Monday

By Richard Earnhart:

It's 3am and I have a happy cat in my lap. The sky is blue gray from moonlight. It is so still that the stars don't even twinkle. I can't sleep. There shouldn't be a reason why. I am emotionally exhausted from months of politics. Maybe it's because I can hear glaciers melting in my dreams or that I can sense the spirit of a child leave its body in Darfur. I don't know.

The Democrats won Last week. More people will die in Iraq today, and tomorrow, and the day after that. The world, even if you press really hard on the brakes, won't stop on a dime. There is still a very dark momentum. But we came to the precipice and collectively looked over the edge and those of us who thought that maybe we shouldn't jump considered something different, like living, for instance.

Of course there is a lot of work to do. Of course there will be monumental failures along the way. The world really won't feel terribly different at breakfast. Or lunch. Or maybe even dinner. But slowly we will start to push the creeping darkness back. We will talk wiretaps. We will talk about feeding the hungry again instead of cutting taxes. We will start talking serious tax credits for alternative energy and home food production. We will start rewarding people for what they save instead of what they spend. We can start investing in our children again, in education and health, and see that that is the best savings account you can have.

We will still be a materially lustful society, committed to waste. But we didn't go over the edge of the chasm. At least not yet. Collectively we chose hope. We rejected the mantra of hate that we've had shoved in our faces 24/7, for a long time now. Instead, we decided to give ourselves another chance.

I can tell from the clarity of the sky that today is going to be another gorgeous day. There will be deer in the driveway. I will have fewer iris in the morning. If I am really quiet, I can hear the javalina snoring down in the arroyo. It is another magical night in New Mexico. It will be another miraculous day on planet Earth.