Optimism

Last night I found myself, after a frustrating day of misunderstanding & close-mindedness, crying while watching the rerun of the Republican National Convention, while watching a floor full of people chanting "USA" and "Send them home" when a Puerto Rican woman, with dark skin and accented English, took the stage.

Today, I cried when Patrick showed me this ad, about love and acceptance and what it means to be human. I am cheered, and I promise I'll get off the political soapbox, at least for a little while.

Rant.

I am tired, and angry, and this is the most despicable thing, in a list of despicable things, that I have heard and seen in a long, long while.

These people want to run our country.

Baby Face

One of the things I love about visiting Patrick's family in Alabama is seeing pictures of Patrick up (please see this for reference) around their home, and the stories his parents tell me each night about him and his brother growing up. I suppose one thing I like about it is how Patrick he was, even as a little boy, telling his mother he wouldn't be her son anymore if he had to wash his hands and go inside for dinner.

Maybe it's silly, or overly sentimental or wishful, but sometimes I'm overwhelmed by the 25 years of Patrick's life I wasn't there for. There's no part of me that wishes for a high school sweetheart kind of romance, of course, and I'm very glad that I met Patrick as an adult, when our ideas and outlooks on life might be more stable than when we were five, or ten, or fifteen.

Plus, my awkward phase extended a little too long for my liking, and I never really went for the Christian boys back then. 


What I'm grateful for, though, is to go to Madison, Alabama, to see a picture from Patrick's first birthday, when he smashed his face right into his cake at his grandparents' house, and to see gapteeth, and Peter Pan at Halloween, and a crying baby with a fat head at Christmastime.

Into the Deep

Today I drive south with Patrick, his mother, and his brother to Panama City, Florida, the furthest south I have ever been.

Patrick's grandfather, who lives down on the Florida panhandle, is fond of saying that anyone who lives north of Dothan, Alabama is a Yankee. If you follow that hyperlink, you'll see why I'm telling you this.

The other day, Patrick's parents informed me that a tropical storm is brewing in the Gulf, set to reach both the Florida coast and hurricane status about the time we arrive on Sunday. Now, Patrick tries to tell me that earthquakes and volcanoes on the west coast are scary, but I question the sanity of a region of people that lives with hurricanes, and tornadoes, and chiggers and considers this par for the course.

I'm comforted by the fact that I am assured Gulf oysters are the best in the world, at the very least.

Slave Songs

Outside of Huntsville, there is a black university called Oakwood, that sits on what used to be a southern plantation. We went today with Patrick's old friend Craig, a man who will eventually get his PhD in slave and race relation history to see the slave cemetery on the Oakwood property. One of the placards told us that Dred Scott's second wife and two children were likely buried on the location.

It was just a field, in the middle of other fields, with markers put in much after the slaves were buried there--no names, or dates. Just songs and poems and hymns, messages to commemorate the lives spent in slavery.

In Which She Acts Like She Knows Something About Politics

I'm (still) reading David Foster Wallace's collection of essays called Consider the Lobster. It's a slow read, and his sentences are complex, and his ideas are even more so, but I've never been the kind of person to choose pleasure reading based on ease. I'm on "Up, Simba," which details Wallace's time on John McCain's campaign trail for the 2000 primary--the one that McCain lost to Bush, who Wallace refers to throughout the entire essay only as "The Shrub" or Bush_2.

It is long, and I do not care for politics, primaries, or McCain, but it is amazing. What I love about DFW is that he manages to articulate exactly the points that I invariably end up huffing and puffing and furious about in arguments--but he does it in the calmest, most collected way possible.

I've been bickering lately with Patrick's best friend, a New Hampshire native in his early 20s who is voting this fall for Vermin Supreme, a man who wears a boot on his head and promises every citizen a free pony. The absolutely enticing possibility of a pony aside, this is one of the more illogical, white-&-male-privileged acts I can possibly think of, but I've never managed to articulate this clearly to our friend, let alone have a discussion about it without getting indignant about my uterus & waxing poetic about our societal responsibilities as educated young people. 

The problem with voting for Vermin Supreme is that our friend is, in effect, voting for the opposite of what he believes in, lesser of two evils arguments be damned. But I can't explain this any better than David Foster Wallace can. He is referring to primary elections here, and not to voting for a write-in pun-ster that throws glitter at his opponents, but the sentiment--and the implications--are the same: 

Let’s pause here one second for a quick Rolling Stone PSA. Assuming you are demographically a Young Voter, it is again worth a moment of your valuable time to consider the implications of the techs’ last couple points. If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don’t bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible psychological reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don’t bullshit yourself that you’re not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard’s vote.

By being in America, and not moving to Canada as most twenty-somethings have threatened to do at least once, we are all participating in the "system," as Patrick likes to call it. This is not a choice. Act accordingly, and with your own--and the country's--best interests in mind.

Fresh Feeling

Outside of Woodville, Alabama, there is a state park called "Cathedral Caverns." Under the forests and rocks and dirt and kitschy stuffed bats in the park gift shop, there is a cave system that stretches far back under what they, in northern Alabama, call a mountain, and I, of course, would call a foothill. I had never been in a cave before yesterday, since the northwest's propensity for earthquakes tends to hinder underground cavern systems from forming, and also because I have seen the movie The Descent, thank you very much, and I know what lives in caves underground.

Cathedral Caverns was named when Jay Gurley brought his wife underground, to see where he spent his days exploring & spelunking. He took her back to the stalagmite forest, where pillars and columns reached up from the floor and down from the ceiling to touch each other over millions of years, and she saw splendor and wonders that she told him were equal to the beauty of the old cathedrals of Europe. The dorky teenage tour guide was paid to point out to us stalagmite formations that supposedly resembled church spires, organs, and gargoyles, but I think Mrs. Gurley's comparison was more transcendant than that. 

Cathedral Caverns boasts some of the world's most stunning formations, including the largest column in the world, named Goliath, which is 243 feet around, and the largest (commercial) cave mouth in the world, pictured just above.

Your eyes play tricks on you in the caves, showing deep pits that are actually reflecting pools of water, and bats flit almost silently from room to cavernous room. On the ceilings in more than a few places are embedded sharks teeth, evidence that millenia ago, an ocean stretched up past the Gulf to cover all of Alabama, on up into Kentucky & southern Illinois.

As we walked deeper into the caves, our tour guide turned the lights off behind us, until we reached the end of the paved walkways. The caves stretch about a mile, maybe two, further back, and the final room of the caverns is called the crystal room. The calcite formations there are so pure they are white, and shine and sparkle like quartz. To get there, you have to wiggle your way through a hole the size of a five gallon bucket, and climb over boulders that have been in the same place, undisturbed, for more time than I can fathom.

At the end of the tour, our guide flicked off the final switch, leaving us in total darkness. We were 3/4 of a mile from the entrance, around twists and turns, with mammoth rock formations blocking out any possible sunlight. The guide said that within 48 hours, we would go blind, as our body would tell us we no longer needed to see, and our other senses would kick into high gear. My eyes strained, the muscles pulsing and dilating, and I felt disconnected in a way I have never, ever felt before. When I told Patrick this, as we walked back toward the cave entrance, he said I was experiencing an entirely new sensation, something for which my mind had no approximation. I haven't felt anything that new or different in 25 years.