Llamas NOT for Obama or McCain or Anyone Else Apparently

Everybody it seems does a llamas obama blog mostly I suppose because it just rolls off your tongue. We own llamas, and now we will indeed have a President named Obama, so what better way to share with you what our LLAMAS think about the world of politics as it stands to date.

As you know from my last posting I am commuting of late and have had very little time to much of anything with the llamas the past two weeks.
I leave in the dark and get home in dark with just enough time to go to bed.

BUT.....
On election day I was home relatively early and got to see both speeches
by the major candidates as the results made it clear that Sen Obama was going to be our next President of the United States.

Full video John McCain

Full video Barack Obama

Both speeches were full of powerful emotions and recognized fully the intensity and potential catastrophic impacts the issues facing our nation are and will have on all our lives. I was impressed with Senator McCain's comments, and quite overwhelmed by now President Elect Obama's recognition of the power of the moment, its implications, and the uphill struggle this country will face in the months and years ahead. The single most overlooked phrase in his entire speech came quietly and I am just paraphrasing, but essentially he said the problems particularly with the economy did not happen overnight and would not be solved overnight, maybe not even in ONE TERM OF OFFICE.

Given I still had time on my hands before I had to go to sleep I wandered out to visit briefly with the girls. Those of you that own llamas know that once they have settled down for the night, they tend to take umbrage to being disturbed. First, they have had a busy day eating, sleeping, playing, aimlessly wandering around, playing, sleeping, and occasionally wandering into a shelter not only to eat some more, but to prove to me that no matter how much I clean it up, poop happens. Second, its nightime and after an exhausting day all they want to do is hunker down and sleep. It is also a rare thing for us to invade their lives after dark, which means we have disrupted their routine, and disrupting the routine of llamas is and act of sacrilege.

But this was one of those moments in history that requires contemplation and perspective so what better way to gain perspective than to share what is being billed as a major turning point in national, international, and human history with the llamas. After all it will impact them as well right?

They were all hunkered down and calmly watching the rains at night one of a rather significant rain storm, chewing their collective cuds, and giving me looks of disdain for intruding on their night-time routine, but they also were quite obviously aware that I had come to visit with a message of exceptional importance. All eyes and ears were focussed on me, no one jumped up and ran away.

The girls were in their usual groups in the shelters mixed and matched by age. Most of the elder girls gather in 'their' shelter so I that is where I decided to start with sharing the news in order to get the proper elder perspective.

I was amazed at their reactions to the announcement that Obama had won the election. Rachel stood up, turned around and kushed right back in the same place with her back to me. Sunny yawned, chewed on a foot that had an itch, and Tipper sneezed. Most certainly NOT the reaction the rest of the world was having.

So I asked them ok girls who exactly did you want to win the election?
And it was Rachel who looked over her shoulder and spoke for the llamas.
"Oh dear fool', she said, "it really doesn't matter in the scheme of the universe because Earth Abides ." She paused briefly and looked at the roof of the shelter before continuing.

"But since you have asked here's what we all think. You may not know this, but we knew there was an election, our hearing is incredible and while you and Chloe watch TV we hear it, when you are in the pastures talking we listen, so of course we form opinions about what it is you think. Obviously there are some problems in the world that are impacting your existence and so it effects us. The problems right now apparently are LARGE. The bar is set high, very high for anyone who would win this election thing, and as a group we have decided it didn't matter who won. The bar is too high for any magic wand solutions. The worst of it all, and please listen carefully to this, THE PROBLEM NOW THAT OBAMA HAS WON THE ELECTION by a huge overwhelming mandate for change is that the bar, already incredibly high, has just been raised by you, by the media and by President Elect Obama to a height that even I couldn't jump over." And she stopped talking.
Sunny chimed in. "You expect instant results, expect instant gratification, expect instant solutions, expect it all NOW" And she stood up and faced me. "I have watched you use all the technology things that come up and are supposed to make you more connected with the world and make your lives easier and give you more time to enjoy the simple things in life. Well if you haven't noticed, there are no simple things left in life for you humans. You have sucked the simplicity out of your lives, and you don't even know it." She turned away in disgust with me.

And NOW it was Tipper's turn to share the wisdom. "We are NOT llamas for Obama, or llamas for McCain, or even llamas for any one else. You need to understand that we are llamas for llamas. Not for any of the constructs you want us to have, but for our own. Your problems are by side note our problems, but what Obama does or doesn't do isn't going to make our lives noticably better, or simpler, it will just be one more thing happening around us, that we have no control over. And in fact it is important to understand that no ONE PERSON can make the kinds of differences in the world that you and the rest of humanity in this country silently and desparately crave." Then she walked right up to me and very quietly whispered, "You humans don't even know what it is you want. You are caught in a whirlpool of your own creation, and are being slowly sucked down into the abyss. I know that is not what you hoped to hear from us, but that is what we have seen, and what we think. Relax a bit, smell the rain, stand in it and let yourself get wet to the skin and enjoy it." And with that comment she walked out of the shelter, found a spot in the rain and just kushed to do just that.

I honestly don't know what it all means, don't know what they were trying to tell me, but can tell you for a fact that for the past five days as I watch the news spin and spin and re-spin everything about this election, I am struggling more with the comments made by my llamas. They are wise and magic creatures and when they speak it is important to listen.

I think I will think on this some more...