Has any election in America’s history created as much anxiety as this one? Months of daily scandals, vulgarity, accusations, power plays, distortions have become a form of psychic violence for many. It seems like our very lives are on the line. So we’ve put together some instructions for navigating Election Day.

Barry Blitt/The New Yorker
Barry Blitt/The New Yorker

First, even if you are dispirited by what has become a very nasty election process, remember that the important thing is: We get to vote. We are lucky. MANY people around the world do not.

Waldina
Waldina

So go vote today. Feel really good you got to do it.

Then, to antidote some of the very dark news stories we’ve read the past months about and between the candidates, we recommend:

…Watching Saturday Night Live’s final funny, redemptive bit with Trump and Clinton (if only a dream). Watch the whole 9-minute recap-of-Trump-and-Clinton here. Here’s our excerpt:

…Or follow Yoko Ono’s instruction for imagining the two political adversaries:

Yoko Ono's Acorn via Sally Schneider
Yoko Ono’s Acorn via Sally Schneider

For perspective, here are a couple of Mary Oliver poems we find helpful:

I do not know what gorgeous thing
the bluebird keeps saying,
his voice easing out of his throat,
beak, body into the pink air
of the early morning. I like it
whatever it is. Sometimes
it seems the only thing in the world
that is without dark thoughts.
Sometimes it seems the only thing
in the world that is without
questions that can’t and probably
never will be answered, the
only thing that is entirely content
with the pink, then clear white
morning and, gratefully, says so.

It’s a great reminder that the Nature AND all its possibilities is right outside our window…

Fast Forward
Fast Forward

We took the very bold liberty of changing a word in Mary Oliver’s Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness to reflect the current mood:

I don’t say
it’s easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?
So let us go on

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be seem doomed.

We are going to “go on” tonight by have a really good pizza with friends, a communal FUCK YOU! to our anxieties:

Salvatore Cuomo
Salvatore Cuomo

And whatever the outcome is tomorrow, we’ll ponder all the miracles in the world STILL and things we can create ANYWAY…

Ascension of Polka Dots on Trees - Yayoi Kusama

Maira Kalman
Maira Kalman

 

Yoko Ono Watch piece from Acorn; Mary Oliver’s ‘What Gorgeous Thing’ from Blue Horses; Polka Dot Trees by Yayoi Kusama; ‘There is so much to do’ from The Principles of Uncertainty.

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