Desperation

I attempted to chat with my old libertarian pal today but I drift farther afield each week. In my dorm room, which my ex-roommate Champ Camacho vacated today after reporting to the campus that I was going to pay for the electric damage he caused, I feel tense and unable to settle down. It's getting more difficult for me to engage with people rationally, to slow down and take arguments on their own terms. I've tried to get more of my philosophy out of my head and onto the page but I keep drifting into the ultimate and infinite Heart Sutra. To settle down and look at my Time essay again, I think I'd have to go through a rigorous detox program from interning in Washington.

An increasing number of calls are desperate. There's not as many people from within the district offering their opinions on health care or the environment; now there are people calling from all over the country, saying that Barney Frank is the only Congressman they respect, and that they're very concerned about gasoline prices, drilling in Anwar and offshore, Fannie and Freddie, collapsing banks, Bear Sterns, mortgage scammers... there seems to be no end to the variety of calls I get, nearly all of them from people quite far away from Massachusetts. One man was very angry, demanded I thank him for his service in the Army (I was prepared to tell him that I don't thank anyone for killing people, but held myself back), and called Barack Obama a "secret Muslim", at which point I hung up and got scolded by staff. An angry lady tried to engage me in a policy debate, which I'm not supposed to do; I have to learn to be quicker with the "Hold" button, because these people won't stop talking long enough for me to interrupt. One very old woman talked for a long time about her financial troubles, Obama's energy promises, prayer in schools ("I support a minute of silence, but not prayer. Whose prayer would it be? George Bush's prayer?"), and religious education ("you're Buddhist? That's great, I'm Catholic but I sent my son to college to learn all the religions of the world, I told him you have to understand...")

I'll admit it: the economy has made me depressed as well. All the newspapers have it on the front page. It makes me wonder whether it's a good idea to be a religion major, what kind of job I might look forward to five years from now, and how I can support myself and my family. I watch only a minimal amount of television but the media are difficult to avoid, especially working in Washington. I think people who know what's good for them will avoid overloading themselves with information. Even when it's factual, as it is here, listening to this stuff over and over will blow your feelings out of proportion, and with my current mood it seems like only next week Congress might shut down for good and I'll be stranded in DC with no direction home.

The summer couldn't get much angrier.