I've been absorbed in the "correction" we've been seeing, the collapse of our entire financial sector (my investments included), along with real spasms of inadequacy in our energy sectors affecting real people, not just speculators in a pit. I've watched with great dismay the desperate thrashings of an old, power hungry man and his Manchurian compadre as the last democratic exercise we possess, the election of leadership, turns suddenly against him and the paradigm he represents. The venom, the whipping up of frenzies and lynch mobs, and the incitement (or, at least, tacit approval) of violence is sickening, appalling, pushes the bounds of realism. Is Barack Obama being called a terrorist? Is George Bush nationalizing our banks, the very socialism his ilk have blamed Obama for suggesting with regards to health care?

Is America so intellectually vacuous that these arguments have merit with even the "lowest" of low information voters? Apparently somewhat, as the mobs seethe and roil, yet it appears that gains continue to be made by Obama and the forces that hold dear to what remains of our democratic institutions. It feels as if there is almost a cleaving, a separation, occurring whereby partisanship will be generationally and regionally entrenched. With Obama's certain victory, a sacrifice is made, that of growing disparate populations who have accepted spoonfed hate and isolationism, in a time of great turmoil. Many will overcome their racial biases, and fears of "otherness," yet many will also hold fast to cultural and intellectual xenophobia.

I need satire to vent, base and thoughtless as it may be, we all do. But after we salve each shocking sting as the world we know melts away, there's got to be some action behind it, some energy that is prepared to fill the gap. Energy higher than the merely partisan, action more powerful than the pronouncement of words and opinions. My goal for today is to find my action, for words and opinions I've aplenty. What am I willing to do? Whatever it is, it must be far more than mere voyeuristic witnessing of a collapsing paradigm, as has been the American luxury.

Whatever it shall be, it's time to get serious.

What are you going to do today?

21.00, here goes. No teevee box, so I'll have to visualize.

21.02, I guess I'd rather not tie the word visualize to Walnuts. Brokaw. Also. The Tom sounds like he's getting a prostate exam.

21.05, B looks presidential and persuasive. Walnuts tries to almost barely acknowledge Barry. Wooden. Whoever said he's the master of this venue is exaggerating a tish. My friends, x2, drink 'em!

21.09, Wow, eBay the Treasury away!

21.12, Wall Street, Main Street, suspended my campaign, blah blah. Drink! Oh, and talk down to your audience, WTG Walnuts! Never heard of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac? Maybe you, since you've never had to use subsidized mortgages on your 13 mansions, McGrumps.

21.16, Barry doesn't get caught in Tom's semantic trap, and Walnuts has the nerve to diss the cronyism he's been a long term party to? Oh, another "my friends," drink!

21.21, Walnuts borrows Barry's use of cynicism, and doesn't answer the question, and. Also. Doesn't. Answer. The. Question. I hate that there's no follow up from the candidates. "My friends" again, and a planetarium.

21.25, Walnuts goes on about bipartisanship but borrows from Palin and doesn't answer the question, again. He was asked to put things in order, but "we can do 'em all at once." One, two, and three are all the same! Everybody wins!

21.28, willing to bet there's a POW moment coming, considering the mavericky flatlining that's going on. His biggest sacrifice? Specifics.

21.33, Avatar the Cat jumps in my lap for Obama. He's in the tank.

21.35, I propose stop drinking during Walnut's "my friends" utterances, lest we all die from liver poisoning, and, someone's losing the Miss Congeniality contest again.

21.40, Sheesh, Brokaw is the poster child of anal puckering.

21.43, If the French do it, we can do it to! Walnuts the Surrender Monkey!

21.50, Tom is a trollop. That's about all I can think of. About as condescending as his pal Walnuts. It's telling that all McSame can do is point at Obama and call him, with great incivility, "that one over there."

21.55, now watching the CNN live dial feed. Wow, Walnuts is flat to tanking with Independent voters, and even his own red boys. Ouch.
Oh, and folksy goshdern bald humor! Leave the hairplugs alone!

