how anyone ever accomplished anything in the south i do not know. how anyone ever accomplished anything in the north, during summer, is equally confounding. because here i am, looking at my not-so-lengthy to-do list and, after some pretense of rescheduling, deciding that nothing is important because the heat is just too oppressive. the heat and humidity have assumed a steady stream into my room. i've tried closing the curtains and the window, opening the curtains and the window, even a hybrid of the two, and i have an industrial-sized fan in front of my face, settled on the highest setting. i'm even lounging in the most unflattering and light outfit i could manage - and here i am, baking in my bed, looking at my to-do list and deciding that everything can be rescheduled or put off until we dip into the 80's.

off the top of my head, i can only think of one truly great floridian (which, appropriately, denotes residency in florida, not origination): ernest hemingway. he settled in key west, the southernmost tip of the archipelago that extends from the peninsula, closer to the equator than i've ever lived and, thus, much more prone to heat. and while he wrote tremendous novels, novels of love and courage and honor and independence, he also killed himself. because he died before the widespread adoption of the necessity i call air conditioning, something tells me it was the heat that did him in. no man, however strong, can write of matadors and the spanish civil war and brett ashley in that heat and not lose the will to live. and so he lost it, and so he shot himself.

i'm not yet at that point. though my shirt has decided that it can, indeed, support condensation, i've not given up. my laundry's in the dryer, and it gives me an excuse to feel productive without actually performing any labor. it's an accomplice in my attempts at delusion: i have done this, and so i can go on to do other great things. really, though, my accomplishments are sparse and pathetic and rather depressing. i've managed to keep my room clean. i moved a mirror. i've oriented a fan in front of my face. i've written two paragraphs. i took a much-needed shower. end.

unfortunately, i'm not like ernest hemingway (aside from the obvious unfavorable comparison between my writing and his). neither love nor courage comfort me in this oppressive heat; and even then, i'm unable to accomplish even the imagery of such things when the weather happens to be more conducive. he became lost in thought, in words; i am lost in ambivalence and reluctance. it is 91 degrees. two more hours, and we shall achieve the 80's. then, maybe, i'll be able to look at my to-do list with something more than an eye for excuses. i'll get around to what i've been meaning to do all along. and unlike ernest hemingway, i won't give up - because i have a fan and few accomplishments and a sense of purpose. sometimes, that's all one needs. 

no regrets

it's easy and convenient, and maybe too frequent, for us to gauge victory in tangible terms. a win is a win, for instance; and a loss, no matter how engaging or fulfilling, is a loss. right now, as barack obama claims the democratic nomination and hillary clinton prepares to concede, i feel like the victor. maybe that language is a little too self-congratulatory - i'll say, instead, that i feel fulfilled. i was a part of her campaign from the beginning, and though there is a sense of loss - will i ever regain the time i spent working for her evasive victory? probably not - i'm struck more by my feeling of accomplishment, of satisfaction, of pride in my chosen candidate than whatever regrets or recriminations i could fashion.

instead, with all that has happened and with all that will happen, i'm more than satisfied with my decisions. i could have supported her from my desk chair, i suppose; i could have been satiated with petty donations and occasional blog posts, or talked to my friends and neighbors (the most useless box a potential volunteer could check on our GET INVOLVED sheets). i could have done this or that, walked into a campaign office when the fancy struck or when i had the spare time, making calls with passionate indifference. but i didn't do that. i'm proud of the fact that i gave up  a semester for hillary clinton. and if that semester wasn't as successful as it could have been - she did not, in fact, win the democratic nomination - i've no hesitancy to fight for my beliefs.

my mother didn't quite see it that way; it took a while for her to regain her composure. working and on break, she had to fight a few co-workers to change the channel to CNN in time for hillary's speech. as she told me later, she felt a sense of emptiness and futility watching her on tv - those hours we spent calling behind our desks, persuading the good folks of northern new hampshire to support a woman for the presidency, the photos i sent her, the relationships i cultivated in plymouth: these were wasted, for our candidate did not win.

but my time off was more than that. it was more than phone calls, canvass packets, volunteers and interns, photos, snowbanks, expense reports. it was cathartic, relieving, real. i wouldn't trade that experience - the people i met, the stories i heard, the urges to quit i had to fight and the sense of fate i had to embrace - for anything. i grew more during those six months in new hampshire than i had in a full year of harvard. and i actually made history by doing it.

people will say (in fact, pundits are already saying it) that hillary clinton should have conceded tonight. these are the same people who said that she should concede after iowa, after super tuesday, after ohio, after pennsylvania, after indiana, after west virginia, after kentucky, after puerto rico. these are also the same people who said she was the inevitable candidate before any contest was conducted. they will demean her, belittle her, repeat the charges and accusations that have followed her since she declined her husband's name and began making more money than the governor. but they won't be able to take away the fact that she was the first woman to win a presidential primary; and they won't be able to take away the fact that i was a part of it. 

