happy *ahem* diwali

today is diwali and i am sick at home. have spent 7 days fighting back this cough and cold. one week ago tonight, i returned from an ndp meeting in montreal with a heartful of sorrow and a head full of ache. that meeting may well have been our last as this executive - it was a strange belly punch after nearly two years of struggle, with the wrong people yet again mishandling misinformation with wrong intentions. those of us with a clue sat around like shells of our former energetic selves. elections will occur at our provincial convention next month, perhaps none too soon. the energy to teach, let alone persuade, seems gone from us. as i fled montreal that night, i contemplated not running for any seat on the next executive. i floated in a bittersweet anticipation that must precede the liberation of someone with stockholm syndrome.

i've thought a lot this week about that ndp meeting. it wasn't our worst, nor our best. but it seemed to have left me and the people i respect feeling strange. as we crawl towards the end of our term, i hope we were able to accomplish things that stick. and holy god how i desperately hope Certain People appreciate just how much good they've created, even if it seems impossible to acknowledge. me, i'm back to feeling sad and indifferent about the party, and about my involvement in it. more than the small politics of the quebec ndp has me clutching my coffee and ambivalence today. it's the general left. sometimes i really can't answer the questions What Are We Doing and Why?

whether rinky-dink ndp stuff, or big ticket campaigning, i suppose politics are fun as much as fucked. that's why people like me are glued for life. it's a twisted sort of intellectual s & m - we get off on the pain, i guess. but i don't know that ultra-right and liberal hacks endure the same kind of torture as us. we have to be willing to find a thrill in small victories, and be sustained by them. will we ever be up against shit that isn't way bigger than us? the stakes have never seemed higher, making the game extra dire, extra exhausting. which is why to endure the Petty Bullshit of internal politics is to feel like a glutton for pain. i mean, progressives face political fights all the fuck around, perpetual and substantial. as tiny peons, you're constantly wondering where you can do the most good while suffering the least grief. those options seems too few, really. they say Pick Your Battles. i say, WTF? and How?

being sick this week caused me to miss things - crucial work time, sure, but also meetings and campaign office openings and person's day events. illness is fuzziness. my regular feelings of lost were doused in shit-tasting syrop, while calendars and goals became clouded in the cough. things don't feel quite right, and not quite wrong either. just not quite. it's as if everything around me is made gravelly by phlegm, like maybe one big cosmic cough would clear things up and allow some kind of truth to hum through. for clarity.