civic duties

today, i spent the morning devoting time to a variety of (neglected) civic duties.

first, there was a peace rally in uptown Oxford today, which i missed b/c of the cold n wet weather, so that was a bust.

then, i realized i had forgotten to file my taxes. which is ironic, considering that i've spent every Saturday morning for the past 2.5 months helping other people with their's. so, after rummaging thru stacks n stacks of various papers and forms tucked away in the drawers of my desk, i finally salvaged the 1040EZ instructions i'd gotten from my library at home many months ago (ha – i must've thot i'd get an early start on this...)

only to discover i'd failed to get the actual form.

i was close to giving up at this point, but thinking i should probly do at least one civically responsible thing today, i pushed on and am now typing out my tax forms on Adobe (the whole situation was considerably improved by listening to French poetry podcasts. "Le pont Mirabeau, qui coule la Seine...")

anyway, the point of writing all this: i found it quite an absurd juxtaposition of civic duties: protesting (to exercise freedom of speech, to be critical of the government, thus to be a responsible citizine) & taxes (to pay give some hard-earned $ back to the state so they can spend it on the war i'm protesting and not put it into educational reform or healthcare or ...)

it's also raining cold wind this morning, with no sign of sunny warmth in the near future. is this really April?

confused.
-stephan!e