Today was election day in the United States.
I woke up early to walk my dog around the neighborhood and the sky was red- it reminded me of the saying “red in the morning, sailor take warning”.
I drove downtown and on the side of the road there was an ambulance and firetruck tending to a person laying face up on the sidewalk- one of the workers laid a thin grey blanket over the person while another tore open a plastic bag containing a black body bag.
The wind picked up in the afternoon and it reminded me of a time back in 2017 when I did a dive into learning about wiccan-new-agey spirituality traditions- wind can be a cleansing force or a harbinger of change, perhaps those are two sides to the same coin.
On a whim, perhaps to help keep positive and avoid looking up election results, I searched “voting” in Spotify and had the chance to listen to some songs that were, perhaps very tangentially at times related to voting. In general they included some peppy tunes, empowerment songs, and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You”.
“Where is the Love?” by the Black Eyed Peas also came on and it struck me how differently that song hits now compared to when I first heard it around 2010. Today, it made me feel hopeless. My own life is going pretty good, much better than I could have hoped for but in the larger scheme of things, it really feels like we’re on the precipice of a shift in this country while at the same time regressing to fear. We’ve been teetering on the edge, multiple edges, for years now and I keep wondering if this is finally the shakeup that throws us over the edge. Perhaps we already went over that edge years ago and we’ve been tumbling ever since. Rome didn’t fall in a day after all.
I was able to see the documentary “Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project” today too. For the first time in my adult life, I saw a video recording from a news broadcast of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center on 9/11. There was also a clip of Obama’s acceptance speech from when he became President-Elect back in 2008. Seeing the clips on election night 2024, sixteen years later, was surreal given how much has happened in those ensuing years.
The sunset today painted the sky red, recalling the saying “red at night, sailor’s delight”. Even the atmosphere isn’t too sure where it stands.
We’re in for a few likely rocky weeks so buckle up, drink plenty of water, check in on your friends, and maybe go sit in the sun for a little bit. We’ll regroup on the flipside.
-Katie B
Katie Buesch 