This election has me rattled and make no mistake. My normal policy is to get enough information to make up my mind and then move on; I don't have so much time in my life that I need to spend any of it learning anything about a candidate I've already decided against. I also don't watch "anti-hero" television shows or hang out with assholes. Still, there's a part of me that enjoys the delicious shiver of an insect in an unexpected place and so I have watched the debates. They give me nightmares. 

I sometimes feel like I should go around stating to people who I am that makes Trump personally repulsive to me and I've fought the urge because it goes beyond personal revulsion. I can say that as a woman I find his sexism disgusting; that as an atheist I find his leanings towards religious tests incredibly backwards and threatening; that as a queer person I hear his "traditional marriage" dogwhistles and shudder; and that as an immigrant, I find his stance on immigration to be ridiculous, even if just in empathy with immigrants to the US. But then the implication is that I'm only reacting in my own self-interest… which, though it seems to distinguish me from a number of his supporters, is not entirely the case. I'm slightly whiter than milk and his racism is still revolting to me.

And I guess maybe this is why it's scary? Because I feel like as a human being, sometimes at a disadvantage (though very often at an advantage), I am able to imagine how it might be for other human beings in different circumstances. So I have trouble understanding the stunning lack of empathy coming from the supporters of a racist, sexist, xenophobic, etc etc. horrorshow. They don't even seem to understand how much he disrespects them, so eager are they to be on his side disrespecting the other groups he scorns. How can women support him? Mexicans? Muslims? People with the ability to make complete sentences? Is it just the played up fear of coming in last that motivates people to perceive the world as a competition they can never win unless they step on the other competitors, rather than try to see themselves as being on a team where the shared strength of every team member means winning on a larger scale?

So I think about that, about how I can understand that. I think about the GOP and Frankenstein and who the monster really was. I think about the internet and how the very thing that has made life so glorious for me (the ability to know about and connect with a world beyond my immediate neighborhood) seems to make the world so terrifying for other people, and what that means. I think about these things and then I fall asleep to dreams of a house where I am always hiding behind a panel, holding my breath, waiting. I've saved space for you here if you want to come hide with me until November 9th. I'm not ready to entertain the idea that it might be necessary after. 

Our cat died this morning. She was sixteen. I have had cats my whole life and this is the second one that I didn't love. The first one went to live with my boyfriend's grandfather after six months of us vexing each other. This cat, though, was acquired partly because I wanted my son to grow up in knowledge of caring for something smaller and weaker, so sending it off to live on a farm wasn't an option. And she didn't vex me so much as she just never took my heart. She  was sick in the beginning and suicidal through most of the middle, and though I made her flashcards explaining about how she only got nine lives she continued to jump out the apartment window whenever she got the chance. Possibly I never loved her because I never expected her to stick around for long. I felt bad about it sometimes, not loving this creature who lived with us, but certainly my son loved her and she was fed and petted and brushed. 

We were gone for the summer and five different people took care of her, with five different ideas of how a cat should be cared for. I'm sure that was a factor. But she had been toothless for seven years and always had one thing or another going on with her fur or her digestion, and she was eighty years old in cat years. We came home to a cat that was clearly not long for the world. She licked food off of my fingers for the first day but then even that didn't interest her.

She didn't seem to be in pain; she purred when she was petted and she mewed when she was uncomfortable but mostly she slept on my chest or in my suitcase (a previous battleground, but I decided she could have it this time). I watched her slipping away this past week. I thought I would see if I could let her go naturally, without euthanasia, although I am a big fan of choosing not to suffer needlessly. But it didn't seem like she was suffering. I am incredibly privileged to work from home and be able to spend most of my day checking on a cat every hour to see if she wants to lick water off my fingers or be carried to the cat box, so that's what I did. And somewhere between one hour and the next this morning, she died.

I did not love her. But I did care for her. I hope I have resolved that within myself. I'm not sure she knew or cared, as long as I fed her. She was a quintessential cat in that regard. 

My sister has a bird, a parrot, that was rescued from some old dude who wasn't really able to take care of it. Otis is an absolute beauty and quite gentlemanly in many ways. He has a collection of phrases from his previous owner, and sometimes we talk to him in that voice, as if it were his voice, Otis's, though of course we don't know what that would sound like. Otis is a bird, with a bird-sized brain, but because he can talk, it sometimes seems like he's really quite smart, smart enough to mess with you.

Like sometimes he makes the sound of the dishwasher being done when it hasn't even completed a cycle, and I come running to be a good houseguest for nothing; I think he likes the scurrying. And sometimes he uses my sister's or brother-in-law's voices to call out "hello" as though they have just come home and I get all happy because that means it's cocktail time except Otis doesn't drink and they won't be home for two more hours. Pavlov's parrot or something, this one.

Or like I sit down to work and Otis asks me "Whatcha doing? Whatcha doing?!" and I tell him I am working. And he asks and I answer until it seems existential, until I am almost crying about it, because I am sitting here in beautiful sunny California, there is a swingset in the backyard, there are rivers to raft in, and I am… well, Otis, I am working. Which is the right thing to do, but if you say it enough it can sound wrong.

