Jennie Smash

Outside my window, it really looks like November. It’s raining. The sky is gray. There are leaves pasted over everything like paper mache.

I dreamt of bats last night. I dreamt that I was living in a haunted house. My real-life landlords were the landlords, and they were sad because they couldn’t rent the top floor. I offered to exorcize the place for them. They were pleased, not only because we could rent the place but also because I had apparently wanted them to rent it earlier to friends of mine, some mysterious people called “the twins” and they’d said no. They were happy that we were on good terms again.

Mrs. Piddlington and I stomped around on the upper floor, saying the Lord’s Prayer. We shivered with cold and looked very fierce. Outside the windows, the bats gathered.

At the end of the dream, we got in our cars and drove off, just like in the Amityville Horror. Evil won. All we could do was run away.

I didn’t dream about the elections last night. Not in so many dream-words, anyway. But I’ll tell you this: no matter what happens, I’m not getting in my actual car and driving away. This is my country, too, no matter what the Republicans want you to think, and being a liberal does not mean that I love my country any less than they do. (I would argue that I love it more: As a profoundly nonconfrontational person, it’s hard for me to offer criticism to anyone, and yet here I am, offering criticism to America.)

Don’t talk about going to Canada, my fellow Democrats and liberal Independents and Green Party members and all the rest. Stay here and fight. We’re going to have to be very strong over the next four years. We’re going to need each other.

Hang on. The Revolution will be televised, and misinterpreted, on four networks and a score of cable news outlets.