I Feel Better Now

I woke up this morning a little jumpy, a little filled with that sense of lots of things to do, none of which I so much wanted to do.

Then I went and voted. One of the things which had me somewhat jumpy was the fear that I might not be a properly registered voter, despite the fact that I had been super-confident about my status. "Oh, yes, I'm registered," I told my near ones and dear ones.

My grounds for thinking I was properly registered were pretty good. I had voted in the fall of 2006, and I had not moved since then. So it's not like this was a false confidence. On the minus side, I hadn't received a sample ballot or a polling place notice. On the plus side, I had been out of town for a while, so there was a somewhat complicated mailing issue. Also on the plus side, I had gotten an email from the California Democratic Party.

Anyway, I looked up my polling place and the sample ballot online last night, tried to figure out what I thought about the latest term limits compromise and whether transportation dollars should be kept from the general fund and so on and this morning at 8 I went to vote.

My polling place was kind of a riot. To get there I walked by a pre-school at morning drop-off, where five year olds with complicated haircuts where being comfortingly hugged by parents with German-made SUVs. The polling place itself featured a lot of girls with stiletto heeled boots and Coach-logo purses, and had on the walls photos of transvestites in front of Hollywood landmarks, only the transvestites were, in the photos, way big, towering over theaters and hotdog stands.

A lot of people had to cast provisional ballots. There was a line. When I got to the front, they looked up my name. There I was, a registered voter with a ballot all her own. I went, I marked, I looked it over and fretted about whether I had inked it thoroughly enough.

I guess I just feel safer. I am a properly registered voter; I am a part of a civic polity. There's got to be some protection in that, right?

Close To The Borderline

I don't know exactly why the Border Patrol has set up shop at the Greyhound station in Rochester, NY, but there they are, with their walkie-talkies and their green uniforms and their dog.

I've been to and from Rochester maybe three times in the last month, and each time there they are, to ask if I'm a U.S. citizen, and take me at my word.

They are not without exuberance. Today, after the dog sniffed the luggage, the dog handler scratched him behind the ears, and encouraged the dog to leap into the air. The dog leapt, the snow fell, and we stood there and chuckled, sort of. The dog was so happy.

Normally they don't let you onto the bus until the guys are off it, not wanting to confuse the issues, I guess. This time when we got on they were still there, interrogating one guy. "So your parents are from Puerto Rico, and you were born in Yonkers, is that right?"

They would ask this guy stuff -- what's the name of the airport in Puerto Rico? stuff like that -- and then relay information into the cellphone.

And then, after all that build-up, they wandered off the bus, leaving the guy in question to complete his danger-filled journey to Buffalo in peace.

Yesterday I actually did cross the border on a bus. We were held up, because of the complicated citizenship issues pertaining to our Mennonite companions. One was a dual citizen; one wasn't. The immigration official was explaining it to them: "Your friend can't do the things you can. You're a dual citizen, so you can work. But if he does anything other than put his feet up and take out a beer from the fridge, he's breaking the law."

"He can do some dishes to help around the house, but that's it," she said. They seemed confused. Earlier the bus driver had been telling them about Martin Luther King Jr. This was news to them. "He gave this speech," the bus driver said, "about this dream he had."

It's The Hollywood Santa Parade!

Yesterday I went to the Hollywood Santa Parade, which I guess is technically different than the Hollywood Christmas Parade, which died last year from hemorrhaging money.

I live about two blocks away from the parade route, and last year I came back from the grocery store and watched high school bands practicing on the little side streets of Fountain and found the whole thing pretty goddamn touching, but didn't go. Then they said that was the last year and I found myself stricken by a sense of loss and failure, which is funny. As though it wasn't worth going to in itself, but if it was my last chance to experience the parade all of a sudden it became critically important.

I went to the parade once before, when I was maybe seven or eight, with my family and my best friend's family. I don't really remember what I thought about it; I remember people shoving and a struggle to see and some confusion.

Anyway, I saw the signs this year and I meant to go and then I forgot, and then I remembered. The parade started at five; I worried about whether to show up early to get a seat and all that. I went to get a late lunch at RoRo's Chicken and I saw people already staking out seats.

