my spirits continue to rise.

- the first female speaker of the house
- dems winning the senate
- and the icing on the cake, the resignation of rumsfeld

i didn’t have a blog back in march 2003 when bush began bombing iraq, but the moment that war began is forever frozen in memory for me. i can’t begin to describe the utter desperate revulsion, shame and fury i felt, all at once. i wanted to peel my skin off just to be shed of its association with massacre. i wanted to *do* something. i couldn’t just sit there and let it happen without some protest on my part – an individual statement of horror and adamant objection. and i would have been protesting in the street at the first opportunity – except that i was so worried something would happen to jeopardise my move to the uk in two weeks time. i felt like my hands were tied. it was horrible.

i wrote this later that day in my journal:

war has started.

i want to scream.
i want to shout.
i want to throw myself in front of the planes if only to slow the killing by my small act of resistance. i can’t believe they are killing people in my name, as an american citizen – yet somehow i believe it deep within the grief of my bones.

my outrage sputters against the dark.

i moved to london 2 weeks after that, and since that day every time i turn around the news just gets worse and worse. every time i hear it, my heart my stomach my morale just sinks. i never thought bottom could ever get this far down.

but finally, there is reason – to think the pendulum might start to swing back, to think we’ve hit the bottom and are trying to surface, to think that maybe we’ve lifted the moratorium on questions, to think that maybe we’ve had enough fear and frustration, death and despair.

maybe we finally want more from our government, ourselves.

maybe hope floats.

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rumsfeld, senate, house, iraq war, midterm elections