i'm reading wintering: the power of rest and retreat in difficult times now. another snowstorm is blowing in. i read another site suggesting that it's too soon to assume obama will get his tower in the park and i start to hope and at the same time i stop myself. i'd rather believe it's over. the cycle of hope and despair is reminiscent of the political cycles that see figures like obama rise smiling with slogans of hope, get rich as fabled kings and go their fabulous ways, leaving despair in their wake—or threatening to return to build a towering monument to their empty promise in the public park. behind the promise lies the threat. i'd rather be resting and wintering. presumably in spring the trees will be razed and the 17 year locusts will stay buried under the staging because it's not their time yet, politically, and everything in the the land movers way will be displaced to make way for his second coming. so be it. it doesn't mean i've changed, nor the path of the birds migration.