Will this never end?

Pending resolution of the US presidential election it seems at times that the entire world is in a state of suspended animation. On almost every imaginable level there is an unbearable resistance to moving forward until that event is accomplished. It isn’t even clear that the nail-biting will end on Voting Day (November 8) or whether it will only be the spark that sets the debris ablaze. Until then the election is on everyone’s lips. You can’t go anywhere or talk to anyone without the chimera of Donald J. Trump percolating. Meanwhile the anxiety about the election lingers universally, sometimes casting a shadow upon the entire globe, fuelling at the very least an examination of liberalism, isolationism and nationalism or trepidation about the decline  and upset of the American Empire and the Grand Old Party.

With a moderate stretch of the imagination the very public presidential election is a metaphor for the apprehension that echoes the condition of my own personal affairs.  We are poised to resolve our own dilemmas about the same time that the US election takes place. We’re leaving Canada shortly and scheduled to arrive on Hilton Head Island just days before the election. It is no accident that our anxious preparations for going south for the winter dovetail with the monumental events affecting our American hosts. We are as much wired to the epic production as we are to our comparatively mundane routine. I won’t even apologize for likening our petty personal concerns to those of Donald J. Trump and Hillary R. Clinton. Big or small, we’re all caught in a web of obligations, trials, ambitions, wearisome duties, hopes, disappointments, family, health and perpetual flux – in short, everyday life. Like a Shakespearean play there is the grand upper-tier theme and the colloquial sub-plot, each reflecting the other, one formal, the other demotic. Nobody is able to separate himself or herself from the strength of involvement no matter the perceived elevation or vulgarity of it.

One thing at least is different; namely, our goal is not so much winning as achievement.  The election race will certainly carry the weight of victory or defeat for one or the other.  We by contrast have only a sense of relief to anticipate. The winding down of our current affairs represents the conclusion of a multitude of preoccupations. The synthesis is perhaps best characterized as a fresh step, a somewhat fictional or emblematic transition from one stage to another.  There are clearly material differences which will result but the primary alteration is the culmination of an agenda we began almost seven months ago when we returned to Canada for the summer. Our transcript has at times been marked by frustration, but for the most part we have accomplished what we set out to do. There remain outstanding matters but even my notorious impatience is not so great as to defeat the hope of composition soon. I am for the time being resigned to perpetual revolutions of monotonous thoughts, the result of having been tethered for months to the same posts.  The only thing that will end the nightmarish repetition and resurgence of these sometimes overwhelming distractions is a total break from our current vernacular.  Small wonder it is reminiscent of preparing for a well-deserved holiday. Yet I won’t diminish the fortuity of winding down a number of matters affecting us.  There really have been palpable progressions and amortizations. The dénouement isn’t entirely theatrical.