Here's something you can count on: when you sit down with your morning coffee to read Ocean, you're not going to get walloped with political opinion. Not even a hint of one. I don't want to stir up your political juices and I don't especially want to stir up my own either. Fact is, Ocean is not political because I myself do not engage in political squabbles. I track with great care what's going on in my country, in the world, but I do not jump into the fray, I don't argue, I'm rather quiet. This comes from a life of living at a time and place that was forever threatened by a political vacuum cleaner that could (and did) suck up all good things and coat them with political goop. Postwar Poland was like that and my parents -- both very engaged in politics, he professionally, she as an opinionated bystander -- amplified everything tenfold. Not so much in their daily conversation, but in their actions. Every step they took was measured in political consequences. So rebellious child that I was, I took the opposite approach. I read, I listen, I process things and I go about my business, which happens to not have politics smeared all over it.
However.
Should the MAGA candidate win the presidential election, I want to go on record and say that I did not vote for him. Why is this statement important to me? Exactly because I lived in postwar Poland. For a long time, and especially when I was younger, I wondered why people who could speak out (and mind you, not everyone could do so without paying a price), why did they not say something? At least state their opposition? It may not have changed the outcome of history, Poland may still have been a heap of postwar rubble, and still saddled with a holy terror neighbor to the east, but it would have had me look more kindly toward the people living to the east and to the west of us, knowing that compassion, acceptance, and empathy weren't all sucked dry, in Germany, in Russia, in places around the world where brutality surged and the worst human traits rose to the top of the political pyramid.
So, let me say it now: I did not vote for brutality, for hatred, for a callous indifference to the fate of our planet in our presidential elections. (I voted early so I speak in the past tense.)
I voted for Kamala Harris.
Now, back to the farmette lore.
Two words describe the landscape this morning: wet and gray. I don't wake to a steady rain -- the kind that would soak the ground and fill the roots of growing things -- but any rain right now is a good thing. And, too, it gets wetter as the day moves on.
The leaves are still clinging to at least some of our big trees and so we aren't yet winter naked out there...
But we are moving in that direction.
Breakfast, inside.
We talk about engineering. Ed describes a small piece of his current project to me. It revolves around a knowledge of physics and space that I do not possess. I tell him that I was slated to hate physics in high school: we had an old and boring teacher, I was plunged into the subject matter at a young age -- barely 13 -- with little preparation for any of it, and, too, my parents weren't in any way scientifically inclined. If you dont talk about these things around the kitchen table, you're less likely to lean in that direction in your own professional choices. But Ed shakes his head on all my protestations. It's not physics that helps you out here -- it's structural visualization, he says. This is a skill that he was born with. He asks me if I ever took those tests -- they're called spacial reasoning assessments.
I have not. Then how do you know if you can do work that requires that kind of talent?
Hmm... I guess I always believed I would work with words and ideas. Still, when he pulls up a sample spacial reasoning test, I'm tempted to find out if I'm a total pea brain in that department or if I can rise to the challenge.
Verdict? His score is higher, but I'm sitting pretty good at 8 out of 10, though honestly one answer was a half guess. Too, I took longer to come up with all responses.
Ed tells me -- I read somewhere that if you have innate skills that you dont put to use, you remain deeply dissatisfied in life. Well now, this only goes to show that structural visualization isn't a special talent of mine, since I actually am satisfied and content.
Only, it really is a gray day and the rains stay with us from morning til dusk. Which, of course is early tonight because of the disappearance of daylight savings time.
We do not take a walk. Well, I actually do take one from kitchen to living room and back again. Many, many times. With 50 jumping jacks thrown in for good measure. I tell you, a new month is always an inspiration for me. Even if that month is gloomy November.
with love...
