You have planned three revolutionary acts for the future. They are uncomplicated, but they are effective. You have made a list.

One, you have planned to vote. You have planned to vote a lot. You have planned to vote in every election you hear about, and maybe even volunteer at the polls, even though that seems sort of boring and you're not all that good with people. You are planning to vote for presidents and mayors and school board members and comptrollers. You do not know what a comptroller is. No one knows what a comptroller is. But comptrollers are elected, so you will vote for them. You plan to do all this, even though voting isn't really your favorite right -- you're pretty sure the one about talking about what you want to talk about is your favorite right. But that's okay. You're coming to terms with this. You're coming to terms with a lot of things.

Two, you have planned to be optimistic. This is actually more than a revolutionary act, this is also a heroic act. Conveniently, you have always wanted to be a hero, and though when you were younger you thought your superpower would involve teleportation or flight or supersonic sensitivity, you understand that optimism is a pretty good start. So even though fear is color-coded and public opinion runs around like roaches in kitchenlight, you will be optimistic. And you will vote. You will vote optimistically. And when the polls come in, and the results are tallied, if you are unhappy with the results, you will try very hard not to move to Canada. Although it is a very, very nice country.

Three, you have planned beauty. Or, maybe, you have planned upon beauty. You have steeled yourself for it, and you have prepared yourself for the opportunity. This is, perhaps, the most complicated item on the list. It is in fact more complicated than any idea you have had, at least since you were three, and you had ideas about digging very large holes to very foreign countries.

Because lately, everything is a whole different sort of raw. You stand up on a wall and you shudder. You are a bare nerve in a world full of bare nerves. You still believe in revolutions and you believe in standing up and screaming your piece, in marching, and in chanting -- as long as the chanting doesn't involve too many ridiculous rhymes. Only if you stare too hard, if you scream too long, you chip away pieces of yourself and they flutter into leaf-piles, raked up and bagged, it starts to get harder to look at something beautiful. It starts to get harder to remember why you started marching in the first place. And although have decided to vote, and you have decided to be optimistic, and you have decided to not move to Canada if you can help it, something still smarts.

So three, more complicated than holes to foreign countries, you have planned upon beauty. You have planned to find it in quiet spaces between conversations, in passionate moments among touches, in tough edges of storytellers, and in songs you have never heard before. You don't expect permanent sunrises or butterflies through windows. You don't expect chocolate-milk water fountains and round-faced babies on every corner. You expect pauses, and moments of peace which overturn. Now you will look at lines of things, and at shapes of people, at tones and beats, at colors, fragments and slips of paper, oil paints and clay, and all like never before, because you know what it's like, now, to be in locked-door black mindsets, to be huddled with red-eyed people who are terrified. Everything today is held that much closer to the surface. Everything good today runs rivulets and rivers down your body, snaking around your knees and elbows and marking you: fine.

It turns out that maybe you are a superhero after all. You turn on the best thing to listen to, and you wonder about learning to fly, next.