Friday, March 20, 2009
Waking Dream (life, blue jays)
The night before last I couldn't sleep a wink, so I stayed up until 7 playing video games and writing about the Toronto Blue Jays. Life is so strange, but I like it very much.
Monday, March 16, 2009
The Harmony of Dog and Tail
It's been a little while since I posted, so I thought I'd check in. If there's anything you'd really like to read a post about (from me) then let me know, because I feel we've entered the request part of the evening.
I had a thought the other day on why I still shudder a little when I really think about life on the campaign. The long hours were part of it, as was the pressure of how much the whole thing mattered (compounded by the organizational layers that existed to remind of that pressure), but I think it was something a little more fundamental. To be a field organizer, I had to be a slightly different thing than I'm used to being. If I'm a point I was in a different location. If I'm a vector I was pointed in a different direction. If I'm a polygon then my sides were stretched a little differently. If I'm a song, the chord progression changed a little. If I'm a sandwich, I had more celery. Yes dear reader, the Obama campaign made me into a celery sandwich.
I had to lean on people more than I like to. I had to find the cracks in other people's armor and wiggle my way into their lives. I had to interrupt people at dinner. I had to convince people that calling other people while they are at dinner, or even better, knocking on their doors, is way way more helpful than your f***ing yard sign. People wanted him to win, and they wanted to help, but they didn't want to help outside of their own comfort zone (I'm speaking of 95% of people here. I am infinitely thankful for the other 5%). And that's not because people are bad, it's because people are people, and I generally prefer not to ask people to be much more or much other than they are, but I had a job to do.
I don't know that the answer is, but wouldn't it be nice if politics wasn't so obscure? I mean, my job was to call strangers to get them to call other strangers and either convince them to vote Obama, or convince them to join them in calling from a targeted list of strangers. There was plenty more, but that sums up a lot of it. The whole system was articulated when things were smaller and much more based on agriculture. The needs of the me and the we were mostly known and tangible. The structure of decision-making was based on those sorts of conditions. Now we have that same structure stretched over the massive monster that is today's U.S. of A. The tail that was designed to wag in accordance with the wishes and moods of the dog has become more conscious and more powerful. Now we've got cluster and fuck pointing fingers at each other and asking for your money and support to prevent the other side from clustering or fucking you (depending on where your allegiances lie).
Still, once in a while something more true and more honest, something more about the dog than the tail comes along. I felt Obama was one of those people/phenomena, and was so badly needed now. So I went on a vision quest, a mission to mars, a journey to the south, to a place only loosely connected to where I'm from in time and space. I'm different now in ways that I only partially understand, but I feel better. Not only that, but our president is Barack Obama, and our VP is not Sarah Palin. In the last paragraph I kind of implied that the ideas that form our government are based on conditions that no longer apply, but I will say this: we just pulled off a major revolution without shedding a single drop of blood, and there aren't many places in the world where that is possible.
I had a thought the other day on why I still shudder a little when I really think about life on the campaign. The long hours were part of it, as was the pressure of how much the whole thing mattered (compounded by the organizational layers that existed to remind of that pressure), but I think it was something a little more fundamental. To be a field organizer, I had to be a slightly different thing than I'm used to being. If I'm a point I was in a different location. If I'm a vector I was pointed in a different direction. If I'm a polygon then my sides were stretched a little differently. If I'm a song, the chord progression changed a little. If I'm a sandwich, I had more celery. Yes dear reader, the Obama campaign made me into a celery sandwich.
I had to lean on people more than I like to. I had to find the cracks in other people's armor and wiggle my way into their lives. I had to interrupt people at dinner. I had to convince people that calling other people while they are at dinner, or even better, knocking on their doors, is way way more helpful than your f***ing yard sign. People wanted him to win, and they wanted to help, but they didn't want to help outside of their own comfort zone (I'm speaking of 95% of people here. I am infinitely thankful for the other 5%). And that's not because people are bad, it's because people are people, and I generally prefer not to ask people to be much more or much other than they are, but I had a job to do.
I don't know that the answer is, but wouldn't it be nice if politics wasn't so obscure? I mean, my job was to call strangers to get them to call other strangers and either convince them to vote Obama, or convince them to join them in calling from a targeted list of strangers. There was plenty more, but that sums up a lot of it. The whole system was articulated when things were smaller and much more based on agriculture. The needs of the me and the we were mostly known and tangible. The structure of decision-making was based on those sorts of conditions. Now we have that same structure stretched over the massive monster that is today's U.S. of A. The tail that was designed to wag in accordance with the wishes and moods of the dog has become more conscious and more powerful. Now we've got cluster and fuck pointing fingers at each other and asking for your money and support to prevent the other side from clustering or fucking you (depending on where your allegiances lie).
Still, once in a while something more true and more honest, something more about the dog than the tail comes along. I felt Obama was one of those people/phenomena, and was so badly needed now. So I went on a vision quest, a mission to mars, a journey to the south, to a place only loosely connected to where I'm from in time and space. I'm different now in ways that I only partially understand, but I feel better. Not only that, but our president is Barack Obama, and our VP is not Sarah Palin. In the last paragraph I kind of implied that the ideas that form our government are based on conditions that no longer apply, but I will say this: we just pulled off a major revolution without shedding a single drop of blood, and there aren't many places in the world where that is possible.
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