The eve of elections. I will vote tomorrow, but, as usual, I find it hard to imagine how it will affect anything. Robin Andrea, writing at Dharma Bums, inspired me with her post today:

[On smaller blogs] … holding down the fort, our earth, during these battles. For doing the work, planting the gardens, keeping our eyes on the water levels and quality, checking in on the forests and the oceans, the quality of food we eat, the economy and health care, and the animals we share the planet with.
– The Big and The Small

It’s an ideal, difficult to maintain out of hope rather than cynicism.

Stone basin at the entrance to the Viewing Pavilion of the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

It helps me to try and take a long view, eg: 7th Generation. In 175 years, it will not matter who was or was not in power. I will be dust and forgotten in that time. It is our collective response which will make that future. Yet there are still things I can do, decisions I can make, truth I can speak to power or the empty air, which I can imagine could make things slightly less worse than they will be otherwise.

I’m a pebble. I’m falling. My existence at the surface, in this life, is a brief passage. I have only a moment of opportunity during which I can act. Then I will sink to the bottom, cold and silent forever.

I cannot know where the ripples will go.