I came upon something tonight that was so apt I had to share it.
I own Robert Inglis' reading of The Lord of the Rings (an all-around admirable and beautiful adaptation and performance, and I urge any Tolkien and/or audiobook fans to look it up, especially those who sometimes do menial and/or mindless tasks) and I'll play various parts of that when I'm folding laundry or doing the dishes or doing some other menial chore that is altogether mindless in its impact.
Well it just so happened I was folding laundry tonight, and I'm bummed out, fucking of course I am. And no not because I'm doing that particular activity on a Saturday night either. Such is pretty old hat for this guy.
If you really need to know what's bumming me out go take a look at my recent diaries and then at the front page and rec list.
Anyway I'm folding laundry and drinking beer and smoking some funky stuff, and bumming about South Carolina, and listening to that audiobook.
And I hear something that makes me remember what's really important.
It was at The Council of Elrond, the part of the proceedings where Bilbo isn't happy that Boromir is trash-talking Bilbo's long-time friend Aragorn, and so the old hobbit eventually says to hell with it, stands up in the midst of The Council of Fucking Elrond and recites this rhyme he wrote for his friend
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king
The last two lines only apply as the loosest of metaphors, because, unlike Aragorn, Bernie is neither a swordsman nor a king.
But I think the rest of it is pretty much spot on, for describing Bernie Sanders, his career and the whole #FeeltheBern movement.
A light from the shadows shall spring.
But goddammit we can't let up now. In fact we must redouble our efforts. We have to remain strong and working harder than ever.
Keep knocking on doors and doing whatever else you can for Bernie's ground game.
Keep sharing and retweeting and plugging Bernie on social media.
We have Super Tuesday ahead, and many states to go. We cannot waver. We knew this would be a hard climb. We knew they were counting us out.
But we've come this far. We've showed them they are wrong about Bernie.
We've already beaten the odds, and we CAN beat them again.