On The Eve I Will Ne'er Forget

YIkes. Tonight is a crazy adrenaline night. I am so excited about tomorrow, I really am. I know things can go either way.....but still, the suspense is doing its job. Perhaps it's the increasing intensity ever since the election of the year 2000, when, in the city of London, I watched the actual newspapers (at vendors on the streets) change headlines 4 times or so. I had just gotten back from my first European venture, with Mandy Rosenberg, and had seen the red lights of Amsterdam, the towering beautiful gothic architecture of the Dome in Cologne Germany, the shadowed and velveted walls of cathedrals in Sevilla Spain, the Eiffel Tower, the Alhambra in Granada, and many other of my lifelong awaited visions appear before my traveler's heart. When we arrived in London on the morning of November 8th, at 6am, it was still 10pm in the states. A stranger shook my hand when he heard my accent and told me congratulations and that Gore had won. Even though I had not voted, and despite the fact that even if I had I would have voted for Nader, I was very excited. I remembered the last presidential debate just a couple weeks before, and Bush's vocabulary about "war" had freaked me out, and I hadn't been following the election too closely, I just felt things would be fine. But I should have known things would sway into a way bad direction after the country's obsession with President Clinton's little extra-curricular activities. Everyone acted as though Satan himself was running our country. Little did we know who would come next. In Europe, they laughed so hard with me, about how nosy and bored people in our country had to be to make such an effing stink about it FOR SO LONG. How many Presidents, I must ask myself, came before Clinton with mistresses and affairs alike that they managed to keep snugly to themselves?

Back to 2000 however. Hours after I arrived in London, after the results had teetered back and forth already repeatedly, I fell asleep knowing that this election wouldn't be ironed out for a long ass time.

Since then, some really insane shit has gone down.

I didn't like Bush from the get-go. But at the beginning of his term, I basically just ignored him. I was just minding my own egocentric business and pretending that not knowing what was going on in the world would actually help change things in my heart.....? I know, I was a romantic wreck........ That was until the morning of September 11th, 2001, when I found myself in New York City.
More precisely, I was in Brooklyn, New York, and in the company of three traveling friends who had all met in New York City for a film festival and the CMJ music festival. We had flown out on the 9th and we celebrated my birthday in the East Village on the 10th....with far too many shots of who knows what and repeated ACDC themes on the jukebox. Needless to say, I didn't wake on the 11th until about 10:30 am. A few hurried discussions later (a phone caller informed us all as to what was happening just a mile away) we climbed atop a brownstone roof and watched silently the black cloud of smoke that poured from over most of the Manhattan area we saw before us. That day was unlike any other day I have ever known. I honestly have very few words to describe the feeling. Across the nation the American people's preoccupation with business, their pocketbooks, the economy, consumerism, fashion, celebrity idolatry had vanished into thin air. There was a complete abandonment of selfishness in New York City. I saw stranger's helping strangers everywhere; as they crossed over the bridge into Brooklyn, on the subway, in cafes and shops, on the streets...... absolutely everywhere. My brain was blown out by the immensity of that day. Later that night, we heard George Bush's statement. Everywhere people were raving about it. Here it is. If you'd like to see how strange it seems now, now that we see he spoke these words that very SAME day, take a look for yourself. I think his wording is weird. And I thought it seemed weird on that day too.



But the point of this blog isn't to rag on the past. There would be way too much to blab about...........and believe me, even talker-to-the-grave ol me is sick of the discussions. I have heard them one too many times...and by now I am SOOOOO OVER the past 8 years. I could go on and on and ON in this blog and expand into great detail about the hoaxes and trickery and corruption that took place in our country AFTER November 7th, 2000. But I will not because my stance is already clear. You all know what has happened. We all know what has happened since then, be it even just through the media's whirl of confusion and mixed vocabulary about Osama Bin Laden and Iraq and terrorism and economics and Sub-Prime this and that and blah blah and blah. We are all, I am quite positive, very informed about the yucky things that have gone on.

But tonight, coming from the heart of my heart of my heart of heart, I want to write a blog that addresses the ferocious veracity that such years of struggle have imparted UNTO US. I have to say, this eve feels like no other eve I can remember. Not any eve of Christmas or Thanksgiving or Halloween or ANY OTHER CELEBRATION I CAN REMEMBER holds a candle to this racing of my heart. I happen to be at my Mom's house tonight, changing cat litter and setting pilots on the heater (kind of) and warming things up a bit before she gets home from her autumnal holiday. And in being here, I have had a few moments to check out this one old thing I forgot ever existed, maybe you've heard of it, this odd square in most people's living room called a television!
I have seen so many things on TV tonight, and it's weird that it's the night before the election. Cause that's all it's about. News stations reporting poll numbers, nonbiased political advisors, Campaign ads, rallies, more rallies, protests on sidewalks......it's insane! Already the polling places have 4-5 hour lines for early voters in various states. I have a feeling what shall take place tomorrow will leave the media and the Grand Ol Party alike with dropped jaws. I just think there may be more registered Democrats that show up to the polls than ever ever ever could have been predicted. Break a leg, I think to myself. We shall see.
At least my mental state is good. I hope all of ours are. I feel like everything is OK. I could deal with anything.....any result. We joke about a mass Koolaid suicide if Sarah Palin were to stumble onto the task of actually being Vice President. God, I HATE EVEN TYPING THAT! My prayers are out there in the skies tonight big time though, speeding though my own sleeping dreamscapes where I hope I am at least in line to hug the New President. That doesn't make any sense to you I know, but it does to me so I wrote it. I pray. I pray hard sometimes. I know I am such a girl but......tonight I cried a couple times just listening to Obama speak. I am sure it is also a decent bit of PMS. But it is also with conviction that I truly and most happily believe that Barack Obama is an inspiring enough of a person that sheerly through his own demonstration of hope and dedication and motivation, he can motivate ALL OF US to get off our asses in the next four years and do our share in helping to make this country more of an admirable place to live, and no longer be the actual laughing joke of Europe and Iceland and Canada and god knows where else. Because he has the life stock AND the hard work behind him. Because not only does he have what it takes to be Pres AND MORE, but also because he is more like all of us, the small ones in the world. He may not be after tomorrow, but he HAS BEEN, and he has worked his whole life to make change and headway in the world.

I always am an optimist. I know things could work out differently than I hope. To tell you the truth, usually I don't get what I want. Not until later that is, when I don't really give a fig anymore. So I woke up this morning with an awesome old Smiths song in my mind, always I have thought of it during my bouts of unrequited love, of which there were plenty. Perhaps you know it? If you are not too familiar with the Smiths than perhaps you will remember the song from a scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It's the radical awesome scene when they hold hands with the kids and go to the art museum........and Ferris at the blurs of paint..

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, LET ME GET WHAT I WANT
Good times for a change
See, the luck I've had
Can make a good man
Turn bad
So please please please
Let me, let me, let me
Let me get what I want
This time

Haven't had a dream in a long time
See, the life I've had
Can make a good man bad

So for once in my life
Let me get what I want
Lord knows, it would be the first time
Lord knows, it would be the first time