21.58, Barry is keeping the road high. Good job. He is strong on specifics, and appropriate. Walnuts is just so... lost... up there.

22.01, POW reference any time now. His patriotic spiel was nice rhetoric, but was entirely empty of how we would really, truly, rebuild our lousy int'l reputation.

22.07, new game: drink every time Brokaw admonished Obama for McCain going over the time limits.

22.15, all of my feeds are crashing because my computer is seemingly haunted by java gremlins, but good work on recalling Walnuts little bomb cheering ditty.

22.22, again, sheesh, Tombat keeps schooling Barry on time, but Walnuts is certainly a greater consumer of it, and hot air. Also.

22.27, yay, we really get to talk about bombing Iran, compassionately and conservatively. And Israel always gets to determine American foreign policy. I hereby declare that Rhode Island now administer foreign policy for Australia.

22.33, well goshdern, this liveblogging thing only really works when your video, browser, wifi and three giziliion dollar computer actually work in concert with each other. My synopsis: McCain did himself no favors tonight, showcasing an ill tempered, rambling, and pedantic way of thinking and doing. It's over for him, my friends, and he's scrambling. Both he and Caribou Barbie will both have to return to their former, or "real" jobs, as having made complete asses of themselves with no political capital or credibility left. The media deserves the same. I'd thought long and hard about whether Brokaw would have the nerve to display an obvious Walnuts bias, and he did. Just because Keating the Fifth is an elder, and was gooked in Hell, and such, does not mean that he is some glowing hero deserving of more respect than a mere former "community organizer," as Barry has been attacked for being. PTA moms, go to hell, you're organizing. Walnuts has been to Hell and back and cannot feel your filthy communist pain. Anyway, snark aside, the format sucked and yet Barry thrived and looked very commanding and presidential. I would not have even thunk to liveblog any other debate. This one is important, and not in my lifetime has any politician truly inspired so many like me who are disaffected. I feel very fortunate to witness what shall hopefully be a remarkable day in American and world history in less than a month's time. Not the election of our first African American president, but the election of our first president who is not, from the start, any kind of tyrant. We are doing this, folks, and will do incredible justice to the last two stolen elections by electing Barack Obama.

This weekend, the big O is coming to Asheville, and I and a jazillion others will be packing it in to watch him speak on Sunday. I was proud of my little home state last night, at least of being of the same geographic stock as the good Senator Biden. He sure ate some mooseburger, ya betcha.

Tonight is a wedding rehearsal for two great friends, and I have the pleasure of doing the duty. So, back to work on the ceremony, and the peacefulness of this terrifyingly gorgeous autumn day (so damn gorgeous that I'm worried that a glitch in the simulation software will occur, and the Universe as I know it will have to reboot for having exceeded the memory capabilities of the System).

There is some guilt in not adventuring tonight, gastronomically or otherwise, as I am obviously not in Central Hungary everyday. Yet I've feverishly chased town every rainsoaked street of the main centrum, lost or otherwise, I've put my sweat and drive into the day's unwritten adventures, and perhaps the kindest one can be to oneself is to stop and just be in the body for a while. At least, that's how I will justify my downtime tonight. Anyhow, a bucket can only hold so much usefully before it becomes an awkward comedy of excess, so tonight, I'm emptying.

Ljubljana is stunning, and as I twittered, it should be a haven for expats. I am now 12 days into the trip, two weeks left, and I am getting better in adapting to the wear, team, and grime of cross continental travel. Albeit, I am less daring than backpackers who throw themselves across borders with little more than tattered guidebooks. But this is who I am, no more, no less. I have been asking myself what standard I hold myself to, regarding what I should get out of the journey and what I put into it. I feel that my expectations of myself are almost completely beyond what is immediately achievable, in the realm of the mythical attainment. While I must keep one foot across the threshold of higher purpose, my forward foot needs to be more grounded in the now, the journey, the topography of this minute´s adventure. I think I have grown up in such a self analytical and critical climate that it makes it impossible to ever achieve enough, the same struggle I see in school kids. The same I see in seniors, struggling to put an exclamation point at the end of life. Overreaching creates an underreaching within, discarding an aspect of the soul/self for what it is... there, present, singular, and briefly anchored to a material incarnation.

