TALK about love, and you don’t have to guess who’s louder.
Here comes the conga line of candidates, dear. The campaign season has officially kicked off, and on go their jingles till your ears burst with flowers.
Here’s another chance at romance, and it would matter not even if a bypass operation were overdue for your heart.
If you’ve been jaundiced in hindsight over broken promises, didn’t you hear love is supposed to be blind? That’s probably why not a few politicians often lose sight of us long after they’ve had us convinced they could only gaze at us with Cupid’s arrow between their brows.
If their campaign jingles can’t soften the stone of your cynicism, consider instead the lyricism of Barbra Streisand that might yet crack your comatose skull into nodding: “Lovers are very special people. They're the luckiest people in the world.”
No more hunger and thirst, yes. Ah, to burp from a surfeit of fool-proof policies and no-nonsense public service! “But first be a person who needs people” who are also needing your vote like a valentine offering.
Or, if your heart is no more than a heap of ash long after the slow burn of suspicion and distrust, what’s your head for?
Surely there must be other uses for it, besides smashing it smack against election posters that vandalize walls and other public spaces.
All I know is that blaming politicians is no rocket science.
Long after I learned it’s easy to make paper planes out of ballots, I’m still scratching my dandruffs whether it makes sense to skywrite the necessity of my vote.
If you can mull over lighting incense for the sanctity of our elections, just make sure you don’t doze off dreaming till you smell nothing but burnt hair.
Against the occasional silver-lined cloud over my head that says change is possible, even inevitable, there’s always the déjà vu of disappointment. That, at least, is easier to admit than failure of imagination and lack of inspiration about our candidates.
Who among them are capable of or heart-wired for a committed relationship with their electorate? Better yet, who among us are passionate enough to demand no less than the full accounting of their sincerity and selflessness?
Like love, an engagement with politics demands of us a stubborn streak to go beyond our masochistic knack for heartbreak.
I know I need to have more faith in picking candidates, besides choosing a better brand of shampoo. But I’m also certain, against the bubbles of blah swirling around those bathing in the frenzy of false hopes, that it’s a rare candidate who can compel us into silence and self-reflection necessary for a heartfelt decision.
Or, comfort us with caution worthy of Erich Segal’s honesty: “True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.”
(geemyko@gmail.com)