Shitty Fucking Day.

1. Kerry lost the election promising 4 years with the man who, at least to me is clearly the worst president of modern history. I can see the next four years being some of the most destructive since the civil war.

2. I lost my cel phone, that stupid little piece of machinery upon which I have become much too dependent. I depend on the feeling of security that my phone brings and the knowledge that in an emergency, I can be reached. If I am going to be late for work, if my uncle has a heart attack, if there is an earth quake, if the University of Washington is attacked by terrorists while my sister or my team mates are there, I can feel that I won't be isolated. I can find out immediately if the people I love are safe. Furthermore, my cel phone has all of the phone numbers of pretty much everyone I know. Without it, I don't have the contact information for anyone who I would have called to address point one tonight with whisky and hunched shoulders in a dark bar somewhere.

3. I am afraid that I have lost faith in the work I do. I don't know if civic responsibility is something that can or should be taught in schools, much less college. I don't think that 19 year olds who don't already believe that it is their duty to become involved their community, much less to serve the people around them, are going to be taught anything new because they are forced to use the skills from an accounting class at a day care center. I have, over the last few weeks, also found myself questioning the morality of Service Learning in any but the most perfectly designed, and exclusively fictional settings. I don't what moral value, if any can be found in reflection, a process in which participants find the "value" of service, not in the act of service itself, not even in the positive impact the service has, but in the emotional and intellectual masturbation that accompanies it.
Furthermore, I don't even know if I believe the Service Learning and Civic Engagement dogma that we recite again, and again, and again. I have worked to become involved in my community all of my life, as a dumb-fuck boy scout planting trees and collecting food, as a dip-shit college student involved in student groups, as a Nevadan VISTA trying to establish a program for brilliant punk kids to do something positive. I have voted in every single election of my life. Still, I don't know that I ever felt myself a part of a community more extensive than my Americorps team (which disperses in 9 months), or the group of students at my college who came to my dorm’s floor to drink (which dispersed years ago). I certainly don't feel any sense of our country as a community, or city as a community, or neighborhood as a community, or the people who ride the 271 every morning a community. I can't imagine what, short of running for office would give me any feeling that I am any legitimate part of American Democracy, 'cause those "I voted" stickers ain't fuckin' cuttin it.
If actively trying to be involved for 15 years doesn't give me a sense of Civic Engagement how, then, is our work supposed to be Dewey's "midwife of Democracy" for this, or any generation? Or is something just wrong with me?

4. Finally, on my way home, I walked in to a rose bush. I just brushed by it lightly, but a thorn caught me and tore a hole in one of the 5 pairs of pants that I own. They were the olive green ones Dianna bought for me. Now I have three pairs of black cords, one pair of blue cords and nothing else. Fucking bush. I fucking hate that bush. Fuck that fucking bush.