In one of the Superman movies, three criminals escape from the Phantom Zone and make life generally uncomfortable for Superman and anyone within about five miles of him. One of the subplots is that Lois learns his secret identity; at the end of the flick, he mesmerizes her, so that she forgets it, and, as a side effect, all of the devastation that's been visited on Metropolis, a city that probably has a standing designation as a federal disaster area. Coming to, she looks around the newsroom and cheerily asks 'So, what's new with the world?' And reaps a harvest of stares.
Now that the election is over, I feel some identification with that. Driving in to work this morning, I caught a brief article about Arafat's condition, and thought "Who?" And then it came back. Oh, yeah, Arafat, Palestinian, got it. Its as if while the campaign was going on, I swapped completely out of this world and into one where it really mattered that I keep up to date on what was going on in the political zone, have opinions on troop deployments and gay marriage and transportation funding. And then, when the bubble burst, here I was again. Life slowed down to sublight speed, and the most important thing was whether we remembered to get milk, whether I had sent out that email I meant to send, and, oh yeah, I really should call my periodontist. Major political schemes have no being in that world -- they simply don't exist; they're completely phase-shifted out of sight. Life is quieter now. And that's not a bad thing.
Though every so often I find myself thinking "There's something about Clark Kent...and Superman...right on the tip of my tongue..."
4 comments:
I'm glad you stopped by, I'm in the middle of changing things though, including a different comments system. I apologize if your comment gets lost in the process, but you should stop by again and tell me what you think!
Did you ever watch Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman? On that series, Lois first learned Clark's secret identity when they traveled through time with HG Wells to stop a criminal mastermind from the future. When she found out, Lois jotted a note to herself on an envelope in her purse, so even when they travelled back, if this never happened, she would still know. (Granted, how would the note on the envelope exist if this never happened, but it is just a tv series.) Clark sees the note before she does and destroys it--leaving her with a funny feeling but nothing more than that.
I think you drew a great parallel between those feelings and how we all feel now that the election is over. All of the hope that something might be different seems like a dream and now things like grocery shopping are important again. It is important to hold onto a piece of that hope and heartbreak--so it can motivate us over the next 4 years to stand up for causes we believe in and support our next Presidential hopeful.
Angie -- I am not thinking of it as four years. I'm thinking of it as three and a half years -- because thats when Bush will have to start acting like he cares again, so as to be able to transfer his 'presidential magic' to whomever the Republicans will be putting up then. I have given a little thought to trying to get involved in local politics, even though I don't really care who gets into office as County Commissioner for Really Trivial Stuff. Even though I know that the CCRTS has more impact on my daily life than POTUS does, I cared more about that than I do about the local stuff. It's illogical, I know.
What really fascinates me, in the old sense of fascination being a form of entrancement, is wondering why all of those people voted for Bush. I'm assuming that the vast majority are normal people -- not bright, not stupid. Clearly, they heard things from him that resonated with them. Some of those things scare me. I heard a fellow from Columbus, on NPR, saying something like 'If you're gay, thats your problem. Don't drag me down with you' and right there in the car, I said 'well, there speaks the voice of the flaming bigot'. Yet a minute later I thought maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe he's really saying that he's unsettled and uncomfortable, and Bush appealed to his need for stablity -- for 'the way things used to be'. Thats independent of what his feelings might be about gay marriage, but its complementary. It might be that regardless of their opinions on specific issues, people were just saying 'We're scared, and we don't want any more changes for a while'.
I know, I'm not making much sense. I'm still running this stuff through the mixmaster.....
Me, too. Even when I was opposed to the concept, I didn't think of it as 'your problem'. Oh, and didn't he say 'choose to be gay'? I thought that was pretty interesting, too. There's a lot of education to be done, I think.
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