I run the highway south on an average day, and then back up it north to turn onto the proper dirt road home. About a mile before the turn, there’s an east-west highway across it, and the marginal gas station/minimart, and a traffic light. Someone ran that light tonight and someone got T-boned. All four directions were shut down for a time.

I snaked my way through the minimart lot and got in line on the shoulder westbound, which was as close as I could get to the closure. I sat about ten minutes, and then I saw a battered pickup slip in front of me, into an abandoned lot, and then onto what had to be a dirt road north. I watched until he disappeared in the dust.

Well hell. If he can make it, I probably can … probably …

So I swung out far behind him, and followed.

It was a real cow path, up and down into the arroyos, nearly bottoming me out a few times, and the overgrowth scratching both sides of my tiny spaceship at once. I took it super slow, out of concern for my tires and undercarriage. It went on far longer than I’d guessed. By the time I found the exit back up onto the highway north, two more cars had almost caught up to me behind. I breathed.

It’s Saturday night.

Monday, classes begin.

I am not close to being ready for them, but I’m not worried either. Tomorrow I will push myself hard and do what needs to be done, and I will do it well.

More importantly, I am very ready, for bigger things, and I used every bit of the break wisely, not rushing myself, but sorting and refining piles of paper and piles of thoughts into a new and beautiful system. The coming four months are going to fly by, and I’m going to glide on their thermal updrafts.

I feel sane.

It’ll be alright

There’s another debate Tuesday. Five of the 13 still standing (we’ll miss you Marianne) made the stage easily some time ago.

One just squeaked in under the wire, Steyer. They say he’s poured a crazy amount of cash into ads in Nevada and a couple other strategic places, and bought his way to the right polls, and therefore onto the stage.

What disturbs me about it is just how easy it is to push people’s opinions around with money.

I don’t care that Steyer’s on stage, and I wouldn’t care if he wasn’t either. He talks a better game than half the candidates at least. He’s no Bern, but nobody is.

I’m disturbed because people can seem to be so easily manipulated with cash on a Bloombergian scale.

I don’t know what the Obama/Clinton wing is planning, or what schemes the alleged moderates will perpetrate against the electorate in the name of holding onto power. I don’t know what Deval Patrick thinks he’s even doing, although my guess is that the WassermanSchultzians are trying to peel off enough delegates to save Biden’s ass in the end …

But even more troubling is that Trump will have even more money to play with, come the General in November. And if people are so easily swayed now, what’s to stop them from being swayed then? Steyer’s peeled off ten percent of Nevadans. Trump could do half as well, nationwide, and cruise to four more years.

Like Jackson Browne sang so long ago, here I stand waiting for Everyman.