Today, I will dive deep into Ljubljana, for the joy of it. What I come up with is what I come up with, and I will be happy with it. As the cafe radio now blares from the depth of the ´80s, "It´s my perogative."

Despite the hiccups, though, I am enjoying myself ragged. The language barrier has been fun, and in Sofia last night I was reduced to making a choo-choo noise to the cab driver to indicate the train station. We both laughed, and he sold me a CD of Bulgarian hits, actually quite good. Today I wandered in the heavily accented heat around the fortress of Nis, which has since fallen into use by drunkards, and its historical value is only discernible through intuition. I know it was built in the 1700s, and surrounds much older structures. But for the ubiquitous cafe umbrellas and the retired carnival rides littering the outskirts, you just soak up the history by osmosis.

The sun is now full tilt on the monitor and I can't see a damn thing. UPDATE: the gentle cafe host jury rigged a cushion resting on top of my journal as a shield. I was about to say, and thus am saying, that the sun here is more brutal than the sun at home. Hotter than Balkan political rhetoric. Even more than that. I think metal is melting around me. AC does not exist here, at least in any perceptible way, but again I'm not here for my comfort, but to learn and be open to the lessons of the road.

I still have an hour before I have to get to the bus station, and I'm computered out. I suppose I'll look around for a burek, the local cheese filled pastry wonder.

Love y'all...

“Kick up the dust” by jay joslin
This body is held to the Earth by the long golden light of another passing day
Is made a lengthening shadow by the rush of protons from a heaving star
These footsteps fade into the gentle late summer night,
Falling in rhythm to the whimsical dance of stars
Under the opulent fantasies of constellations,
And the whirring chorus of cricket song.
Your body is held to the road and its curiosities by the ever quickening drama of time,
Is implored to move across the map by whispered promises of legends to behold
Your footsteps kiss the paths through a wilderness made to be known-
The Universe desires passionately to know itself through your bones,
Seeks to feel, dance, laugh, and run uphill through your skin
Longs for brambles parted by your hands in discovery.
Our bodies are held to their destination by the urgency of mortality and the blessing of names,
Are composed of atoms that are but dust, kicked up in the exertion of self-awareness
Our footsteps are made in the agreement that for this life, we must know it,
Must know the surging waters of love and the drought of disillusion,
Must wander in the moonless night for shelter, warmth and song,
Savoring holy moments of meteors and sudden friendships.
This body is held to the Universe, as much as it is an extension of it, soul within soul, star within star,
Is choosing to make camp in the rugged wilds of the unknown, for where else is there sanctuary?
My footsteps kick up the dust along a well-worn path trod by every living hungry creature,
An irresistible highway worn by the endless gypsy caravans of our young intellect,
I cannot help, like you, but to cross this perilous terrain of Earthly existence,
Thus, let us make camp together, light the fire, and tell stories
Over the embers of yesterday, marking our progress
On this tattered map, agreeing we have no choice
But to kick up the dust, kick it up within the soul
In torrential recognition of our rambling nature,
Kick it up along the road into swirling eddies
Of improbable molecules, and ride the trail
Into ourselves, in this long golden light,
Through this shimmering landscape.

It's also true that in 13 days you can watch this site for daily updates on my Oriental to Occidental Odyssey from Istanbul to London. I'll have pics, real time GPS data on where the hell I am, and observations from the road as communications allow. It's 27 days of 17 countries, mostly as a solo traveler until I reach Munich for Oktoberfest, where I join Joshua and Robin for merry making, sausage saluting, and beer bellying. I will be in the Balkans for most of those days, and with so little time left to get my logistics in place, time is being funneled into very tiny points of must dos and check lists. Minutiae never loomed so large.

So, despite the lack of activity in the past, I dunno, era, the blog will be cooking daily. Please join me in the coming weeks as I slide into purposefully perplexing portals hither and yon in the Old, and Older, Country...