Today was Election Day, I couldn’t make myself vote for either dude in the biggest election on my local ballot, so I scribbled the Write In bubble full and wrote in NONE OF THE ABOVE. I do that a lot. Feels stupid to even go vote if I do that, but I remain hopeful one day I will get to look at a ballot not filled up with assholes. But I enjoy walking from the house to the voting precinct, which is in The Waltons Mountain Museum, an old school turned into museum for the old TV show my mom used to love. There is no actual Waltons Mountain, it was a creation of the books that led to the television show. In fact, there ain’t even no Waltons around here; that wasn’t even their name. This all seems relevant most of the times I’ve had to vote since I’ve lived here, that we’re living in a false representation of reality that doesn’t look like what I just saw when I walked here, up the road. On my walk today, there were workers doing the last bits to hook the hydroelectric dam back up to the grid that is down below my house. One dude was up in the bucket truck, working away, and I could hear “Hey Joe” by Jimi Hendrix blasting up the hillside, traveling unencumbered up the power line kept clear every other summer by immigrants or out of towners with chainsaws and woodchipper truck. Last summer, I got them to dump off four truck loads of mulch. That dam got washed out during the floods of Hurricane Camille in ’69, and just been sitting there all this time. I’m glad they’re hooking it back up, but I doubt it’ll make a difference on my electric bill, what with all the data centers going up everywhere around the state. I guess they can’t manufacture that false reality as easily as they used to.
As I walked back, the sky was a wonderful blue, with a single solitary jet trail slicing the blue in half, blowing out like the top end of Philly graffiti because it had been there a minute. I looked up at the sky, same one that’s been stretched out overtop humans since before an American flag got dreamed up and even continents got all tectonic into separate land masses, and I thunk, “All of the above.” How wonderful it would be to actually have something you felt good about voting for, like that. But all we actually get is assholes.
As I walked back, the sky was a wonderful blue, with a single solitary jet trail slicing the blue in half, blowing out like the top end of Philly graffiti because it had been there a minute. I looked up at the sky, same one that’s been stretched out overtop humans since before an American flag got dreamed up and even continents got all tectonic into separate land masses, and I thunk, “All of the above.” How wonderful it would be to actually have something you felt good about voting for, like that. But all we actually get is assholes.
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