The politicians up for election, how they clobber, club and crucify each other — the back room hacking, the in-your-face attacking, the under-the-table cracking, the character fracking and reputation hijacking.
Campaigns are pretty much a public brawl, in a skirt or a tie, on a hill, in a hall.
I long for something else — a quiet friend, who isn’t running for office, who isn’t telling other people off, who isn’t hiding smutty history, who has no record of groping or doping or wheeling or dealing, the wall or the hall or the floor or the ceiling.
I long for something unselfish, undivided, unbiased — something not frantic, forced, frothing, fierce.
I think of my father, now in his final years, bending over my mother in the bath, gently splashing water on her shriveled, shrunken, surgery-scared skin — softly, soapy sloshing what she can’t clean herself.
I think of my brother, at the City of Hope, wrist band 86, time-wasting wait again, the needle in the arm, the unexpected end — of work and wish and want. He will be going back to work in a few hours to make sure people are taken care of, to make sure things will be okay when he doesn’t get to go to the office anymore.
I think of my friend who lost her husband two years ago. Thirty years then gone. There she is in the therapy room after the group meeting, waiting until everyone is gone so that she can secretly pay for her disabled friend’s care, even though her own financial future isn’t certain.
Such pauses from ourselves, such thoughts of someone else, such quiet, unseen, brave campaigns — they rise up to the top and rule when all else is lost.
Such kindness as these are of great note.
Such kindnesses as these all have my vote.
Modern Soliloquies & Pastiches 