He's Got A Sadness About Him You Only See In Catholic Stained Glass Windows

To The People I Pass On The Train At Night - Jordan Bolton

My first book ‘Blue Sky Through the Window of a Moving Car’ is now available to pre-order! Get it here - https://smarturl.it/BlueSky

I can never tell which of my posts are going to explode (it is never ones I put work in) but I pray to God this one does

The past few weeks I have seen an explosion in doomerism and defeatism about Trump. Some people seem to have just decided to call the election for him for reasons that don't even make much sense

(He was almost shot and that always helps! Look at Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt! Reagan was already president and incredibly popular, and the shooting happened 2 months into his first term; Roosevelt was shot when he was campaigning in 1912....in an election he lost)

Trump has never been popular, he has never won the popular vote, and he has never had popular support. For the past 3 years, especially post Roe V. Wade, Democrats have increasingly overperformed especially in special elections. There were so many polls predicting 2022 would be a Red Wave, that turned out to be false due to faulty and biased polling. I'm not saying a Dem loss is impossible, but it is a lot less of a sure thing than the doomsayers are making it out to be

How does Trump win? Apathy. Despair. Low Turn Out. While many of the "Trump is guaranteed to win" posters I'm sure are real people who are justifiably scared, I think we underestimate just how many are people at home and abroad, who want a lower turnout, who want Trump to win.

I used to hear a joke growing up that "If voting did anything, they would make it illegal" Well considering how hard Republicans are trying to discourage voting and making it hard to do, it must do something.

Don't despair. Don't panic. Don't retreat. ACT

So what can you do?

Are you registered to vote? 🗳

You can register to vote here! ☑️

Do you know what/ who will be on your ballot? 📄

Do you know your state voting requirements? 📥

Do you know your polling location? 📍

Can you vote early? 🖊

Can you vote by mail? 📬

Do you need disability services for voting? ♿️

Do you need to know your voter’s rights? 🧑🏽‍⚖️

Do you need a ride to register/ vote?

Spread this far and wide. Tell your friends and your family. Make clear to them what is at stake if Trump wins.

Additionally, here are two volunteer organizations that I help out with

Vote Forward - write letters to encourage turnout

Working Family's Party - an organization working to help progressives win in primaries and general elections. I particularly like working in their text bank program. Want to help in a phone bank but don't like talking on the phone? this is perfect as you send texts to encourage support and voting

Spread this far and wide. Tell your friends and your family. Make clear to them what is at stake if Trump wins. Feel free to add other resources and organizations that

“reasons not to kiss her 1.) this sort of love is not allowed. you are both too soft, and the world around you is all knives and chipped teeth 2.) no one ever taught you how to love. your war paint and scarred hands could never hold her like she deserves 3.) no one has ever loved you this full surely you would drown in it all 4.) she belongs in a museum, and you are merely here to gaze. look around you, all the signs scream ‘do not touch’ 5.) she touches you like youre fragile, and if you break you wont be able put yourself together again 6.) she is all bubblegum skies and chapped stick kisses, and you cannot watch the love run out of another persons eyes 7.) if you jump, she might catch you, and then youd have to watch as she tumbled through the dark 8.) her gaze is too gentle. you will not be the one to tell her that not everything can be fixed with a smile 9.) she is so good. she is so good, and you cannot ruin one more good thing 10.) you will not watch her crumble under the weight of your sins. she is too light, too breathless to be caught up in the dizziness of your heart reasons to kiss her 1.) she loves you, and her eyes are closed, and didnt your mother ever tell you not to leave a good thing waiting”

— lessons in listening to your heart, and not your head

you can pry starting sentences with 'and' or 'but' out of my cold, dead hands

I'm an intern and my job is to enter addresses from hand-written letters into the database and did you know that Joshua Neumann from Hermannstreet 4, Cologne, has a life too

Oh

He's a principal in a small town. I googled it.

A mid-50s couple donated 100 dollars to our cause and I said that's very generous of you and he shrugged and said is it really

Oh

I guess it isn't really. Not for us.

When I came back after New Year the woman I've been working a lot with saw me in the office kitchen and hugged me.

I googled a scrawled address to decipher it and the town was so pretty I'm going to go there on a day trip with some friends. By train. Like we did 2 years ago.

You know what I'm saying, you know it.

on icarus.

(Attributed to Oscar Wilde//Sigmund Freud- Interpretation of Dreams//@meanwhilepoetry//Herbert James Draper- Lament for Icarus//Joseph Campbell//Hozier- Sunlight//Rainer Maria Rilke- The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge//Mary Oliver- The Sun//Vincent Van Gogh- The Sower//Matthew Ward- The Collected Stories//Florence and The Machine- Falling//Billy Collins- The Art of Drowning//Renè Milot- The Fall of Icarus//Hozier- I,Carrion (Icarrian)//Virginia Woolf- The Waves//J. Bengt- Icarus Flew//??)

This poem by Alice Miller healed something in me

The moment you decide that horrific violence is okay if it's aimed at Bad Guys™, you immediately have an incentive to categorize all of your "enemies" as Bad Guys™ in order to justify violence to them. They are not people anymore, they aren't complex and diverse human beings with their own motivations and lives and desires, they are the Bad Guys™ and everything done to them (no matter how horrific or indefensible in any other situation) is okay because it's for a Good Cause™.

The only way to not fall into that sort of mindset is to just not let yourself create exceptions for your basic morals. And that isn't EASY, you have to correct yourself constantly and break away from people and blogs and new sources and the like that push dehumanizing and violent narratives, but it's the only way to approach sensitive and important topics with kindness and compassion rather than hate and anger.

Blood family

I think that whoever, or whatever, created human kind

They really, really, really,

really

wanted to force the point across that we're meant to socialize on a broad scale. To interact.

And I don't mean that in an emotional, "I saw a stranger on the bus and suddenly I remembered what we're here for" way (I do those too, but not today). I mean it in the barest, most fascinatingly clinical way.

Blood family.

Blood connects you to the most ABSTRUSE kinds of people! They can be such, such fundamentally different people to who you are yourself. Would you have ANYTHING to do your uncle if he weren't blood? Your aunt? It gets real great when you get close to each other in age. Would you have anything to say to your cousin if you met them in school?

It's bizarre. It's fascinating. It's a small but ridiculous. We are born, we are forced to interact with people completely different from ourselves. You choose friends. You don't choose blood family.

It seems so... stoic. Clumsy, brutal. There is no way you can escape the horrid, lovely, interesting, deeply uncomfortable ties to society. Not your society, not the one you create for yourself with friends, but the general one. You are born forced to confront the fact that humanity is as varied as snowflakes, to use a clichéd metaphor.

Do with that what you will. It's a fact. Not a single person can escape it. You always grow up with some kind of family that you're forced to spend time with. An orphanage, a traditional family, a single parent maybe.

Connection. For better or for worse.