Heats

"Writing your own headlines
Ignoring your own deadlines..."

-- Cake, "Open Book"

--

Pulled the laundry out of the dryer. The buttons of the jeans were like molten steel, burning jolts to the fingertip. The zippers were worse.

Some of my clothes take a longer time to dry than others. I can think of two or three sweaters that just don't seem to retain moisture, almost like the non-porous surface of finished furniture. Other articles, like wadded socks and wrinkled old jeans, hold back their water stores like libertarians in log cabins, grudgingly giving it up if the dryer jostles it around enough. And some shirts I have will dry quickly on the torso but remain limp and damp in the sleeves; the only way to dry these completely is to hang them near a window or vent.

I wish I rose more easily in the morning, and I wish laundry dried more quickly.

--

Yesterday we restarted the tour, glitches notwithstanding. Today is a day off, and Wednesday is our first overnight.

Tomorrow, Inauguration Day, finds us at a Kentucky library in the afternoon, four hours after the intense celebrations of the city will have begun. Already people quote Dr. King--"Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"--as they lay hail to the upcoming chief. Facebook statuses in laud of the Illinois politician are already making me queasy, not because of the man, but because of the vast horde of smiling people behind him.

The voice of millions of people cannot be wrong? I adamantly proclaim this assertion a lie: big, bold, and gnarly, like a wart on a witch's nose, it sways those millions into ecstasy and delirium, a testament to the tipped scales of the so-called levelheaded in this country.

But what can I do? Mine is only one voice, a closeted conservative voice in a sea of a million--and remember, millions of people cannot be wrong.