 

15 step

since i've met kristen, words - both spoken and written - have assumed a special sort of significance in my life. i've learned to avoid saying things to simultaneously irritate, disgust, and enrage her, or use them selectively to intentionally piss her off. moist. cheesy. (or anything relating to cheese, for that matter.) there's another one, too, something like damp or pickled or anything relating to an unsavory foodstuff or sweat. in any case, kristen has taught me that i, too, dislike some words and love others.

crisp is one of my favorite words - and one of hers, too. to me, it is the early morning in florida's winter. it is the clear blue sky, dotted with lethargic clouds; and, framed by tall oak and pine and palm trees, it hardly moves, brazenly languorous, in no great rush. it is when i walk outside, tennis racket in hand, a light sweater under my arm, just in case. it is when i am younger, much younger than my soon-to-be twenty years. it is when we are living in a three-story apartment in kissimmee, florida; i just left elementary school for the new middle school, and with the adolescent confusion typical of dollar novels, i need to prove myself and fit in and yet remain the person i am. it is metal gear solid, basketball, the swimming pool, algebra, pokemon cards. it is a new life, a yearning for independence, my mother.

tonight, crisp was different. it was in the air, in the breeze, moving between the leaves of these ancient trees and the cracks of cement between these ancient bricks. it hovered between the boutiques on mass. ave. toward porter square; it was in porter square, the homeless woman looking downtrodden beneath her bags, one of which presented a mesh interpretation of the american flag, my whisper that i knew what she was feeling and that she would overcome, too. it was in my return, along the river, the motorcycle that disrupted the early night and scared the shit out of me. it was in that brief moment of fear and the longer moment of recovery; it was in the couples i passed, their hands clutched and their collars popped, no doubt thinking about the boutiques they had just left.

and yet, despite the warring seasons and images and settings and times, i feel the same - the same need to prove myself, the same need to fit in. i miss my family, and i miss my friends. i long for the security of stasis, of plans, of not caring. and i am here, sitting in bed, my run behind me, the sensations of that peculiar crispness long past. for i am here, sitting in bed, without my family and without my friends. i need to prove to myself that i can, indeed, survive; without them, on my own, with my paper cup full of change and my box of matzah. whatever happens, i must remember that freedom inherent in running, the crispness rushing through my hair and past my shirt and between my legs, all around me, in everything. it is summer, and i am alone - but i have my memories, i have my reasons, and i have my words.

signs of love

there seems to be something energizing, if masochistic, about staying up past one's bedtime. i set these for myself every night, convincing myself that i'll wake up as intended, that my sleep-deprived logic - no matter how cajoling or sincere - won't win. but that rarely happens. my alarm goes off (these days, its sound might as well herald a tornado) and i ignore it. i become pissed off that it finds a way into my dreams, invades my private thoughts and passes muster as something original and creative. and because i want to remain in that pure world, free of responsibility and realism, i wake up even later than my most generous allowance.

i know myself well enough to suppose that i won't wake up as intended (at 6:40am), that i won't fall asleep for a while, and that i won't miss the sleep tomorrow. i'm lying, and that's okay; i have a reason to prolong my night.

there have been whispers about hillary clinton's macabre tendencies for a while. maureen dowd has not-so-privately hinted at senator clinton's desire to tarnish a promising political talent (barack obama), no matter the cost and no matter the collateral damage. she's running because she's selfish; she's still in the race because "anything can happen." the undertones of that rationale - that "anything can happen" - have always been negative. someone might kill our greatest hope, for instance. and hillary will be there when it happens, carrying the casket and offering her services for a fee.

so it isn't surprising that the press - fueled by the internets - would jump on a story i find hardly worth mentioning. now infamously, and by turns alarmingly and cunningly and stupidly and desperately, senator clinton remarked that robert f. kennedy was assassinated in june of 1968. here's the quote that's been causing such outrage:

“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”

the sentence that everyone's been focusing on - especially maureen dowd - is the latter. hillary mentions "assassination," and therefore must be implying that barack obama might be a little bit vulnerable to it. nevermind that senator clinton herself, among the most passionately hated politicians in the United States, is subject to the danger too. instead, as ms. dowd so nicely puts it,

