Obama Fever?

Well, tonight it looks like Obama will win North Carolina, Hillary Indiana. The ballots haven't all been counted, but most of the votes are in. Will Clinton pull out of the race? Unlikely. Will her funding plummet? Will her backers hesitate? Will she remain short of delegates? Likely.

At the beginning of this democratic primary race, I found myself torn between candidates. But after doing some research and reading many (too many) articles on each contender, I was able to settle my sights on Obama. He's smart and flexible, if slightly unexperienced as an actual leader. He strikes me as the candidate most able to think on his feet, the most diplomatic, the most articulate, and the most able to inspire large groups (and young people, finally!). His skills are not necessarily better than Hillary's, but then, I don't think it's a matter here of good or ill. They're both skilled politicians, both capable human beings. Obama's skill set is simply more suited to the needs of the United States at this particular moment in time. We fear the recession, the war, the rising prices of food and oil. We have suffered terrible government and been wounded by the current administration. We have regrets. We are irrate and tired. We desire change. We are a people who need someone to cheer and unite us, to make us feel strong and to put a bright, caring face on our international endeavors. The right leader will be able to smooth the way for our efforts to pick ourselves up off the asphalt of the international playing field and get back into the game. I think Obama is that leader.

But the longer the primary becomes, and the more the elective process reverts to the familiar slog of vapid "controversies," yapping pundits, and endlessly-discussed exit polls, the more I become disillusioned. I was naive in 2004; I thought John Kerry had a real shot at victory, even as the depressing election returns flooded my television. I don't want to be naive in 2008, and I fear that the campaign I envisioned--a race between democrat and republican that made cultural history while concerning itself with the kinds of tangible political and economic issues that currently worry real Americans--is becoming a pipe dream.

Don't do it, Obama. Hillary, hold back. Let me, like so many young people, people who have never been moved to vote before this historic election, retain some shred of my old, dewy outlook. For one, just one, election cycle, let me believe democracy can do more than the Bush administration has demonstrated is possible. Let the race be smart, let it have a little dignity, let it have a strong democratic candidate to stand up for and shed light on the issues that concern folks like me.

Crappy Poem for Y'all!

My latest crappy poem. Pirated from pieces of another, longer work (of my own) as per a poetry class assignment. Freudian bits. Not sure what THAT means...


Becky Adams
Stage Blocking

Blocking the "light" of heaven,
this continuing gloomy mind.
Ironic—to be arrogant
takes life. He who has not experienced
unconsciousness may not fear death.
I thought this image was death:
a penis.
Being treated as dead before dead? Horrifying.
Resurrection that is too late, and reverses? Terrifying
human reality.

High class against the workers:
enlightened destruction, symbolic exploration,
intellectual understanding.
Forced from Utopia, humans succumb to vermin.
This seems to sum up "vigorous health"
([though] I don't think poor farmers would see it)—
unity. Circles. Extravagance
sometimes judges
true fantasy, romanticizes old doubts.

Metaphor has been literalized then turned
back to metaphor, has reached a fevered pitch.
Unheimlich meanings,
like algebra,
depend on the nature
of the journey we intend. Metaphor
now literal, projecting memories—
man without community:
sickly, unhappy.

Queen of Sleep

Anybody who's known me for long knows--if only peripherally--that I have long lauded myself the Queen of Sleep. I've fallen asleep on park benches, in classes, in airports and bus stations, etc. It's not that I can't keep awake when I want to (I'm not narcoleptic), it's just that if I'm tired, I don't have trouble nodding off. And, unlike, say, Kasey, I can be asleep at night in seconds flat. I've never woken up for small sounds and I've never really had any chronic problem with insomnia. In my past life, I could just lay down and wake up eight hours later, rested, with no trouble at all.

Emphasis here is on "past life." I don't know what it is, but for the last month or so I just can't seem to get a decent night's sleep. I either wake up every twenty minutes or wake up after two or three hours and stay awake. Tonight, I feel into bed at 1 am and was up for good at 4. WTF? What am I doing? Sometimes--like tonight--my body is tired, but my brain is just roiling, but sometimes I'm not even worried/excited/plotting/tense. Sometimes my head is quiet but my body just won't stay tired enough to sleep.