So I am working. I am also taking some time for myself: I have been wine tasting; I have driven over the border into Nevada to win $60 on a $1 slot machine and walked away; I have eaten until all I can fit in are cotton pants with an elastic waist, and then I have heaved a giant sigh of relief and eaten more. I have been complimented on my "look" by a stranger and have in parallel noted with pleasure my increasing invisibility in the patriarchy. I have celebrated birthdays and anniversaries. I have mourned the deaths of 49 people I did not know and one who I did. I have visited some friends and will visit more. I have laughed until I cried, which is usual for me, and cried until I laughed, which is new and interesting. I have debated whether love makes us blind (I believe it does not). I have been flooded with memories of previous times I was here, previous longings and disappointments and delights.

I have not told Otis everything I am doing. I probably shouldn't tell you, either.  

Ok, so television. I like watching Orphan Black a lot. It started sort of in the realm of "who are you, really?" nature/nurture stuff, which is one of my favorite stories, and then it got sort of Fringe-y with the Neolutionist stuff, which is not my favorite story but since I would like to have tentacles I have empathy for people who want to have tails so okay, that's fine. Now I think it's gotten a little too "holy crap, we haven't been canceled? Better string this along then" with the plot, but I'll still watch Tatiana Maslany do just about anything and I like Jordan Gervais a lot too so you know, still fun. And I like playing "Which clone is the most like you?" with myself, where we would like to be Cosima, with her smarts and her pretty French girlfriend and her desperate desire to believe in love against all the usual odds, even though we know we are more like Alison with her pointy needs.

And I like Orange Is the New Black, and I'm putting them together here not just because they both start with O and end in Black, but because I again feel these vague identifications with the characters. I like Red's fierce loyalties, Boo's uncompromising sense of self, Norma's faith in kindness. I would like to think I have Poussey's moral steadfastness. But the other night we watched the episode when Caputo compromises himself over and over to be the "good guy". Gives up his dreams to help someone weaker, falls on his sword because he can take it. And I have done that; I have let my ability to see how to help other people and my pleasure in being able to do that interfere with even thinking about what I want, what pleasures I could take for myself beyond giving. But then Caputo started listing everything he'd given, and I thought: eww. Because I will give to the extent that I feel able, and then if the only reward is knowing I gave, well after a while it just gets boring. After a while, it's like sleeping on marble, pouring out the heat of my body into endless cold. And I did that, I have done that, but I can't do it anymore. After a while I have to get up and move around and find some place softer. I feel that the point of kindness for me is that I can, it is the pleasure of doing something I do well. When kindness is used as an excuse for self-pity, it's almost as ugly as being selfish in the first place. So not Caputo, me. Though it felt like a useful cautionary tale. And that is why I love television; these stories, the mythology, the promises and the warnings, the shoes I can walk in for 45 minutes at a time and see where I might wind up. 

Things that have not changed:

There are some faces that I love to look at, have loved to look at, even when my love for the person has so completely evaporated that I barely trust my memory, I still feel such pleasure in the tilt of their eyes, curve of lip, chicken pox scar, whatever. There is still, in their faces, something of what initially pulled me to them. Other faces as my love faded the veil slipped and they became unattractive on the outside as from the inside, until they are just faces, flowers of no particular interest. 

And then there are faces I almost can't bear to look at. 

What I am wondering this month, as I fail to watch another political debate partly on aesthetic grounds, is whether these people were born with terrible faces and then gradually developed personalities to match them, or whether their faces reflect their personalities. This one constantly surrounded by every stale fart in the world, judging from the curled lip and the pinched nose. This one with his lips pursed tighter than any sphincter needs to be. These faces physically repulse me, and yet other people must find them attractive. What is that about?

I walk down the street and look at faces and think about chickens and eggs. Is this the face you would have chosen, if you had a choice? Were you born looking like the world had failed to meet your expectations; arms crossed disdainfully already on the playground, a bossy dissatisfied child; does the thin upper lip reflect a disappointment you were born with? Were you born this way and your personality grew into it, or did your looks grow this way because of how you lived? The result is the same, I guess, so maybe it doesn't matter, but I have a half smile, slightly widened eyes, and I'm asking.

Last night an angry bee was bothering me as I took a leisurely stroll down a narrow path that seemed mostly like a grocery aisle. Flapping my hands in front of me to get rid of it. I don't know why I didn't just turn and walk the other way; this fuzzy yellow creature was obviously intent on stopping me. Fwap fwap fwap with my hands at it, effectively blowing it out of my way on puffs of agitated air until finally it landed on my hand and I couldn't shake it off, and I felt the stinger go in. A mixture of pain and… relief, then, because now the thing I had been dreading happened, and now the bee would die so I could proceed unhindered. Except it kept coming at me. A wasp? Is it bees that die and wasps that don't? And which are hornets? I could feel my hand starting to swell. I just wanted to get to the end of the path, where it opened out again; also, I wanted to find tweezers to get the stinger out, and they're on another aisle. I am, even now, confused about why I didn't turn around. Instead waving my hands, sometimes brushing against the fur of a very determined and angry hornet, the buzzing, the pain in my hand. I put a scarf over my head, tenting it over my face so the hornet couldn't sting through it, then wondered where the scarf had come from and why it was so heavy and finally woke, buried under the blankets, sweating and frightened and very confused. I still need tweezers.