"In politics, there are many unpredictable and unsavory twists and turns. That’s why she’s hanging around, and that’s why she and Bill want to force Barack Obama to take her as his vice president, even if he doesn’t want her, even if Michelle can’t stand her, even if she has to stir the sexist pot, and even if she tarnishes his silvery change message."

of course, i don't condone the idea of senator obama's assassination - far from it. but neither do i condone the vilification of an effective senator and committed public servant. the vitriol that so many obama supporters (and non-aligned democrats) are spewing at senator clinton stem from a basis established by her most prominent detractors in the republican party: hillary clinton - cold, calculating, shrill, bitchy, probate-court attending ex-wife hillary clinton - is horrid enough to actually wish for a man's assassination. despite her years of working for universal health care, education improvement, poverty reduction, civil rights, reproductive rights, social justice, and equal opportunity, hillary clinton - cold, calcualting, shrill, bitchy, murderous hillary clinton - is ambitious and selfish enough to actually wish for a man's assassination.

please.

while the comment was more than unfortunate, the new york times - which has been more and more in favor of hope recently - actually contextualized of her quote and its implications:

"It was in the context of discussions about her political future that Mrs. Clinton made the remarks on Friday to the editorial board of The Sioux Falls Argus Leader. She had said that some people whom she did not name were trying to push her out of the race, but she noted that historically many races had gone on longer than hers. “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right?” she said. “We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”

oh. well that does a lot to clear up the matter, doesn't it? still, she could have said, "and bobby kennedy ran until june of 1968." that probably would have been more tasteful. but at the same time, why shroud an extraordinarily well-known historical fact in an exclusive euphemism? if the world knows that bobby kennedy was assassinated - and it does, to judge by emilio estevez's recent film - why not explicitly reference it? we don't say that the titanic stopped sailing in 1912; we say that it sunk.

once again, people are allowing their pre-conceived notions to define a candidate's actions. when hillary teared-up (she didn't cry) in new hampshire on the eve of the primary, it was intentional. then, she needed to fake humanity. and now, on the eve of the last democratic primaries, she references an assassination - proving that she was, indeed, never graced with the humanity we never thought she had.

and this little tete-a-tete, however non-confrontational (to his credit, senator obama's hardly referenced it), illustrates the degree to which we need to conscientiously rebuild the democratic party. both campaigns have gone negative, and both have supporters who passionately hate the other. some men will never vote for a woman, and some caucasians will never vote for an african-american. fortunately, these proclivities - however hostile - are largely subdued. unfortunately, a party fractured enough to vilify one of its most successful and most committed members is a party doomed to fail. we must remember, no matter whom we support, that unity is more important than ourselves and our candidates.

in limbo

it's taken a while, but hillary supporters at harvard are starting to come out of the woodwork. it seems that the threat of an obama nomination--or, perhaps more accurately, the threat of a non-hillary nomination--has induced some students to assure me of their support. people whom i had never thought to support hillary (it's quite a thing for me not to know who supports hillary and who doesn't, really) have taken me aside, their voices grave, asking me for my thoughts. and my thoughts--at once optimistic and resigned--are of no comfort.

it feels like it's the beginning of the end. when senator clinton won indiana and lost north carolina--and when barack obama gained a total of twelve delegates out of more than two hundred possible--i thought there was hope. hillary won indiana, after all, even though she was heavily outspent in a state that neighbors obama's home turf. and so, when the press declared hillary's campaign dead for the third or fourth time, i was rightfully pissed off. meanwhile, pundits the world over declared that the democratic party was fractured, citing exit polls in indiana suggesting that a large number of hillary supporters would rather vote for mccain or stay home than vote for barack obama.

my first reaction was skepticism. though it isn't unprecedented or without basis, the argument that long primary seasons harm the candidates involved and engender bitterness between the two camps is somewhat simplistic. it's natural to think that months of negative ads raise the negatives of both candidates, that jibs and jabs adversely affect each candidate's supporters. and polls have suggested that both obama's and clinton's negatives have risen (an unfortunate thing for hillary, too, because hers were already pretty high). nevertheless, i prefer the counterargument: that this extended fight for the nomination is a good thing, especially if barack obama gets the democratic nomination, because it's prepared the candidates for the much more specious attacks to come from the Evil Republicans.

