I’ve been feeling so settled in DC recently. I am finally at a job I really, truly enjoy, and I have become complacent. I was looking at pictures from Denver recently (though I may be surrounded by 50 computers a day, I don’t spend nearly enough time in front of any one of them to keep up with my internet stalking), and it actually brought tears to my eyes. Good friends have gotten married, surrounded by other good friends. People I have known for most of my life. I wasn’t there, but just to see the joy in so many faces brought tears to my eyes.

DC is home now, but I can’t help missing the people and places that shaped who I am. This past year marks the longest amount of time in my life that I have not been to Denver.

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

There’s a bunch of stuff I’ve been meaning to write about recently, and as always, as soon as I open my computer to work on it, all of my thoughts fly out of my head. Ain’t that the way.

I was in Denver this last weekend for my friend Laurel’s art opening (pictured above, at said event). It was phenomenal, as I knew it would be nothing less. Going to Denver gives me a sense of meloncholy, I fall back with the old people so easily, and it feels so right. Denver is comfortable and easy.

Oooh! One of the missing ideas has come back to me.

I look back on this past summer as one of the very best times I can remember. I don’t doubt that it was amazing in it’s own right, but it also came out of one of the thoroughly dark moments of my life. I remember this summer from my bicycle, late at night. I was out in the world, I was reconnecting with old friends, and making new friends. I approached everything with a sense of open-ness that I rarely experience, and I know that was because I knew that if I screwed something up I was leaving soon anyway. It’s a weird way to live life.

When I came back to DC it was like waking up from a dream. It was cold, and surreal.

I have begun to question things I have taken for truth for the last three years, about who I am and what I need to do with my life, as well as where I need to go with my life.

Yesterday morning I woke at 4:30 in the morning to books falling on my head. I had stored them on the top ledge of the window frame. This did not seem like an ill-fated plan at the time because I had done so on my other window frames with no ill effect. And, in truth, these books stayed put for a month and a half.

Beyond the physical discomfort of suffering a bloody nose from paperbacks falling on my face, there is potentially some psychological trauma that may need to be dealt with stemming from being assaulted by the paper-back copy of Anne Frank’s diary that I read in second grade.

Tomorrow is mid-term elections. I felt pretty removed this year, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I’ve just moved, and if there’s anything more complicated than the electoral college it has to be DC politics. Since I plan to raise my familiy in Denver (whenever that may be) I don’t feel badly about having voted absentee in Colorado. The big issues in my district were the gubanatorial election, the two marriage amendments. There was a seat in the running, but it is a Democrat versus someone in the Green Party.

Getting back to the two marriage amendments. One is a definition of marriage stating that it is between a man and a woman. The other is a domestic partnerships amendment which also defines marriage as between a man and a woman, but allows that people in domestic partnerships should have the exact same rights. Personally, I don’t have any problem defining marriage as one thing and domestic partnerships as another, as long as they really truly mean the same thing. To me it reeks of “seperate but equal” and we know how well that worked out. I don’t understand what the problem is. I don’t understand why two women being wives detracts from a man and a woman’s joy in being husband and wife. Why is it so offensive?

For legal/ civic purposes I think everyone should get a domestic partnership. Let’s removed the term in question from the equation. Everyone gets a domestic partnership, and if you want to get “married” you can do so in your church/synagogue/coven whatever. If you belong to a religious organization which objects to the love you have for your partner, at that point it becomes your issue, not the government’s.

If I thought anybody read this I would prepare myself for an onslaught, but since I think there are maybe three people in the world who check it periodically I’m not all that concerned.

I’m feeling disenchanted with democracy. Don’t get me wrong, I love to vote, it’s crucial to vote, GO VOTE TOMORROW (the three of you who are reading this… maybe). It’s just that I can’t get past the idea that the people are stupid. Or maybe not the people. I don’t know any truly stupid people, so I have a hard time qualifying anyone as stupid. And yet the American People (writ large) seem to allow, condone, encourage incredibly upsetting behavior. I don’t understand the disconnect. Where is the majority that voted for Bush two years ago? I haven’t met any of them… where are they stashed?

Anyway, I belive in the power of democracy, but I can’t help but think that the people with whom I share this democracy aren’t paying attention.

The system is too big, and too broken.