the world we love (original) (raw)

Because I have the luxury of not being at work for most of Tuesday, I'll be spending the day volunteering — phonebanking with my union, mostly, but also working a couple of driver shifts for canvassers and probably picking up some Election Protection Project volunteers after the polls close.

All of which meant casting an absentee ballot today. So I put on a sweater and my headphones, stepped off the porch into the grey afternoon to the sound of

I always believed in futures I hope for better in November

and set off down the sidewalk, scuffing through the damp fallen leaves: maroon, brown, burnt orange, a few bright yellow, a few that still showed silver-green on their undersides.

Main Street goes down a hill to the railroad depot, which is now the chamber of commerce, and then up again to City Hall, which used to be City Hall and Library but is now City Hall and Opera House. On the way you pass the house with a leafless birch tree decorated with a sign — "Norwegian Saguaro Cactus" — and then the one with the ceramic chicken tucked under the shrubs at the corner of the house.

City Hall's too warm inside, but the receptionist is friendly. The city clerk isn't; she looks like her feet hurt and acts like she'd rather be anywhere else, and I thought, well, whoever dreams of growing up to be city clerk anyway? She looked at me sideways as she handed me the very large ballot; "have you ever filled one of these out before?"

"Yes," I said, wondering what she saw. This is my fourth presidential election, but, okay: dirty trainers, baggy jeans, gray wool sweater getting a little worn around the edges, headphones, hair no doubt sticking straight up, expression possibly a little sullen — maybe I'm the picture of disaffected youth who's never bothered to vote before. Maybe I should've worn a black hoodie, or at least the gray one I wear half the time anyway.

now's the time to disagree

Outside, getting ready to hit play for the half-mile walk home, I smiled at the postal delivery guy unwrapping a chocolate bar a few steps away. "How you doing?" he asked. "I'm good," I said; "I just voted." "That's good," he said, "good for you," and broke off a piece of chocolate and handed it to me. "Thanks," I said. He raised the chocolate in a little salute and turned off towards the post office, and I went the opposite direction, back down the hill.

got to take what you can these days there's so much ahead and so much regret

The two blocks between City Hall and the railroad tracks are about as close as we come to having a bad part of town, or maybe not so much bad as kind of tacky: a used-car lot, an abandoned service station, a junky secondhand shop, the Whatever Bar, and the Nevermind Saloon, which right now has a row of pumpkins in the front window and looks shabby and a little wistful in the afternoon light before the neon beer signs are turned on.

I'm in love with the ordinary

Back up the hill, the memorial fountain's been covered over with dark green plastic. The leaves on the south side of the street are muddy. A plastic skeleton sits in the chair in the barber shop's front window. I crossed the street at the Lutheran church crosswalk rather than scooting across in the middle of the block like I usually do; maybe it's the civic duty rubbing off, turning me into a law-abiding citizen for an extra minute or two. On a front porch halfway down the block, a pumpkin-headed scarecrow is propped in a rocking chair.

I came around the corner with a question ringing through the headphones:

don't it feel like sunshine after all?

and I thought: Yes. Yes, it does.