Those who've been caught in insomnia's half-nelson before probably think I'm just whiny or naive. But this feels so weird. This doesn't feel like me at all. When I find myself just--awake, night after night, I almost feel like I'm in someone else's body. Occasionally it makes me freak out about my health, and I just roam my room in my underwear, asking silent questions while I pick things up and put them down again.

Am I eating the wrong foods (quite possibly)? Have I started drinking too much (almost certainly)? Am I not getting enough exercise (definitely)? Is this some weird, hormonal, sexual thing (just what the fuck would that be)?

I don't know. But I don't think I like insomnia. I may still be the me that can float off in front of the TV, on top of someone's leg, and in the doctor's waiting room, but I've lost my cardinal ability--the taken-for-granted privilege of being able to drop into deep and restful slumber. The kind with REMs. The kind that, you know, knits up the raveled sleeve of care, repairing whatever damage the day has done. And I really miss it.

Hot or Not Defines My Human Worth

As of right-this-moment, I am hotter than 68% of women who have pictures posted on hotornot.com. I put my picture up as little more than a joke to myself, but, when I was only hotter than 42% of women (this was an hour ago, not that I'm checking) I felt...offense.

Strangers had decided I wasn't cute! I immediately browsed my files for a hotter photo of myself and swapped my faux-hawk shot for this picture where I have really, really red lips and my face is turned in such a way that the camera suggests I have a profile.

All told, I've spent about 55 minutes, now, monkeying with the internet in an attempt to make myself look more attractive to people I don't give a fig about and will never meet.

This does not seem healthy. Why doesn't grad school assign more homework?

The Late Night Villanelle

Guess what comes of a Thursday night hopped up and full of caffeine, my friends? That's right, a villanelle--otherwise known as writing done in the world's most difficult poetic form. Inspired by love, sponsored by Diet Coke.

Becky Adams
My Lover's Actions

My love is a magnolia tree
dripping scent,
and full of bees

who settle down among its leaves
like campers in an airy tent.
My love, like a magnolia tree

is blind and deaf. It can't see
or hear the messages it's sent,
except through humming of the bees

who come for what it breathes.
To accurately represent
my love as a magnolia tree

is to impart the tragedy
of needing to depend
on bees,

on anything that stings and feeds
off beauty's stupid innocence.
My love is a magnolia tree,
flowering and full of bees.

Dear God, Why?

Dear God,

Though I have sometimes postulated that you, perhaps, do not exist, I still think it is rather cruel of you to send cockroaches to my bathroom sink. After all, though I allow Stephen Colbert to make fun of your believers, I rarely mock them myself (at least, not to their faces). Also, I went to church that time with Megan Tanner when we were in the fifth grade and I feel that ought to count for something. Especially since I wore my best Dalmation sweater.

Love,
Becky

Injury, Love, Turkey

I may have just irreparably ruptured the thigh muscle I pulled Saturday night. I've been babying the injury all day, but tonight it hit me that no one--not even my dog--was home, and that it might be a long time before I had this kind of solitude again. So I turned the CD player up insanely loud and sprang all over the apartment singing like a crack-head at a rock concert. I did the Egyptian. I did the twist. I head-banged and played some mean-mad air guitar. I did that weird ska step and smashed into the breakfast bar while skidding across the linoleum in my socks.

My vocal cords will heal. The neighbors who might have passed by the kitchen window and seen me gyrating in my bra will also (probably) heal. My leg might not. I might have to hobble around on a House-like cane for the rest of my earthly days.

But God--if a body can't sometimes spaz dance alone to the Decemberist's "July, July," what's left in the world? Not a goddamn thing worth having, is my take. Times like this--when you're taken with joy for no reason and there's no one around to tell you you're making an ass of yourself and destroy that perfect, initial moment when you're making an ass of yourself--are what I might be most thankful for this year.

Happy turkey day, everybody.