i tossed and turned for hours last night having crazy dreams about the things i feel most confused and ambivalent about in life, which at the moment include 1) obama being elected and 2) being suddenly surrounded by co-counselors and having 10,000 conversations about co-counseling every day. in my overconsumption-of-media induced state i kept thinking that amy goodman from democracy now could explain these things to me and help me figure out how to feel about them. they were the kind of dreams where my brain couldn't stop trying to analyze everything even though i was asleep and nothing made sense, and it was so much worse because i was being attacked (in real life) by a mosquito that somehow got into my room and kept buzzing in my ear and biting me everywhere. i used to date someone who would grab mosquitos out of the air with one hand when they were buzzing around our bed at night - i never used to be bothered by mosquitos but last night i had to turn the light on and sit up vigilantly in bed trying to kill it but i never could and it buzzed in my ear for hours.

here are my questions: is national euphoria over obama going to make us forget about imperialism? why is co-counseling so huge in philadelphia? should i move out of my challenging collective household and get my own apartment, or is my desire to do that just my capitalist brainwashing making me think that the way to solve my problems is by having total control over my surroundings and not interacting with other humans who are different than me and force me to make compromises?

also, ( read this essay by dylan rodriguez whenever you're ready to let go of any excitement you may have been feeling about the election: )

i've been seriously considering writing something on this for the past couple days, which is very uncharacteristic. i made this over a year ago when i thought i had to in order to post comments on dean's livejournal back when we were having conversations that partially led to starting enough, which actually was the first time i'd ever written something and posted it directly on the internet (now, of course, i'm a pro but only for things related to anti-capitalism). but when i started this a few of my friends who secretly (or not-so-secretly if i were only plugged in to this internet universe) had livejounals became my lj friends so i got to read things that they wrote which i've found very wonderful and charming.

anyway, life in general lately and particularly this weekend has been so strange and weird and full of mixed emotions that it's prompting me to want to do something unusual like write something here, even though it is weird and kind of challenges my whole identity as a person with a mostly businesslike relationship with the internet - so this is an experiment. i spent the whole weekend obsessively consuming mainstream media to get information about the gulf coast and hurricane gustav, and feeling really helpless and worried and trying to be prepared to do things to help. it was so different than three years ago, because even though i reacted to katrina in a lot of different ways, it wasn't even on my radar before it hit. and afterwards it was really present because evacuees were filling the austin convention center, but i hardly knew anyone who was living in new orleans at the time so i still felt kind of interpersonally distant. but now i've just recently returned from new orleans and i was worried about my friends and about the amazing and strong social justice work that's been happening there and what would happen to it all if new orleans was destroyed. it felt a little emotionally overwhelming and hard to process, and then i felt self-conscious about taking up space with my emotions about it, because whenever someone's like "how you doing?" and then you're like "i'm sort of freaking out about this extremely dire situation in the gulf coast," it kind of obligates the other person to become really serious and dire  - and i didn't want to make anyone feel shamed for not acting serious and dire in the first place, because it's true that horrible situations are going on all over the world at every moment and we have to have filters and can't react to everything in a personal way, plus the hurricane hadn't even hit yet, plus i was really attempting to not be emotionally dire about it and instead just be supportive and proactive. but it was still weird to leave the house and be in public space around people who weren't freaking out or even talking about it.

all this worrying was interspersed with sweet moments with my housemates that i found all the more precious due to my heightened emotional state: a birthday dinner for pamela at which we all took turns telling her what we liked/loved/appreciated about her, post dinner walk in which pamela showed us these little gardens she made down by the trolley tracks on baltimore avenue and chuck pointed out landmarks related to the 70s when they were part of movement for a new society, and enthusiastic group refrigerator cleaning (extremely satisfying). also one night i spontaneously joined them in watching west side story on public television, which i remember hating and thinking was a disgrace to musicals but which this time i really liked. it made me realize how much i seriously hate movie romance, because there is this one pivotal moment in the film after tony kills maria's brother bernardo in the rumble, and it's the climactic dramatic moment and really should have been marked with a group number about racial tension and gang warfare but instead goes in the totally wrong direction by not letting maria mourn for her brother at all and just zooming in on a soft-focus duet between maria and tony about how everything would be fine if they could just run away together alone and live in hollywood heteronormative bliss forever. i hated that part of the film so much that i apparently forgot about all the important-for-its-time stuff about gangs and immigration and police institutionalized racism, and the excellent dance numbers.

i'm still a little surprised that half of my four-person household consists of 60-year-old activist quaker co-counselors who are straight, but it feels good/interesting so far. smoot and i have started referring to our house as homococo (gays on the third floor, co-counselors on the second floor), which i really hope catches on with chuck and pamela although i don't think we've mentioned it to them yet.