It’s easy to say, “I just don’t have the words.”  We have the words, all right, it’s just hard to say them for they could be too revealing, or horrible, or inappropriate. So we keep it to ourselves, a heavy secret we wished we could tell.

This morning I felt like saying I just don’t have the words, but of course I do. They’re welling up and it feels like a flood may come. Floods are made for destruction, aren’t they? The left-hand path is the easier to take. It would be so easy to hurl accusations and curses at my adversaries. Far too easy, just there on the tip of my tongue. But those are the words they have for me, isn’t that so? I feel like my country is one heaving bucket of “gloat” we want to dump on each other. How easy that would be.  I imagine people far away wearing a certain kind of smile, doing a certain kind of dance, celebrating in their hearts, lighting candles and praising the lord they were delivered from their adversary, and when I think of it, my stomach hurts and I want to say terrible things.   So now, it’s a test of my character, of all those things I claim to be, or wish to be, a woman wearing some kind of decent skin treating everyone best she can. I have to be that woman today, not the bitter, angry one who wears a coat shriveled and black.  How would it look if I dumped a bucket of shit on my neighbors, fellow citizens, in their time of happiness?

My parents were politically-minded, and I wonder what they’d think about this American morning.  But that’s silly now, isn’t it? Do I really believe my dad is turning in his grave because of some “thing” going on in the mortal world? Dun he have better things to do than be concerned with politics?  His shade is free and at peace, but I still wish he was here to talk to.

So. Over the coming days I will have to choose how much time and energy I want to give to the politics of the day, if at all.  Maybe take a page from the book of Shades and see how far a soul can go without poisoning it with this mortal junk.  We’ve all got better things to do, don’t we?