but now i'm beginning to see something different. my mother--my very own mother! a democrat!--recently told me that she'd rather stay home than vote for barack obama, but only if hillary isn't on the ticket. (my response: "we'll talk about this later, and i'll make you change your mind.") another one of my friends approached me in the library a few days ago, bemoaning the changed tide in the race, declaring, "i'm just so pissed off right now that i don't think i'll vote for him out of bitterness." one of my teachers from high school, a life-long republican whom i persuaded to support hillary over john mccain, was more explicit in her disapproval of obama: "just about all of what he promised in his NC acceptance speech cannot be accomplished. when he is finally President (if he makes it), the huge bubble he has created will develop a hole and all the air will leak out." (to be fair, she also called john mccain "a wet dishrag right in the face.")

my point: i'm beginning to see the signs of disenchantment that the punditocracy blathers about endlessly. still, i'll work tirelessly to make sure we have a democratic president for the next four years. obama--though hardly my first choice--is a great man, a great american, and a great candidate. he is promising. and if he isn't particularly inspirational to me, the fact that so many of my peers are inspired by his candidacy is, in itself, pretty inspirational. i've come a long way in my resignation that he's the presumptive democratic nominee. but at this point, to fight the more bitter feelings of millions of clinton supporters, he might have to buck maureen dowd and ask hillary to be his vp.

one of these things first

i'm seven hours back in boston, fifty-three minutes out of mother's day, sitting in the dining hall, one of three students, the only one ostensibly not working---watching the janitor (one of many, i assume) clean up the intransigences of harvard students. it's odd. i try to take lessons away from every trip i take--every vacation should yield the fruits of introspection and self-discovery--and this one was no different. it hardened my resolve, confirmed my suspicions.

i don't know what i'm doing anymore.

that is, i'm not quite sure if i'm doing the right things; --and, if i am doing the right things, if i'm doing them the right way. the dichotomy between right and wrong--morality and moral depravity, more likely--has always bothered me. i'm no longer sure of where i land once i jump. am i somewhere in the middle? do i straddle the line between right and wrong, morality and moral depravity? do i give in too soon and too quickly? do i give in at all?

i feel as if i have limitless personalities and lives to choose from, and i'm afraid i'll pick the wrong one.

i don't want to give in, but i don't know what i'd give in to. my moral compass is always changing its weight. the needle points in various directions before settling on one for a time; and any given direction is subject to change without notice. notwithstanding the obvious restrictions, the fury of condemnation often gives way to the reticence of detente, and the ebb and flow of my moral jockeying relax until gradual acceptance--if disapproval--soothes the stream. pulled in too many directions, my conscious doesn't know where or when to settle. it's constantly shifting, arbitrary, betrayed by careless words and obscured by justifications, rationalities, apologies.

and yet, despite the turmoil, i seem to know where i'm headed.

but clarity has its price, an absolution and devotion to structures of black and white. i refuse to pay it. i shall take vacillation--that is, moral uncertainty--to rigid orthodoxy any day. for while orthodoxy makes for easy resolutions, it leaves no room for error; instant resolve doesn't deign to consider its ramifications or uncertainties. with vacillation--or, more immodestly, consideration--i view each perspective; i leave no stone unturned, no possibility unimagined. that isn't to say that i'm always right---it is only to say that i examine my options.

i don't know whether this society is for me.

i at once value harvard and detest it. i adore the opportunities it has afforded me, generously and graciously. and i abhor the sense of privilege it has created. before i left for college, before the good-byes, my mother demanded of me just one thing: i should never, ever, forget my roots or the life i've led. my family's sacrifices, hardships, adversities, brief glimpses of comfort, long views of dark vistas---these are things one shouldn't forget, things that teach more than textbooks and seminars. my life, as told by my mother, is one of extraordinary promise, one surprisingly unhindered by the forces that have restrained my family. i should save, plan ahead, live humbly, speak modestly, work diligently, act compassionately. i should never, ever, forget my roots.

and harvard, for all its pretenses of egalitarianism, has eroded that sense of modest nostalgia. frugality has ceded to excess, moderation to careless abandon. ordinary luxuries have been taken for granted, privilege has become a right. for all those who wish to change the world--to implement micro-finance, expand and environmental law, create sustainable communities and ease economic hardships--there are forty students begging for positions in morgan stanley and goldman sachs. greed is not good, and i'm afraid that its temptations have become too much.

it is that janitor whom i shall never forget. for all my desires, my excesses, my uncertainties, there is at least one thing of which i am assured: that man has lived a life less privileged than i, and it is to him that i owe my respect and humility. it is to him and everyone in his station that i owe my diligence, my conscience.

i can think of no better way to live.