So this morning I woke up and, as though my body had somehow sensed the urgency in the air, fell back asleep. Oh, how I love days off from school. The air is clean, the sky is pure, even in the clouds and patched fog, the ground is covered with enough snow deep and sparkling to get lost in; I have boots, I have a skin thick enough to hide me from the wind, I have a day with nothing in it yet. It is a feeling like no other, not quite endowed with the straight freedom feeling that comes of actually skipping school, but with many of the possibilities. Maybe it’s the lack of risk that changes it, I don’t know. I mean, yes, I could be called into work—that’s one of the things you don’t get with skipping—but also, I could take the dog down to the park and romp! I could spend two hours playing horn! I could watch Into the Wild! I could… could do pretty much anything. I probably won’t, besides playing horn, and/or guitar for as long a time as my chops and fingertips, respectively, can take. This will be after the music now wears off (it’s Radio Nowhere right now, New Year’s Day before that) and my fingers start itching worse than they are now. In the meantime, I write.
Yesterday, we got a new president. There are quite a few people freaking out, doomsayers, and the occasional orgasm of rhetoric. Personally, I couldn’t—well, I could probably care less if I tried. But I spent the year leading up to the election trying to figure out what the big deal was, and alternately trying to figure out which of the two evils was worse, because they’re both pretty damn bad. And at some point, it became not McCain vs. Obama, but the party who believed in Saint Wizard McSuperpants versus the party who believed in His Evilness the Doom-bringer. And that made me sick. It was absolutely insane, and at some point I was wondering exactly where the hell everybody’s sanity went? I mean, you guys aren’t all crazy! I wanted to take several people by the shoulders and shake them until they resembled my friends and family again. My dad was one of the worst, telling me over and over on the way to school how Obama was pretty bad, pretty bad, pretty awful, he did this and he believes that and he’ll do this and that and this, and one friend from US History was the other, going on and on and on about how wonderful this guy was, never with any reasons or back-up, only constant speeches about how damn awesome he was. Fortunately, two people I knew seemed to retain some sanity, and my friends on complete opposite sides helped me out—my friend the vegan, who wanted to vote for Ralph Nader, and my friend the vegetarian-hater, who wants to take over the country and remake it in the model of ancient Rome.
If I had to do the thing over again, well, I’d probably just say fuck it all and leave. Or I’d cast a blank ballot. But anyway, Obama’s in office, the country is torn between wildly celebrating and committing suicide, and I’m inclined to tell them the whole thing is absolutely ridiculous. He’s just another politician. When has a Harvard or Yale graduate in office done our country any good? What we really need is a revolution, but then I’m just a schizophrenic on a laptop on my day off from school spouting nonsense. Anyway, enough with the political gibberish. Long story much shorter, I have a day to do stuff, and do stuff I will!
On to the waiting horn.
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