Good Strange Things vol. 2

By October I was in a sort of altered state most of the time. I don't mean on drugs other than caffeine, which was certainly part of my state, and the occasional after-work drink. I mean I was fatigued in a way that I knew wouldn't go away fully into I really got to rest, and I knew that would not happen until after the election. At that point the election was just starting to appear on the horizon, but it was still a ways off. I accepted this reality without argument, which made me more able to live with it, but the work day rarely sailed by. I would generally go to sleep relaxed and wake up the same way, but once the day started all bets were off. There were days that I felt like I wasn't holding up my own body, rather I was draping it over the structure implied by my schedule and my superiors expectations. When I took a break, I relaxed hard and hoped it lasted, because if someone came into the office, I would jump back up and greet them.

I was finishing up a late lunch, waiting for me to tell myself I needed to get back to work on October 11th (gmail search), when a small, middle-aged, Indian (from India) man came in and started peering at the various things on the walls of the Richmond County Democratic Headquarters. He didn't seem to require any assistance, nor did he really look like he was looking to volunteer, so I let him do his thing and enjoyed the end of my break.

Eventually I gave him a "Hi, can I help you?" or one of those. We exchanged pleasantries, and he mentioned that he was from India. I told him that I've been to India, which was a shock to him. A lot of Richmond Countians hadn't seen much outside of the Carolinas, let alone another continent, let alone Asia. All of a sudden we were having a spirited conversation. He talked about how he liked all the Democratic candidates, how he came from Mumbai to here because his son lives here and has a clothing shop (I think). We talked about India, Gandhi, the poet Rabindranath Tagore, the Ganges- at first he didn't know what I was talking about because I was saying "the Ganges", and to him it's "the Gunga."

We talked for a while, and by the time we were done I felt refreshed. We quietly appreciated each other for unexpectedly providing a conversation that neither of us could have had with anyone else in Richmond County. I really don't have a problem with your typical resident of the RC, but I had seen a lot of them over the last two months, and to meet someone who fit a completely different description was very refreshing. I think he mentioned meditation at some point, and he had a subtle wisdom that I associate with meditators. As for him, I can only speculate as to how long it had been since he'd met a stranger who had been to his homeland, but I expect those were few and far between.

Eventually the time came for him to go and for me to get back to work, and the conversation came to a natural end. He stepped toward the door and then stopped and turned around, to say something. At that moment it was like everything up to that point was leisure time, but there was one point of business- wise little Indian men don't just wander into your office for no reason after all. He had a message for me, and he wasn't going to leave until I heard it. I looked up at him, and he said this:"I am sixty years of age. I am very healthy. No diabetes, no heartburn, no (something)."

I asked him how he does it

"Vegetables and hard work."
Somehow that was the perfect conclusion to the whole thing. I never saw him again, nor did I need to. We had given each other a boost, and he had passed on a little piece of truth to me. I wouldn't get many more, but life was expected to be hard then, and a little something like that every week or so was all I needed.

Inauguration Wrap-Up

So now he's president, and together we enter a brave new world.

The inauguration itself was... an experience. I'm definitely glad I went, but I'm in no hurry to do it again (not that the option is there). The area around our assigned security checkpoint had some signage, but not nearly enough. People found out where to go mostly by asking other people waiting in line. There were a few staff people who appeared infrequently, and had nothing but their own voices to try to direct people. After some searching, Rachel and I found our line. It went down one block, turned a corner, down another block, then turned into a tunnel (as in, the type that cars drive through on a normal day). Despite the knowledge that the inauguration crowd would be larger than all but a few U.S. cities, I still didn't quite have the mental capacity to anticipate the length of this line. It spanned the aforementioned two or three city blocks, went into the tunnel, went all the way through the tunnel and then a ways- probably the equivalent of another two city blocks- on the other side. I wasn't bothering to keep track, but we were probably in line for about an hour before we reentered the tunnel, and at least another two inside the tunnel.

It was cold, and it would have been an angry and miserable time had it not been probably the greatest cause for celebration I've ever seen in my lifetime. People were taking any excuse to be happy. At one point, a confusing and unnecessary backward curve developed in the line due to a few people lining up on a ramp leading into the tunnel, and a few more following their lead. Everyone immediately sensed that the curve should not have been created, but it couldn't be undone right away without a few thousand people backing up a few steps. Instead, a man with a deep booming voice (a shrill voiced person tried first, but her words weren't connecting) got everyone behind the part that curved up to wait patiently while the line gradually moved enough so that the people who were ahead of the others in line, but behind them in space to catch up, so that the line straightened out, and the curve, that was making us all anxious (line psychology) was undone. We all cheered. That might not be the normal reaction to getting a line of people slightly more organized, but on that day it was the only reaction anyone thought to have.

