Don't mourn, organize

I'll come back to that later. For now, I didn't really sleep last night--I didn't stay up following the returns either, I lay in bed alternately thinking of my beloved and brooding, and looking as the clock ticked away the dark hours. And I've concluded, before the stimulants wore off completely, that I should neither make nor change any plans or decisions tonight.

I wrote this as a comment to rysmiel:

Aye. I try to cling to what I knew to be true yesterday: the green world, the intelligent species I am part of upon that world, and the wide universe in which we spin.

But I remember Eddi McCandry, noting that the world looked no different after she'd won, because what they were fighting for was to save what was good, and it's suddenly little comfort that the world looks the same as it did a day ago. Fitting that tonight's forecast is for cold enough to kill annuals and other tender plants.

And those large truths, life and physics and human intelligence and skill, are harder to cling to than the specifics, the people I love and who I know love me. *hug*

Don't mourn, organize

I'll come back to that later. For now, I didn't really sleep last night--I didn't stay up following the returns either, I lay in bed alternately thinking of my beloved and brooding, and looking as the clock ticked away the dark hours. And I've concluded, before the stimulants wore off completely, that I should neither make nor change any plans or decisions tonight.

I wrote this as a comment to rysmiel:

Aye. I try to cling to what I knew to be true yesterday: the green world, the intelligent species I am part of upon that world, and the wide universe in which we spin.

But I remember Eddi McCandry, noting that the world looked no different after she'd won, because what they were fighting for was to save what was good, and it's suddenly little comfort that the world looks the same as it did a day ago. Fitting that tonight's forecast is for cold enough to kill annuals and other tender plants.

And those large truths, life and physics and human intelligence and skill, are harder to cling to than the specifics, the people I love and who I know love me. *hug*

(no subject)

I just pulled up my close friends filter, figuring I wanted any thoughts and news from people I love, and not too much politics.

But, of course, the people I love, I love in large part for their intelligence and their compassion. So that filter was full of politics and unhappiness.

A coworker, a basically reasonable and friendly seeming woman who told me yesterday that she'd voted for Bush (I simply told her I'd voted for Kerry--no point starting a political argument at work when the vote has already been cast) seemed close to gloating early in the day. I looked away when we passed in the hallway on my way back from lunch: and she came over and apologized a bit later, thus saving me from a probably fruitless shouting match. I try to believe that she, that many of those who voted for that man, wants what's best for our country and even the world, and is simply wrong about how to get that. Denial is a great human attribute, right up there with the brain's ability to see patterns whether they're actually in the external world; I don't think--and maybe this is my own denial--that this basically decent-seeming woman voted for Shrub because she supports Guantanamo.

[Edited/expanded slightly since posting.]

(no subject)

I just pulled up my close friends filter, figuring I wanted any thoughts and news from people I love, and not too much politics.

But, of course, the people I love, I love in large part for their intelligence and their compassion. So that filter was full of politics and unhappiness.

A coworker, a basically reasonable and friendly seeming woman who told me yesterday that she'd voted for Bush (I simply told her I'd voted for Kerry--no point starting a political argument at work when the vote has already been cast) seemed close to gloating early in the day. I looked away when we passed in the hallway on my way back from lunch: and she came over and apologized a bit later, thus saving me from a probably fruitless shouting match. I try to believe that she, that many of those who voted for that man, wants what's best for our country and even the world, and is simply wrong about how to get that. Denial is a great human attribute, right up there with the brain's ability to see patterns whether they're actually in the external world; I don't think--and maybe this is my own denial--that this basically decent-seeming woman voted for Shrub because she supports Guantanamo.

[Edited/expanded slightly since posting.]