Saturday, 19 January 2002 | March, January

My hair is wavy and tangled from the weather, and my shoes are wet inside and out, as is my cell phone, which, when I last checked, wasn't working.

Six of us met for coffee around 11:00 this morning, fogging up the glass front of Cup a Joe with hot coffee breath, turning the normally transparent window into an opaque cloud. By 12:00 we were strategically placing our cars at two different points, two miles apart from each other, and proceeded to walk from one car to the other together, along with 500 (so I was told) strangers. A large percentage of the people wore pageant-like banners labeled with the names of various countries and carried full-sized corresponding multinational flags, made of colorful wet nylon that whipped around in the wind and occasionally slapped me in the head.

Punks, college kids, teenagers, elementary schoolers, middle-aged and seniors; dreadlocks, afros, and permed white hair. A few chants, some singing. I stayed quiet and jumped around to different parts of the queue, snapping quick pictures of i-don't-know-what, the eyepiece of my camera also a victim of fog. By the time we got to the finish line, my pants, socks and gloves were reservoirs for much of the water that had fallen out of the sky.

1:30. Drying out, a heap of raincoats piled on the floor; musicians, speakers, and poets, also on the floor. I wasn't surprised to find that I liked the speakers the most, who were skeptical, hopeful, and rightfully frustrated. I laughed and clapped and got warm, relieved to discover that there are more than I expected in support of alternatives to war. I left around 4:00, contributing my signature to a couple petitions on my way out the door. It's now after 6:00, raining harder, and my cell phone and I are still trying to recover. Still cold, slightly more optimistic.