People were chanting and singing through the tunnel. At one point a wave went down the line. No one wanted to be in that line in the cold, but it just wasn't a day for being pissed off. That was a good thing, because things would soon get worse. We were in the line that made the news, because after we made it out of the tunnel (getting out of there almost felt like being born), down the block, around the corner... news started to travel that our gate had been closed- there was a problem with the metal detector (there were a few stories floating around, all we knew for sure was that there was an ambiguous security problem). That left several thousand purple ticket holders, many of them campaign staff and volunteers, in a huge cluster, wondering if and how they would get in.

Eventually the next gate over opened up, and everyone who had a purple ticket and a few people who didn't went for that gate. There was some order on the other side of the gate, but none on our side. It was literally a 180 degree crowd all trying to cram into the same small opening. I don't think anyone was trying to push forward, but there was literally constant pressure from the force of the crowd behind me. I was a little scared. It wouldn't take much for someone to get badly hurt or even killed. If someone fell, there wasn't necessarily enough space for people to back off enough for that person to get up. The crowd was getting more restless by the minute, breaking into chants every few minutes. The main ones were "Purple! Purple!" which I was okay with and "Let us in!" which I wasn't. They had a good enough reason to be frustrated, but it's not like the cops and staff managing the bottleneck could have done much more (though on the flipside, they weren't doing much other than looking perturbed and worried).

We made it in minutes before he was sworn in. After 8 years of horror and six hours standing in line, the long wait finally came to an end. People cheered, canons went off, and the Bushes got into a helicopter, and then an airplane that took them to a part of the country where George can leave his house without having to worry about someone kicking him in the balls.

I'm glad I went, but not so much for the swearing-in or even the speech. Years from now I'll proudly tell people that I was there, but the real treat was seeing an entire city so happy. There is no amount of celebration that could be too much for this. It's like the first real day of spring when you step outside and it feels warm and wonderful. After a winter that lasted more or less my entire adult life until Tuesday, this shot of sunshine feels better than the rest, and everyone in that huge crowd felt it.

One more thing: Everyone else has said this already, but I'm going to say it too, because it's important. We didn't deserve or get Obama because we had suffered so much under Bush, we deserved and got him because we worked for it. It happened to take an enormous amount of work but we can already see how worth it it was. I mention this because the things out there worth working for didn't end on November 4th. In fact, they became more available on that day. The sun is shining, and those of us who have spent a lot of this winter in hibernation might take a chance on waking up and taking the plunge into the big and amazing unknown.

Good Strange Things (vol. 1)

Once in a while, something magical happened. Amid the grey slog, in the middle of the trudge through the swamp, a burst of sunshine would appear, a moment infused with light and color would lift me up. Maybe it’s what happens when you work hard, or when you really need it, or in accordance with some sort of cosmic rhythm beyond my grasp- or maybe it just happens. I don’t know. I’m just glad that those moments do happen, not least because they had a funny tendency to show up when I was at some sort of low.

My car broke down (for the first, not last, time) one sunny afternoon. I was on the highway, not close to anything in particular, except for a house where no one was home. I called a towing service, and found a shady spot to wait. I had half an hour or so, and I took some time to think about the operation I was trying to create in Richmond County. I needed volunteers and I needed to up my voter registration numbers. I was short of where I wanted to be in volunteer numbers almost every day. At points I had some weekly participants who helped keep the flow a little steadier, but as a general rule I needed more volunteers than I had.

I took a minute to present my wish list to the universe. I don’t mean to get into a whole discussion about what that means, so I’ll just say this. This is not quite praying, or an attempt to make a deal with a higher force. It’s more of a “Hey universe, if you want to conspire some things in my direction, I could really use some volunteers and better voter reg numbers.” The trick to asking for something like that is to forget about it as soon as you’ve said your piece. If you hang on to your wishes, they can’t fly high enough to do anything. If this paragraph didn’t make any sense to you, don’t worry about it.

The tow truck came, and as it did I get a phone call from a woman who had gotten my name and number somehow, and wanted to volunteer. She was available to come in the very next day. Great. The rest of my day was spent dealing with my car situation and figuring out how I was going to get around until my car got fixed.

The next day I got a call as I was getting up from “Jon.” I met a lot of people and it was hard to keep track of all of them, so I pretended to know him until he told me that I didn’t. He also told me that he could bring me 40 filled-out voter registration forms that day, and that he had 200 more. Let me put this in perspective: my quota was 13 a day. I was generally happy with anything double digits for a given day. 20 or more was golden. My single day maximum was around 30- maybe lower. I was happy enough to be able to get into my office that day. To have someone hand over numbers like that out of the blue left me speechless. On top of that, when Jon came by the office to give me the forms, he gave me the names and numbers of about 10 really solid volunteers. Not every one panned out, but even 3 solids is a huge boost.

That’s how it happened so often. I would scratch and claw and grind for results, and it was never quite enough, and then someone would walk in and give me everything I needed. That happened a few times on the volunteer front, but the other two occurrences that come to mind didn’t get me any volunteers. They were strange and powerful though, so stay tuned.