I am pretty good at putting my head in the sand as the world turns around me. After t and p were elected, I cried off and on for several days. In live in an area where t is very popular, so it was not that I did not consider it a possibility. I knew very much that it was possible. I still cried. I hated being right. I kept telling myself that I shouldn’t be so pessimistic. I hate being wrong. I also told myself that it was about time that I take stock of things.
First steps? Speak from the I perspective.
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Today we marched. And not unlike the tale of the six blind men and the elephant or the shadows of a cylinder (from one angle there is a circle and the other a rectangle), no two marches were the same. One friend made it to the rally area at 9 am and never left that point (Read her account here). Problem with that 'plan' was lack of water and sufficient porta potties. However, she was right in the thick of things, I suspect. My four-year-old niece thought we were all marching for "silver" rights having misheard civil rights. Silver probably should have rights, too. She was marching in NYC rather than DC. I imagine still others saw the line at the metro and turned around to go home. Without peer pressure, I never would have made it past that point myself. But I had the peer pressure so here is my march. My daughter and I did not leave central Virginia until close to 6 pm on Friday to stay with some accommodating folks in NoVa. Highlight of the evening, finding out the my daughter had scored two pussy hats and my first meal at Chuy's Tex-Mex. After an admittedly leisurely breakfast, we arrived at the metro stop on Saturday and saw a never- ending sea of bodies pouring out onto the sidewalk from the metro entrance. I questioned our sanity for even thinking this was a good idea. We parked the car and realized that we were near the metro ticketing area. Skipping the majority of the line and armed with our pre-loaded metro cards in hand, we soon found spots on the train. Although not on the most direct route, we stayed on the ever crowding train until L'Enfant Plaza. The ride was long but we had a delightful conductor. Worth staying on the blue line just for her. We finally reached our destination, but not quite. It took around 45 minutes to exit L'Enfant Plaza. Praying that no one would spook and cause a stampede, I moved forward slowly. The above photo is from the Metro; there was a larger crowd behind me. Three hours after parking my car, I was AT THE MARCH. I would describe it as organized chaos. We made our way along. The the realities of nature called our name and we found a relatively short line for a bathroom. Thank you folks from the National Park Service who keep the one by the Washington Monument clean. We marched some more. Fun people watching along the way. Got to The Ellipse. Admired each others signs. Then the hangry and thirsty started and we made our way forward to a food establishment. My march was a piece of the march as seen from street level with no sense of scale except that there were a lot of people and that I was glad to see so many different people come out for the march. Seeing aerial photos from the marches across the country and the world is an entirely different kind of elephant. Wow! Once I get my breath back, maybe I'll come up with something more articulate. For now, all I have is "Wow!" When the fog settles in, the kind that makes thinking hurt, I have to crawl under it, much as one would to escape a smoke-filled building, in order to find a couple words to put together. At first, I wanted to say my mind was blank, but that's not right either. For blank also describes the spiritual empty during meditation. An empty that fills wordlessly into wonder, that refreshes and leaves space for something new. Blank would be a good thing, I think. Nor is my mind swirling with thoughts that will not land. That is something different, too. I can't conceive of its color, but feel its substance. The place where thoughts are formed is a hard to describe place even before the thing I am calling fog settles in. * To my friends who read this, I am not feeling depressed, just blocked on the writing front. |
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