Decisions, Decisions

This week, I canvassed 38 doors for Jake Fitisemanu, Jenny Wilson, and the Democratic Salt Lake County Council candidates. Mayor Jenny Wilson gave me hug when I went to shake her hand. Jake recalled the email I sent him, saying that he previously had no idea about some of the issues I had presented about transportation workers.

I also got to pair up with a young man who had never canvassed before. He had attended the presidential debate, and consequently signed up to volunteer canvassing doors. He lives in the Rosa Parks district, and doesn’t mind driving to West Valley City to help out. It was my pleasure to show him the ropes. I am so excited that people are excited to support the Democratic candidates. One woman invited us to sit awhile and chat. At another home that had a rainbow vase, the person I talked looked me in the eye and said, “You’re doing very important work.”

After canvassing, I picked up my friend and we drove down to Draper to watch a backyard performance of Saturday’s Voyeur. As usual it was hilarious and it takes a serous look at presidential politics in Utah. Afterwards, I did a little bit of campaigning for my race for Second Vice Chair, and when I spoke with Representative Moss, she asked me to forward her the legislative needs for transportation workers. Senator Kathleen Riebe told me she had indeed received it as well. At least two of the other candidates for Second Vice Chair are friends of mine.

Sunday morning I served breakfast at the VOA, where the volunteer organizer announced that one of the volunteers besides myself present was running, and I replied, “I am, too.” Even though she said she was endorsing the other person, she said she liked that we were hosting Queer Coffee and to keep it up. The idea behind the Queer Coffee is to continue to help build the Utah Stonewall Dems caucus.

The topic at church was on listening to our small inner voice. Sometimes, we wander off the trail--sometimes deliberately--and then we need to make decisions on how to find our way back. Other times, we come to a juncture in our life where must clearly make a decision, and we can become paralyzed trying to make the “right” decision. We may even be deciding whether to leave the well-known path we are on, and blaze a trail into the wilderness. Even deciding which way to blaze a trail can be a decision for consulting the inner voice.

It’s important to remember that there is no “right” choice. We can only make the “best” choice given the information we have. Advice on how to make the better decision includes envisioning the future, engaging in a real dialogue with an actual human, considering what really matters to you, journaling your thoughts, and then listening to your inner voice. That inner voice could be subvocalizations, a new awareness of signs that help guide the way, or a coincidental event or conversation that prompts you to move in a particular direction. The inner voice may suggest that you slow down, stop, or consider a different choice instead. Each person’s inner voice is unique in the way it works. It is deeply personal, and a part of what makes you you. When I truly can’t decide, and no amount of information can sway me one way or another, I simply toss a die and let that be my small voice.

An important lesson: be kind to your former self, the one that made prior choices that didn’t quite turn out as planned. That former self made the best choice with the information and values that they had then. You likely know many things you didn’t know then, and are ready to make better choices today. Every single one of us is an evolution in progress: transitioning, growing, and, hopefully, becoming wiser day by day with every decision we make.

After church, I swam some laps at West Valley Family Fitness Center. There I met Marta and swam for 200 m in 18 minutes. This is a decision I make for myself when I can't go kayaking on a particular weekend.

Thursday, I thought for sure we were under attack. I heard what were clearly explosions coming in pairs. When I went outside, I couldn’t see anything that had exploded or tell-tale signs of smoke plumes anywhere. Then I heard them again and I knew they were coming from at least a mile or more to the south. No aircraft in sight, no smoke trails, what was going on so close to our neighborhoods. News trickled in that it was the army depot was detonating munitions. Somehow, Utah has been designated as the place to destroy these munitions. The actual sites were over 10 miles away, yet the explosions could be clearly heard. This cannot be easy on people who suffer with PTSD.

The old Redwood Drive-In Theater is going to become an apartment complex. The zoning change was approved by the city council, with one member voting in the negative. The excuse was that they had no control over the zoning change, but that’s one of the few things they do have control over. Many immigrant families have been able to survive and create businesses thanks to the owners who let the community provide a flea market there. Unfortunately the owners are selling and the buyers plan to develop it to build housing units. I’m pretty sure that some kind of accommodations could have been made that wouldn’t have been quite so disruptive to the families.

In “Trail Marker,” by W. S. Merwin, published in The Shadow of Sirius, Merwin observes a white tern calling in the evening sky. It has been six months since someone has gone, and soon the tern, too, is gone, leaving only the clouds and the tide behind.

In More Stars then Grains of Sand, Al Forsyth notes that most of the people we see around us are actually relatives. We are literally, as well as figuratively, family. He also notes that up to a billion of the atoms that we carry used to belong to Shakespeare.

In the poem “The House in Winter,” by Jane Hirschfield, published in The October Palace, the tide reveals a cupboard that holds jars of delicious golden peaches. The winter light soon sweeps the cupboard back into the shadows.

In The Phoenix Keeper, by Sarah A. Maclean, dawn drowns beneath the morning fog. The peacock griffin statue swims through the condensation clinging to its wing tips. Nervous about the morning’s upcoming inspection, Aila tried everything to relax the night before: burning incense, mindfulness exercises, and burying her face in her scented pillow.

Aila worries that she won’t be enough later that evening. Connor uses a gentle touch to calm her down, and insists the she worries too much.

I decided to honor my late father’s birthday by reading a book by his favorite author, in order to get to know him a bit better. I have already found it insightful that the author explored gender fluidity in her writing, which my Dad may have found interesting. In her “Author’s Note” to The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin notes that “This book is not about the future.” She states that she is “inventing elaborate circumstantial lies” in order to create a thought-experiment to explore the the psychological reality “that if you look at us at certain odd times of day in certain weathers, we already are [androgynous].” She also points out that when we finish a good novel, we made find ourselves a bit different, having changed a little, but not necessarily knowing exactly how we have changed or what we have learned.

In the end, we only have today, and that slips through our fingers. It is up to us to make the best decisions we can given any day, always mindful that we know more today than we did yesterday. We can't go back, except to reflect on where we were before, the decisions we made, the relations we built, and to not hold that person accountable. Memory is imperfect. The world is ever changing; so are we, and our memories with it. We need to learn from the past in order improve our odds of creating a better future; one in which we have built lasting memories to look back fondly on, knowing we made the best decision given what we knew.