We limp out of bed, our fingernails chewed, our cuticles crusted with blood, our eyes misted from too many sleepless nights, our overworked hearts sagging like weathered bags of sand. We walk outside, and everything—the trees, the cars, the crowds—seems singed with defeat, hollowed out, a shade darker. Wearing the same wrinkled jeans, the same creased shirts, the same worn sneakers, we trudge, unshowered, onto the trains. As the Q slowly creeps over the Manhattan bridge, New York’s skyline looks like a yard of dim iron gravestones. The gray sky is teeming with winter.

Half-conscious, we hobble back to our places of work, and it has officially begun: Day One of The Next Four Years. We stare at our blank screens, and even the task of responding to emails seems Herculean.

We wonder: how can we bare four more years of John Ashcroft? How will we survive the new round of assaults on our freedoms of speech and rights to privacy? How many more innocents will needlessly endure torture at Guantanamo?

We wonder: how can we bear four more years of Donald Rumsfeld? How can we continue to put the lives our brothers and sisters into the hands of a man who helped to orchestrate the most poorly planned war since Vietnam? How many more times can we muster the strength to look at the photos of Abu Ghraib?

We wonder: how can we bear four more years of Dick Cheney? How many more lies can we bare to hear about Saddam’s supposed link with al Qaeda? How much longer can we live through this recession--funding wars with our tax dollars--only to see Halliburton, Carlyle, and Bechtel thrive? How much more cronyism can we possibly handle?

We wonder…—no, we can’t begin to wonder about Bush. We’re still too horrified to speculate.

Suddenly, it’s 4 p.m. and we’ve done nothing all day except wonder. Finally, our fingers start to move. We send out those “I can’t fucking believe this” emails, we post rambling rants on our makeshift blogs, and, maybe, a few of us get some actual work done.

We head back home, re-boarding the trains, struggling to stay awake. But then we start to notice things: the “Re-Defeat Bush” t-shirt on the girl sitting across from us, faded John Kerry sticker stubbornly clinging to the iron pole, the old man with the “W Stands for Wrong” button on his cap. We exchange that furtive glance—that same furtive glance the rebels exchanged in 1984—and we know, with precision, the substance of each other’s thoughts.

We go our separate ways, deflated, but far from decimated. Tomorrow—armed with Air America Radio and The Nation, backed by the burgeoning blogosphere—we will go back into the fray.

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For the first time we can remember, the alarm sounds like sweet music. The “eeee eeee eeee eeee” might as well be Bach’s finest.

We pinched ourselves the morning after the Sox won it all, and now we’re slapping ourselves silly, just to make sure this is real. Holy shit, we say to ourselves, holy shit. Kerry won. Thank god.

We spring out of beds, our bodies sore from days of canvassing. Our cheeks are still thawing from days in northern Ohio, in western Wisconsin, in the frostbitten foothills of New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Our hands are calloused from holding signs at crowded intersections in Michigan and thoroughfares in Florida. Our feet are blistered from day-long treks through small towns in Maine and Pennsylvania. Our bodies are sore, but we are not tired, no. We are elated, ebullient, renewed.

We clean that dirty laundry strewn across the carpet, change the sheets, and take out the trash, every last bit of it. As we step outside, we stretch our arms skyward, and we feel that tightness in our backs slowly recede. We throw away that half-smoked pack of cigarettes, and we head for work.

At the office, we shoot off emails to everyone we know. “I can’t fucking believe it, he won! He won!” “America has allies again!” “No more Cheney!” We don’t normally send forwards, but today, we send along everything we lay our eyes on: a profound blog post, a witty anti-Bush cartoon, a heart-warming story about the man whose dying wish was to see a Kerry victory.

We spend all day thinking about how much—and how quickly—the world will change. How we can afford to see a doctor about that nagging knee problem. How our fundamental liberties are once again secure. How are mothers’ and sisters’ bodies are no longer threatened, how our grandfathers and grandmothers may end up living much longer than we previously thought possible. How we can soon go abroad and admit, without hesitation, that, yes, we are both proud and American.

When we leave work, something compels us to take the train one stop further, to the park. It’s freezing outside, but the air feels almost warm against our sweat-drenched skin. Winter is approaching, but this time--like six-year-olds--we’re looking forward to the snow, eager to leave the imprints of angels in open fields.

Somewhere behind the giddiness, there’s the sense that our duty is not over. We will hold Kerry’s feet to the fire, we will make sure he doesn’t repeat Bush’s mistakes. We will continue to discuss and debate, to march and to blog, and we will not let the groundswell dissipate. Tomorrow.

Today, we will walk—in Central Park, in Prospect Park, in the Arnold Arboretum, in Yosemite, in Yellowstone, in Arcadia, in Zion—and we will look at the trees and the lakes, the streams and the rocks. We will breathe in a massive gust of leaf-scented air. And finally-- suddenly-- we will exhale.

Sam Graham-Felsen, a Nation intern in fall 2004, is the author of the blog www.boldprint.net.

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