So I drifted over there around 4:30; the parade was due to start at 5. There was a lot of space left, and I sat down on the street, and watched the 15 year olds next to me flirt and giggle. But then at 4:45 one of their parents showed up with a whole host of other adult/teenager/family friend types, and the thermos of hot chocolate came out and a six year old was sitting at the very end of their row of chairs, looking, mostly, extremely anxious about the whole thing.

Bob Avakian's Revolutionary party came along, handing out newspapers and selling t-shirts about how the Bush Administration was a terrorist organization and then there were the Jews For Jesus and then people selling candy canes and light up toys.

The Eckankar center was advertising clean bathrooms, and lending out chairs.


People kept running across the street, aka the parade route, and I found myself vaguely anxious about that. The six year old's mother brought him a piece of pizza; she was blowing on it to cool it down for him.

Things started happening. A whole troupe of fire department guys on motorcycles tricked out with lights and tinsel and with lovely ladies on the back came wheeling down the street. Then there was a procession of emergency vehicles, lights and sirens on. The Robocop car was one of them!

The families on either side of me were waving; I felt weird waving. In fact, I felt a little weird being there on my own, plunked down on the asphalt without so much as a blanket or a thermos. I guess maybe I should have bought a light up toy.

One of the six year old's relatives who was maybe 13 himself (although I am now too old to accurately measure age in young people) came over and told the six year old to stand up, that he wanted to see how tall he was. The six year old was reluctantly hauled up. Then the 13 year old took his seat. The six year old looked upset and said, "Give me back my seat." The 13 year old said, "What do you say?" The six year old added please, and was given back his seat.

There was Bob Barker! There were high school bands! There was the mayor, who may have been greeted by cheering up on Hollywood Blvd., which was the pulsating heart of the parade route, but not down on Sunset, almost at the end. I mean, there were a couple of cheers, but nothing so much. He was working the crowd; he shouted "Hollywood in the house!" and asked the cops what district they were from and mentioned the tragic recent death of a cop and then later he asked a family where they were from and shouted "Covina in the house!" There was Rocky Delgadillo. There was Fred Willard, which I was very excited about because I had him confused with David Leisure, who was Joe Isuzu. It is only just now that I learned my mistake, and I feel a little cheated.

Endless amounts of time passed between bands and celebrities. I got antsy. The Marine Corps band from Twentynine Palms played a medley of Christmas carols, including that one that goes peace on earth and mercy mild, and I got all choked up, and then I myself ran across the parade route and went home.

The Unquiet Conscience

Louis Althusser told us all about the vague guilt we feel when made aware that a policeman is walking behind us. Then, later, he strangled his wife in his sleep.

There is a lesson in that.

I got a note the other day from the Glendale Public Library telling me that I had an overdue book. The odds were in the Glendale Library's favor; I have a psychological block about returning library books on time. But I was pretty sure I had returned that particular book. Library workers sometimes fail to scan books in properly. I know this, because I was once a library worker myself.

I went back to the Glendale Public Library yesterday; I had other (overdue) books to return. At the front desk I registered my protest about the allegedly overdue book. Also, I checked the shelves. It was there, exactly where it should have been, and I brought it up to the front desk, where they checked it in.

Then I asked if I had any fines and I did and I asked if any of them were for the book in question and they were, so the nice library worker removed those fines and I paid for the actually overdue books and went home.

Here's the point:

Having foreseen exactly this course of events, I felt tremendously unquiet. There was no way for any grudging or suspicious authority to satisfy itself that I had not checked this book out, failed to return it, and then by virtue of claiming to have returned it earlier, gotten out of paying the fine.

Let me be clear. I had not done that. Nor did anyone accuse me of having done that. But because I could not prove I had not done that, I felt guilty.

A couple weeks ago I found myself wandering through Rite Aid with a full bag of Doritos that I had purchased at that same Rite Aid a couple of weeks earlier, and that same vague sense of guilt overcame me. Guilt, I guess, for having put myself into a position susceptible to sinister interpretations.

If, one day, one of the obligations of citizenship is not to put oneself in equivocal situations that could give rise to (ultimately unfounded) suspicions, life will be unbearable.