Were they talking about today?  The Moody Blues, I mean.  Were they talking about this Tuesday afternoon?  The one which will define my life from here on out.  Whoever wins—or steals—this election will have a huge amount to say about what the Supreme Court will become for the next forty years.  He will have a real impact on the lives—or deaths—of many of the young, true hearts which populate our military, and of late, occupy more foreign lands than at any other time in our history.  He will dictate, basing his dictates on arbitrary divisions between Good and Evil, slashing the soul of humanity in two, and he will nurture a fear-filled hate.  Or, he will lead based on law and justice, struggling to heal the great damage that has been done these last four years, and he will build consensus—he will have to; autocracies, like the one we see around us now have never been dismantled by anything but consensus.  And reason. 

He will be Kerry, or he will be Bush.  The next four years will see the draft resumed.  Or not.  Today, our civil liberties will begin a massive rollback the likes of which will make what we have seen so far feel like being grounded in the sixth grade.  Or, today, many of us will breathe a huge sigh of relief, and stop saving money to buy body armor.  Tuesday afternoon—today—we will witness the peaceful transition of power—a miracle.  Or we will watch an oafishly choreographed coup d'etat—again, and some of us will begin in earnest to implement our final travel plans. 

Did the Moody Blues know today's uncertainties when they wrote their tenuous, angst-tinged chords in Tuesday Afternoon? 

tu-u-uesday a-a-afternoon
i'm just beginning to see, now I'm on my way
it doesn't matter to me, chasing the clouds away
something... calls to me 
the trees are drawing me near, i've got to find out why
those gentle voices i hear explain it all with a sigh...

i'm looking at myself, reflections of my mind
its just the kind of day to leave myself behind
so gently swaying through the fairyland of love
if you'd just come with me, you'd see the beauty of
tu-u-uesday a-a-afternoon
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Such light and happy words, held aloft on a late fall breeze; a fragile hope; a last, bright moment before dark winter falls.