A Few Quick Recent Facts

Posted on November 7, 2004 in Campaign 2008 Short Trips

Should I apologize for being silent about my daily life? Nevada did not go well: I ran from the mob. When I came back, faces of people yelling at me appeared in my dreams. I exorcised them with xanax, rest, talking to friends, a little time in the desert, and long walks. When someone screams in your face without having first listened to you, it is hard to erase the picture. It was all about people coming together, I am told. Seemed to me to be more about power and, in the end, cowardice.

Yesterday, I went for a walk along the Harding Trail. As I entered the shadows of the mountains, crickets chirped. Their calls took on the living form of particles in a cloud chamber: I could see them, bright dots at the end of a transparent string. Then we found the sunshine again. The radioactive calls stopped.

Today, we went to a mass which my mother had commissioned in honor of Lynn’s late father. They got his name wrong. I was struck by the priest’s calls for hope and on behalf of the poor. During the intercession, they prayed that we would not be seduced by apathy and afflicted by persecution. Tell me that Catholics are not Democrats.

Those waxy green leaves? Those are poison oak.