recent reading.

Yesterday I finished a book called Denison, Iowa that, a quick search through my archives tells me, I started reading in September...of 2005. I don't think that speaks well of me or the book. It really doesn't feel like that long ago, either, since I've picked at it occasionally over the past couple of years and always remembered what was happening. There's something weird about starting a book when it's new (I started reading it shortly after it was published) and finishing it after enough time has passed that it needs an epilogue to update it. It was a good book though, I guess. Not good enough that I felt compelled to read it in a timely fashion, but there are lots of better books that I've left unfinished for even longer.

I also finished reading Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog, which I only just started shortly before we moved. (The move upset all the books I was reading, actually, and this was the first I've recovered.) It's sort of about diagramming sentences. More than that though, it's an essay on growing up in a particular time and place and the way education can shape personality. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Here's one of the many things I learned from Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog... On the day Ernest Hemingway was born, his mother wrote this: "The sun shone brightly and the robins sang their sweetest songs to welcome the little stranger into this beautiful world."

energetic, promising candidate of today.

I always seem to become obsessed with things when they no longer exist. I love all the apartments I no longer have. All the foods I like at a restaurant are the first to get changed or taken off the menu completely. I actually still miss clothes I had when I was a child (a pink and white striped polo shirt and my 1989 Easter dress, to be precise).

That being said, when did Disney decide to make EPCOT so stupid? I've heard the naysayers that think it was never that great, but I think they're dead wrong. When I was a kid, we had a CD of music from DisneyWorld--probably one of the first CDs we ever owned--that I've been wanting to listen to for at least a year. I found it at my parents' house a couple of weeks ago and have been listening to it occasionally. It. Is. Awesome!

I'm aware that I was sort of a snobby, goody-two-shoes kid, but I was also secretive and weird. Much like today. I tied furniture together with string, spinning the whole house into my web, then slid buckets along the string like an assembly line. I was addicted to the sound of my own voice playing back to me from countless cassettes. (Oh, my GOODNESS do I miss the 80's!)

Right now, I'm watching CNN's coverage of today's primaries. I find Wolf Blitzer incredibly boring. The pundits are so excited right now, which feels wrong. When political pundits get excited, something's gotta be wrong somewhere. They're like the paparazzi, but somehow not looked upon as weasels. I so much want Barack Obama to win the nomination, not to mention the general election. And here's why:

Barack Obama embodies all the good things I remember about EPCOT.

I know, I know. That's ridiculous, but it's also true. I need something fantastically good to happen in this country. I have yet to vote for a winner in a presidential election. I'm hoping to open my own bookstore, in a flailing economy, in the face of Amazon. I see all the possibilities that our superconnectivity can offer. The things I saw as a kid, enacted by animatronics, have slowly become real. But the spirit of excitement and wonder that I felt then is just not there. And when I hear Obama speak, a feeling wells up in me that's very similar to how I felt as a little girl, with my life splayed out in front of me like a sprawling red carpet. Just, take a look at this:

"If we can dream it, then we can do it. Yes, we can. Yes, we can." --from the theme song to "Horizons," my favorite, long demolished EPCOT ride.

"We are the hope of the future, the answer to the cynics who tell us our house must stand divided, that we cannot come together, that we cannot remake this world as it should be. We know that we have seen something happen over the last several weeks, over the past several months. We know that what began as a whisper has now swelled to a chorus that cannot be ignored, that will not be deterred, that will ring out across this land as a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, make this time different than all the rest. Yes, we can. Let’s go to work. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can." --Barack Obama in his Feb. 5th Super Tuesday speech

"Holding the spark, as we embark, on a great journey together we're learning to reach for hope and desire, building a world to inspire." --from a song called "Tomorrow's Child," which used to be part of "Spaceship Earth" (the ride inside the silver EPCOT globe)

"The implication is that if you are hopeful, that you somehow must be engaged in wishful thinking, that your heads must be in the clouds, that you must be passive and sit back and wait for things to happen to you. That seems to be the implication. And so I have to explain to people that is not what hope is. Hope is not blind optimism. Hope is not ignorance of the barriers and hurdles and hazards that stand in your way. Hope is just the opposite." --Obama

"A dream can be a dream come true, with just that spark in me and you." --from "Journey into Imagination," probably the best EPCOT ride ever

"We are the change that we seek." --Obama, Super Tues.

When I was a kid, EPCOT made me feel like I could do or be anything, that the world was open and amazing. And Obama makes me feel like, when I have kids, they'll have a chance of feeling the way I did. I want to be idealistic again. I'm tired of being dissatisfied with my country and being obsessed with things that aren't there anymore.

while in the waiting room...

I'm feeling kind of sick lately. I hate going to the doctor, but I actually went through with it today. I went to the same doctor I went to when I was a child. This man was actually there in the hospital on the day I was born. And I'm pretty sure his offices have not been remodeled since before I was born. Same weird orange paint. Same ugly, gray wood cabinets.

As for what's wrong with me, I don't really know. It's probably just that my prescriptions need to be updated and dosages re-evaluated and whatnot. I have to have blood work done. I'm susceptible to feeling faint and dizzy whenever I have blood drawn, so that's sure to be a day of fun.

While I was in the waiting room, I finished a rather long story in Lorrie Moore's Birds of America. I generally love Lorrie Moore's stories, but the one I was reading today did nothing for me. I kept flipping back to the end of the story to see how many pages were left. I was actually hoping it would take a long time to be called in to see the doctor, just so that I'd be forced to finish it, since I've left the book just sitting around after starting that story. I have high hopes that the remaining stories will, in fact, not suck, since her writing is usually pretty spectacular.