Momentary bliss

This piece was originally posted on Friday, October 8, 2004.
It was moved for indexing purposes.

It's a perfect caress of an evening here in the nation's capital, with a breeze stirring just enough to make its presence known, the air neither too cool for short sleeves nor too warm for long. Behind the Capitol dome, a sky recently vacated by the sun forms an indigo backdrop streaked with teal-tinted clouds.

In the day-to-day leading up to the Most Important Election in a Generation (or a Lifetime, or the Century, depending on whom is speaking), it's become all too easy to forget what a truly lovely place this can be. The denizens, including your blogstress, can hardly be blamed as they navigate checkpoints and endure surveillence and warnings of impending doom.

To the nation, Capitol Hill is the place where the laws, the kielbasi, whatever you want to call them, get made. But it is also a neighborhood lined with trees and quaint row houses that take on a twinkly glow as evening falls. Those who live far from Washington no doubt view the machinery of politics as something large and lumbering, left over from the manufacturing era--just retrofitted with cyberware. The apparati this election year, however, are found not in some giant sausage plant, but in the living rooms and kitchens of Capitol Hill.

Taking her evening constitutional last night, your cybertrix passed by the home of a senator, the windows of which revealed a gathering that could only have been a political fundraiser. People in blazers and khakis and very subdued suits stood facing a single point in the room, glasses of chablis in hand. The focal point was likely the host giving the requisite speech calling for a keeping of the faith and ponying up. Judging from her own mail, your blogstress can assure you that dozens such events take place every night here, and will until Election Day.

In other homes on the Hill, strategy is debated across dining room tables and whispered in bedrooms. Living rooms such as your Webwench's are transformed into oppo factories wherein mind-numbing facts submit to the propagandist's alchemy to become shocking claims.

Some toil for the preservation of the Constitution, others for global domination, most for movement forward in their own careers and all for the victory of their man. All in one charming little village.