Elutriate

ELECTION DAY, NOVEMBER, 1884

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,

‘Twould not be you, Niagara —nor you, ye limitless prairies—nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,

Nor you, Yosemite—nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,

Nor Oregon’s white cones—nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes—nor Mississippi’s stream:

—This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name—the still small voice vibrating—America’s choosing day,

(The heart of it not in the chosen—the act itself the main, the quadrennial choosing,)

The stretch of North and South arous’d—sea-board and inland—Texas to Maine—the Prairie States – Vermont, Virginia, California,

The final ballot-shower from East to West—the paradox and conflict,

The countless snow-flakes falling—(a swordless conflict,

Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s): the peaceful choice of all,

Or good or ill humanity—welcoming the darker odds, the dross:

—Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify—while the heart pants, life glows:

These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,

Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.

When I was a kid, I ever so much wished that all the corruptions, crimes, and unpleasantness in my neighborhood would one day be washed away, elutriated. How naive a kid’s mind is! As I grew older, I realized that everyone would have to live with and even become an active observer or a willing participant to what society in general regards as “evil”.

Watching Rainer Fassbinder‘s Lola tonight reaffirmed my beliefs: that no one is incorruptible, and that morality will always take a back seat to love and desire.