I went for a rare afternoon run to escape the constant mediæstrom in which we live during these uncertain days. Little can compare to the satisfaction of pushing and beating up on your body until it matches the wilted and resigned posture of your spirit. Armed with a sufficient assortment of moody and angry music, I ran through the cool gray haze, streetlights flickering to life above me.

As I passed a small travel agency in a nearby rowhouse, I happened to glance inside and witness an iconographic, almost Norman Rockwelian scene of the 2000 election: three people at their desks, all with their heads craned around and their eyes riveted to a single point high in the room. I didn't need to see what they were looking at to know it was the television. They were watching the media spin their wheels in a masturbatory festival of self-loathing and ratings-topping mea culpae. We're like Catholics waiting for the telltale wafts of smoke signals of a new Pope, while the Cardinals below try desperately to kindle something from a book of wet matches.

Or this: We're all patrons of the famed, four-star Presidential Restaurant, suddenly experiencing a problem getting our food on time ("I don't know what's wrong in the kitchen tonight -- they've never been this slow before").

It suddenly occurred to me that we're in the middle of one of our culture's Memorable Moments, for which everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing -- like Kennedy getting shot, or the Space Shuttle exploding, or Michael Jackson marrying Lisa Marie Presley. Except our moment is unfolding in slow motion.

What is truly astonishing is that the President will probably not be determined by the numbers in a recount. It will all come down to the courts. An individual, or more likely a small panel of appeals court judges will huddle up and then emerge to tell us who won the Presidency.

Amusingly, this election was the first in which I cast my ballot in an actual voting booth. My paripatetic lifestyle has formerly led me to transact my business with the State via absentee ballot. I found it an immensely more satisfying experience to go to the polls in person. For example, I received a small piece of chocolate for doing my civic duty. Psychologists say it is dangerous to reward people for behavior that you want them to continue after the rewards cease. In the case of voting, I'm uncertain now whether that chocolate (it also had an almond in it) may have ruined my desire to participate in future elections.