Catching Up with Fall

A quiet evening at home is a rare thing these days.
I know I've been rather incommunicado lately, so it may help to mention that I've just recently settled into a new house with some friends, ending my 2-year stint of living above a bus stop on Hawthorne. So long, noisy streets. Moving into the lush bubble that is Ladd's Addition has made the world seem a good deal quieter.
And what a crazy time it is in the world. Up until a few months ago, I hadn't followed politics too closely; hell, before trudging down to the Waterfront Park to hear Obama speak a few months back I'd never even heard the man's voice before (on that day it was not exactly clear - by the time I arrived the crowds made anything in earshot nigh indiscernible. But I digress).
Cut to now, mid-October. I've been catching up with the world in a number of ways. I finally discovered Hulu, much to the detriment of my productivity, DropBox, which makes the slow, temperamental file-transfer site YouSendIt seem Stone Age by comparison, and Twitter's constant stream of Election-related updates. It's Hulu that has really helped me reconnect with current events: Who knew you could have The Daily Show dropped in your Queue four days a week with the push of a button? A long way since TiVo, we have come.
At any rate, all this newfangled interweb technology has got me quite over-stimulated with Election-frenzy information, to the point that I'm starting to lose sleep over it. My resigned position over the last several months has been more or less pessimistic about the possibility of any real change (this shirt says it well). Sure, I'm hopeful, but anyone who's ever been let down will tell you it's better to prepare for disappointment than walk into it blindly. At worst you get what you were expecting, at best you're happily surprised.
But this has been changing over the last few days.
Maybe it's the influx of articles like this that do it. I know I can't read anything by Mark Morford or watch an episode of Jon Stewart and really allow it to get my hopes up; but any sign that the people on the fence might actually be backlashing against McCain at this late hour for the vile personal attacks that have been the mainstay of the McCain campaign lately is another matter.
And yet the more that little kernel of hope and possibility gnaws at my brain, the more worried I become. Have you seen those people in the McCain-Palin mob? I am well aware that places like New York and San Francisco and Portland are bubbles of primarily liberally-minded voters; but outside the small world I live in people are quite different. They are fearful and violent. Already there are accounts of incidents like this and this coming to the front. How many more people share these men's sentiments?
I am afraid.
For while a McCain victory (which, inevitably, would turn into a Palin presidency, something absurd to the point of seeming like some Monty Python sketch that never was) would no doubt be a spirit-crushing disappointment, an Obama victory brings out a different fear altogether: the fear of what certain Americans will do should it occur.
More than ever in my short life, I'm afraid of us.
So I hope that all goes well, and resign myself to trying to live as well as I can in the meantime. Trying to spend more time enjoying the simple quiet of walks through my new neighborhood, where squirrels and crows are the only life I encounter. Trying to savor the changing of the seasons, and think that while the whole world seems to be on the verge of something, be it for better or for worse, it's still a lovely evening that I'm pretty grateful to have to myself.