The weather finally turned after a summer that seemed like it would never let up. It was nearly the end of October before it came, but it finally arrived. While I’m not chomping at the bit for winter, I enjoy the cooler weather and the intermittent gray skies of autumn. When the he sky’s get that deep, almost purplish gray, the colors of the trees, juxtaposed against it, seem to vibrate at such beautifully rich intensity. I imagine I’ll be complaining about the cold soon enough. I like the change but I’ll tire of it after a few weeks of cold morning window scraping.
I’ve been struggling to get the final leg of the military collection of “Ghosts” posts completed. Somewhat due to a lack of mental energy (my job has been leaving me mentally wiped at the end of the day), but also connection to the words and what it is I’m trying to get at. It feels like the initial thread has been lost, and now I’m pounding words in a attempt to document a very narrow, sequential, trajectory. The wholeness, or the fullness, whether simply an illusion or an actual reality, has left me.
So much of it is fiction at this point. I mean, I remember the places and the gist of what we were saying, but to document actual speech is nothing short of a farce. I guess that is how it goes, you capture the sentiment, the general idea of what was said, and fill in the rest. I did have a thought at one point of truly going the fiction route and introducing some outlandish bit, maybe an extraterrestrial encounter, just slide that into the story out of nowhere for the fuck of it. Seeing that the whole idea of this blog is to serve as a creative space, I probably should have. It may have actually lent something of interest to the writing.
Anyway, my little characters are frozen in a truck that is heading north toward Seattle. Frozen in the story like the still images of my memory, the three of us piled into that truck, running from their obligations, running from their lives. They have this idea that they’re going to hook up with the Grateful Dead tour. It’s not like they’re part of the United States Marine Corps and have signed away their lives or anything. Oh, the brashness of being so young. I’m amazed we did it, that we left, just like that. Took a little detour and had an adventure. I’ll never forget it, but writing it down makes it all seem so trivial. A couple of guys who did something stupid and immature. I don’t know. I don’t know how I really feel about it, or how I reconcile the varied feelings I have about it. At one remove I’m all for that kid leaving and having an adventure, for thumbing his nose at the restriction and the responsibility and all the constraints of being a young adult. At another, I’m embarrassed how that kid could be so goddamn stupid and immature and irresponsible.
Work has been insanely busy. Every day is a mad dash, with so many inputs it leaves my head aching and my eyes bugged out by the end of the day. Not much more to say about that.
We’re fast approaching election day. Dark days ahead I’m afraid. I say it without exaggeration: unless their is a miracle, we’re going to experience the death of our democracy on Tuesday. They’ll call it a democracy, but it will not be one any longer. When one party has decided the rule of law no longer applies, that the peaceful transition of power is no longer applicable, that the acceptance of the voters will no longer matters, that is when it all ends. Our democracy will have failed.
My wife and I got into an argument about it the other evening. She has hope, a belief that the “pendulum swings both ways”. It may have before, but when you put people in power of the ballot box and the tallying of the results, and those people care nothing of what those results actually amount to, then you’ve stopped the pendulum. At that point your putting on a show, a fiction, pretending. No different than Russia, or China.
I don’t know what you can do about it other than vote, and when that is gone? What then?
Dark days ahead, that’s all I see.
Author: Jason Jacobs
Jason Jacobs is an artist, project manager, and frontend web designer living and working in Boise, Idaho. Beyond work he spends his time with family, as well as reading, writing articles for Uhmm, and working on his art. All words and opinions, etc., are his and do not reflect the positions or beliefs of anyone other than himself.