign there. i’m about five feet up the street when i hear someone behind me yell, “idiot!”
i turn around the and driver who was behind me at the stop sign is in the middle of the intersection with his window down, looking at me. “excuse me?” i say.
“you’re an idiot!” he repeats.
“why?” i ask him. he starts to answer but he’s driving away and all i hear is “you’re the–” before his engine drowns him out. i start pedaling again, and get about to the end of the block before i burst into tears. all of a sudden i feel so overwhelmed by anger and impotence and helplessness and frustration that it’s all i can do to breathe.
i got to the theatre eventually, but that feeling stuck with me for the rest of the night, and i spent a lot of the show lying on my back on the floor of the booth. when i got home (i rode the bus…) i even posted a “missed connection” on craigslist to ask this guy why, why am i an idiot? the only responses i got were from people telling me to let it go, that obviously he’s the idiot, oh and btw pink hair rocks (i’d included some identifying details). i know i should follow their advice. i even know that it’s not about that asshole…
today i started going over my accident (ugh i hate that word) in great, slow detail with a therapist i’ve started seeing. much of the story is so familiar to me that it’s pretty much rote at this point, but she regularly interrupted me and asked for more detail or, more interestingly, to check in with what my body was doing. what my body was doing was holding on as tight as possible to that trauma, holy shit. it was tense and fidgety and at one point i even felt dizzy. it is pretty clear to me that i am not crazy, just traumatized. on the other hand, it’s pretty clear to me that i’m traumatized.
often recently (i guess i mean in the past week or so) my life has felt very calm, quiet and small. i spend a lot of time at home alone during the day because i’m working from home right now and my housemates all have jobs and school. i pet my cat, drink smoothies, walk to the grocery store. but where there should be peace beneath that surface there is not. it wouldn’t be accurate to say that there’s all kinds of negativity “bubbling beneath the surface” or anything like that. that’s not really what i mean. i just know that i have a lot of work to do. that i am carrying a whole lot of shit around with me and i don’t have any peace even when i do have calm and quiet, and small things set me off and make me feel so hopeless. i am trying to be patient with myself and with the world, but it’s hard. it’s not a matter of perspective (i have all kinds of perspective. i know i am lucky that it wasn’t worse, lucky that i have the support of my family, lucky that i live someplace where an ambulance arrived very quickly to take care of me, lucky that the driver didn’t try to escape responsibility, etc etc); it’s a matter of letting myself acknowledge that this has been, and probably will continue to be, fucking hard. it’s affected pretty much every aspect of my life for the past several months. so. there you go.
i would like to start setting concrete goals for myself every week so i have something to work towards and something to get myself up and doing when i find myself acting depressed and alone. in the next week i will:
1) meditate at least three times for at least 15 minutes, and
2) read something that will challenge me intellectually.
