“Hatred ceases by love. This is an unalterable law.” The Buddha

I didn’t want to write this afternoon and as I begin, not sure I ought to continue. I was figuring I’d take it easy this Friday afternoon. I put up my podcast yesterday and while it will not win any awards, I labored hard over it. I spent the better part of last week, grabbing stories and pasting them on to a growing number of pages, each keeping company with a bunch of disparate news items. You know, when you do something out of love and not money, it carries a weird kind of importance. I think to myself, what would happen if fifty years from now, someone uncovers my hundreds of blog posts or the slowly growing library of podcasts? Other than this entire creative exercise being for the sole benefit of my too young grandson, I do occasionally fantasize about being “discovered”.

So, let’s say someone comes across this particular piece, which I began composing at around 5:25PM HST on Friday, November 6, 2020. No, it won’t be in some kind of titanium, time capsule, set afloat in the Pacific, it will just be on my growing old, MacBook Air and beyond that, my imagination falls flat on its ass.

You know, everything becomes history once the moment passes. At this moment, we don’t know who won the 2020 Presidential election, which may easily change by the time you read this, but that is not the point. it is the uncertainty that captures my imagination. There is not a single person on this planet that is capable of speaking about the next moment with an ounce of certainty. The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.

Today, we are all living with such incredible ambiguity. I cannot recall anything close to this time in all the time I have spent inhaling and exhaling. Every goddamn moment in our life is a lesson to carry forward into the next one. Sure, the big picture has to deal with the next President of this country and the myriad speculation that attaches to it. Honestly, in so many ways, I can’t say that I really give a shit about all that. How I want to live my own, very small life, regardless of who wins the election, is what is weighing on my mind right now.

Yeah, I know we want to know all the answers, even before we have verbalized the questions, but what a gorgeous study in futility? There is nothing more elusive than tomorrow and you all know that, I’m sure. You know, I think I am going to stop for now. Nina Simone is singing, “I Want Some Sugar in my Bowl” and my words have evaporated into her singular allure.

I am going to pick up again tomorrow around the same time. it gives us all of Saturday to determine whether people can count all the way up to 1-2-3 in a number of States. The outcome is set and the air is still, not making a sound, waiting for the sum of some incredibly simple addition, one vote plus one vote, equals two votes………………………………….

What a difference a day makes? Sometime this Saturday morning, the Presidential race was decided. Twenty-four hours ago, it was still dream time, wondering about the future, untethered to the one dimensional, one foot in front of the other, simple addition of digits. It’s funny, one of the first things we learn in school is how to add and it is pretty amazing how important this very simple discipline is.

It is so tempting to launch into some masturbatory exercise in pontification about the deep meaning of this election and how it impacts on our sacred democracy. Happily, I am a small writer, sorting out my life and my feelings, aspiring to nothing more than an ounce of clarity in my life.

Most of you, who have had the patience to read some of my stories, know that music has a way of perfectly intruding into my thoughts. I love Bruddah Iz and I always stop, listen, and look outside, inhaling this place he loved so much. Well, there he goes, singing “ A Hawaiian Like Me.” Let me be clear, I find it incredibly comical, when haoles like me, become “add water and stir” Hawaiians. All I feel and will forever feel, is blessed to have been afforded an opportunity to be touched by the magnificence of the spirit that is Hawaii.

Yes, I tend to wander and that is the nature of mind, yours and mine. So, yesterday, I began writing this story, with a touch of the grandiosity about it. The outcome of the US presidential election is a very big deal, effecting the lives of billions. As I have already said, it is such a temptation to cobble together an erudite assessment of what has just happened and what it all means on the grand scale of things.

I am terribly saddened that this country has been shot with a hypodermic of schizophrenia into the aorta of its soul. The pundits can whack off with the words of a fool’s insight, but I am concerned about my country. I love America, blemishes and all. A bunch of self-serving bastards have thrown us all off course, blinding us to the humanity we share. We have become so terribly polarized, unable to see the suffering we inflict on each other.

So, today, we have millions of people reveling in the resurrection of America and the other half feeling angry and robbed. I know it sounds incredibly naive, but love is the only bridge that crosses these armed borders we have been manipulated to construct. Without caring for each other, we have nothing in our pockets. Today, we have so much to celebrate and so much pain to bear and unless we reach across that divide, there is no victory.

As for me, I am eternally grateful to be a part of this small life of mine, imperfections and all. I feel the wind.