voting in the nude

There was a small news item buried amid the huge hurly burly of big election issues that made me smile. And I've been needing to smile recently. A nudist colony had put in a request for a polling station on the colony grounds so that the naked could vote without having to put a piece of clothing on. I like this. This is the complete transparency in government we've been longing for. But where would they put the "I voted" stickers?

Yesterday I took advantage of a break in this vile disgusting horrific rain (shall I tell you what I really think of wet weather), to walk a precinct for a local candidate here in Berkeley. Jesse Arreguin is running in District 4, to replace long term Councilmember Dona Spring who died in July and whose absence in this ever more conforming town will only grow more acute as time goes by. What makes this an especially important district for a progressive to win is that much of the downtown area sits in this district, and with developers and the University carving up Berkeley in a profiteering feast, Dona's legacy is that the simple needs of neighbourhoods should always come first.

But the rain is back with a vengeance today and it sits on me like a bully in a playground. I'm having to fend off demons in my head telling me that I am always to blame for everything, I'm watching my friends get married at an alarming rate and I'm filled with a convoluted set of conflicted feelings. I, who have never had anything but alarm bells go off at the very idea of marriage, am wondering what it would feel like to have someone look at me that way, and promise wildly unrealistic things. Contemplating what it would be like to have someone focus on me in that 'there's no-one else in the room' kind of way is not helpful to me right now, and I should know better. I'm in a confused dazed sort of 'wha'happened?' mood.

Tomorrrow, Barack Obama will become the President elect of the United States, Democrats will gain a dizzying number of seats in the House and enough in the Senate to make a real difference, in California I think Prop 2 will win, Prop 8 will lose by a gay hair and 4 could go either way, and in the East Bay there will be little change except that my property taxes will go up. Jesse should become the youngest council member in Berkeley, and the only Hispanic. And for a short time everyone will smile and give way at intersections instead of running each other down.

And we'll be left with a spitoon full of brown slime - the remnants of a political campaign season which has seen Adolf Hitler, Nazis, Karl Marx, Communism and the Brownshirts evoked just a few times too many and the word Muslim become an even dirtier word. I do wonder whether Dick Cheney's endorsement of McCain, right at the end of the campaign was intended, by the neo-cons, to be the final nail in the coffin of this fundamentally decent man who who will go down in history as the man who proved bipartisanship will never lead to the White House.

And me? Seems my biggest failure on the campaign trail of life was to never be able to admit that I really did want to get married and look her in the eyes and tell her I would wrap my arms around her whenever she is scared and that she is the only woman in the room. I'll be less maudlin tomorrow. As long as it stops raining.

Comments

[Deb in Minnesota]

I hope this day brings you blue skies!