(no subject)

About to go vote. It all feels very surreal, what with me being in riding clothes (lesson later), the recent proximity and particulars of this year's Halloween, and the fact that my polling place is at the local methadone clinic.

I think I'm begging off from watching the returns come in with my parents. It feels too much like no one wanting the single woman to be alone, and I'd rather just do my own thing.

horses, guns and elections

That I can totally legitimately use that subject line is rather amazing, don't you think?

On my walk from the subway to the stables, I noticed cops on the block I necesarily turn down. They are standing in the road, and waiving a guy back onto the sidewalk. I think maybe there's been a domestic dispute and they are trying to calm the guy down or something. As I get closer I realize that this is not the case, and in fact the cops are putting trashcans over little bright metal objects on the ground. Oh. Those are bullets.

Now, I'm fairly unsqueamish about guns for a New Yorker, although I haven't fired one in over ten years. But this was bullets, in the road, near my riding lesson, and that was alarming. It had also clearly just happened as there was just a single cop car there and nothing was roped off. So there I was, traipsing through a crime scene.

Upon reaching the stables I found out that Benny kicked my instructor yesterday and she'd broken her toe, so she was out and no lesson for me. Feh.

So I turned around, found the crime scene roped off, walked out of my way, and came home.

By the way, it took me over an hour to get in to vote this morning. When my roommate went it was over two hours, and now there are lines all the way down the long block. Granted, we have only a single voting machine at our location, but this was still surprising. As was the fact that they checked everyone's ID. Photo ID is not actually a requirement for voting, merely that your mark matches your mar in their records, which is why they have you sign next to the scan of your signature from the form. It's one of those things I find quaint, because it's never really changed, but there I was whipping out my passport to vote.

That's all.

i. hate. this.

Greetings from my father's computer. They're watching Sex in the City, so I'm hiding in here and listening to Nick Cave.

I hate this, watching the election returns. There's something to be said though for sitting in my old room in the dark listening to the same sort of music I listened to when I lived in here, writing random crap about nothing, and staring out the window. Well, not really, but I just noticed that it was really damn eerie. Lovely speakers on this Mac though.

But back to the returns, it reminds me, immeasureably, of when I campaigned for Harvey Gantt, because we watched the numbers come in, and we kept saying it was only this or that percentage of the vote, but that wiggle room just kept getting smaller. Kat wisely pointed out that I probably didn't feel like the world was going to end with the results of that election though. I noted that I probably in fact thought I did, at the time, but it's like being in love when you're fifteen -- it's not that you aren't, it's just that you are merely to be the best of your abilities, which are necessarily limited, not that you realize it.

That said, I've been seeing a huge number of posts online about how the world isn't going to end if whichever guy doesn't win. And those posts have been annoying me, because they are absolutely right, but yet consistently miss one point that I feel is absolutely critical.

The issue here isn't about the end of the world, but the reversion to ways in which the world once functioned. Much of what we take for granted in our way of life, especially if you're my age or younger, are incredibly recent developments in the history of the world. And you can argue all day long that they are the way the world should rightly be, but contextually, at this point, they are just abberations -- from mass media to a lack of general conscription. Deficits have been more common than balanced budgets. Healthcare being available based on fiscal and class attainments has generally been the order of things. I could go on and on... and list examples on everything from the state of women to the state of wars and international doctrines.

So no, I don't think this election is about the end of the world. But I do think it's about whether we're ready to live in the modern world and about whether there really is any such thing.