 |
| Hall Groat II, "Nocturnal Eggs" |
Tuesday, the United States underwent an historic mid-term election. I had just had a COVID 19 second booster shot, had tripped and fallen flat on the concrete, sprained a thumb and perhaps re-broken a wrist that had healed from a similar fall a year and a half before. But I voted. I spent a day in pain from the injuries and in a minor state of despair for my country and my life as it is diminished in power through age and the normal processes of personal infirmity and loss.
I am about Joe Biden's age. I watched him thrash about as a young senator--hopeful, bright, and a bit brash--and had not thought much of him until he emerged as a first-rate vice president to Barack Obama, whom I admired more than any man I had seen as president in my lifetime. I didn't worship Obama, but his style, composure, and grace under pressure, had given me hope after years of seeing lesser men in the role of leader of the free world. Joe and Barack were an affable,competent team who worked well together and seemed to enjoy each other's company. The hate engendered against them baffled me, but by the time they left office the propaganda machine had ginned up a section of the electorate I never knew anything about, Party faithfuls who would buy any obnoxious myth if it was repeated often enough. The very things I admired about President Obama were the attributes they despised, a cool head in spite of a hostile environment, a superior intellect and wit, and a patriotic vision for the country and promise of hope for the world.
I wished that Biden had been the man to succeed him in office, but, through a few unanticipated twists of fate, he was not. Through the four years of the Trump presidency and the years following, I was mostly quarantined and suffered a low-level depression. Raised in the post-WWII period when we were taught our country was great, I thought we were the envy of the world. All that was shattered as I grew older and I saw friends die of the effects of COVID, and others become indoctrinated into what would have to be identified as a cult based on propaganda and deliberate distortions by political entities hungry for power and lacking in character. Just coping with the day-to-day events of life was exhausting, as if there were a cloud over us all. I really thought the mid-term election of 2022 might be the last straw of humanity as I knew it, if it was after all the "red tsunami" the polls had predicted. Those last days from the election until all the votes were counted seemed to portend doom for those of us who had expected better.
Then I woke up the day after election and learned that the red tsunami had not happened. Some excellent people had actually won and only a handful of cult members were going to take their place in offices around the country. They would do what they could to thwart the programs President Biden has managed to pass, but even Biden himself, who had become downtrodden and seemed hopeless in his speeches--no matter how bright and brilliant his words and actions had been in the mere two years he was in office--was bouyed and optimistic again.
The pains in my injured wrist have subsided. The sprained thumb is almost operable again. The sun is out. A few weeks ago I completed having surgery on my eyes for cataracts, and my vision is clear and brighter than it has been for years. I am working on revising my new book and thinking of myself as a writer again. And there is this strange feeling, like a distant memory, which overtakes my days. I think we used to call it joy.
