This morning was the first cool morning, a hint at what the temperatures will be like in late December should this year be anything like last year. My walk now takes 30 minutes for 2 miles, which is still pathetically slow but faster than last week (47 minutes average).

My normal causative introspection leans toward the immediate these days. There's too much politics, as there should be, and my spirit is sick of the fight. Laurea keeps a clear head, watches the RNC convention and laughs at the lies and hypocritical nonsense, does not mind their "attack and provide no answers, only themes" marketing that Rove worked so hard on for so many years.  This is the television speaking. We are idiots.

Because it is the television near the bed, I am forced to comply or leave. Being tired and wanting to finish the book I've been reading, I use my iPod to filter the republicans. This sort of helps, though the music I like lacks the density to block all of it out. This is what we're about now, so many of us can't stand to hear the noise. Either we violently disagree (to the point of physical aversion) or we're just plain ear tired of the constant marketing of hope, derision, hatred, unity, common man versus elitist fuck. My best efforts at trying to understand politics are constantly challenged by the people around me, who seem willing to believe whatever is sold to them without thinking any of it through. Some of these people are religious, so magic is not far from them. Some, though, are scientists who have a starry-eyed care for anything not Bush, anything not Republican, anything not tied to the last eight years of decay.  All of them, on both sides, are so blindly myopic and un-aware of their own selfish cynicism that I can't even talk to them.

So my walk this morning, clear headed and somewhat bleary eyed, was led by this. Trying to avoid politics right now in Texas is like trying to avoid politics in Texas any day of any year. It is a losing proposition for someone who doesn't have faith in any sort of system that produces people like, well, some of my neighbors and co-workers. People who are in love with impossible ideals and so enamored of their justifications that they salivate at the chance to explain their position.  Bumper stickers and T-shirts, slogans become the very height of discourse.

I'm not a fan of any blind assertion. I do believe in absolutes. I can't use faith as guidance on any life or death decision. I'm not the person in control of anything besides myself, and my vote, which may or may not count. But I can influence what is directly in my path, and I can make differences with my time and money in ways that are not ephemeral or mythic.

I walk through the first cool morning after a month of overheating disasters, a half year of whining din from the media and the candidates, a whole eight years of disasterous policy and procedure laid out by cross-eyed believers, and I try to live outside my skin.  Somewhere, there's a calm, cool center of something. Somewhere, there's a lot more trouble than this.

Step after step, walking through my day, trying to be what I think I am. The defenses required to resist the marketing and the noise and the crush of useless knowledge...

Maybe I need a hobby.