Angry? Sad? Depressed? It’s Dandelion Time.

At about three-thirty this morning, my lamp toppled onto my bedstead and woke me. I was pissed. I could not go back to sleep. Also I wondered: Is this waking a gift?

About ten hours later, I’m saying it is. Why? Because I finished my paid writing work shortly after eight, which meant I was able to sit outside in the sun and drink maté with Gregg, while grumbling about Dollary Clump; then get my laundry done and hung on the line in time for it to dry by dusk (I hope); then return to my desk after five hours’ absence – the longer the break, the clearer the head. If not for the fallen lamp, I would not be writing this. Thank you, lamp.

So. Election Day. Months ago, I wondered if there was a beautiful way to participate in the shit show. I never did come up with anything profound, but I did vote twice for the Greens and, six times, for “the dandelions.”

If you have not read The Dandelion Insurrection, by Rivera Sun, you must. Why? Because it is an antidote. It is sunshine on mildew. Saliva on blood. If you left the polls feeling “angry,” “sad,” or “depressed” (for some reason, I laughed out loud while reading about the preponderance of negative emotions among those who’d just voted), you may be ready for the good news: We are the dandelions. Whenever, wherever, we can bloom; we can rise.

What’s eerie about the world of The Dandelion Insurrection is the resemblance it bears to our own. It’s as if Sun takes the hazily sinister aspects of our culture (corruption, plutocracy, oppression justified by trumped-up threats of terrorism) and sharpens them just enough to make them undeniable. We are really just a step or two away from the America she imagines – and maybe, after today, a step or two closer to rejecting a red or blue pinpoint for a brilliant field of yellow.