Who I Think You Should Vote For For President

I've given it some thought and I've narrowed it down to two options.

1) Barack Obama

2)When I was 19 or 20 I wrote a poem called "I Wanna Go Outside." It was a poem about a girl. The first line went something like this:

"Image in all the people" sang the blind John Lenin [sic(k)?] as he picked up his hammer and sickle and saw ... that his eyes were mirrors"

This was my solliptical proseurism uncooked and marinating in Colt .45, beguiled by the presto!digitation of the mannered lexical dexterity which echoes here. Autophonetic asphyxiation. Encrypted.

But the code begs the cracking. Like the blah-blah-blog, the insides-out of 21st century journaling. I think I hoped that you could draw a (squiggly) line from Prufrock to Cusack, from peachphobia to letting the box boom ... somehow her eyes would be mirrors but at the same time "the doorway to a thousand churches."

The wineblood sentimentality of THE ONES and TWOS v. the villain math of the ONES and ZEROES. Whether wholes are greater than sums, alls greater than somes.

Wasn't it one of the Greeks who said that sexual union is an attempt at cum union? to die a little death to the TWOS and BE ONE?

Wasn't it more than one of the Greeks who found other passageways, tighter fits, but other fits nonetheless?

So I guess it WOULD be nice if I could touch your body, but do we HAVE to have faith?

William James tells me that Scientific Positivism is the flipside of Positive Thinking ... Heads, your world is an object, and progress will brighten all the corners. The world is out there. Tails, your world is a subject, and you draw the contours. The world is in here.

And this makes me think of recent conversations about THERAPY and ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS and, of course, religious faith generally. This is what James calls "mental hygiene," that living needs a grammar, a mold, a shape, an anchor. He says "Here is the real core of the religious problem: Help! Help!" This is the project: order. Projected Order.

Thus shaken up even before the quantum leap into indeterminacy - Particles and Waves. When he's underwater does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead. Nobody knows.

I just heard an interview with George Carlin in which he said two things - one wise, one a little too mystical for me - but I'm wondering if they're reconcilable. He said he liked people individually, but when they get into groups, they spoil. Put on uniforms and get uniform. But he also said he believes that we're all made of the same stuff, descended from Atom ... so I am You and You are Me and Stop Sign is Me and Raccoon is Me and so I'm not afraid to die. Can he have both one and the other?

While my high school baseball team made its Cinderella run all the way to the State Championship my senior year, I secretly wished hard that we would lose every time out and the season would be over. Because the coach had demoted me from starter to reserve and because he resented that I missed practice to visit colleges and because most of the other guys were assholes anyway. There was an I in TEAM.

Lou Dobbs says America needs Independents. That the hegemony of reds and blues eats the purple people. And I saw Luke Russert say much the same thing. And how can we not listen to him after all he's been through? And in HBO's (really enjoyable so far) series John Adams, our hero grimaces and coughs standing firm against the streams of loyalist and radicals. Think for yourself indeed, but the glare from those stars seems to blur the stripes.

And I know you can listen without talking, but you shouldn't talk without listening. Though that's both complicated and difficult.