There isn't one.
Just mood.
Ambience. I spent the whole night up, so much to do that by 5:45 in the morning, it was pointless to go to bed. Around seven, though, I remembered the Japanese trick. Set the alarm for 40 minutes' sleep, no more, enough to rest without making it worse by sliding into dream sleep.
I checked what was happening across the Atlantic as late as I could before leaving for work. In the Factory's newsroom, there were so many people looking like I must have done.
The worst was the silence.
Scores of journalists, of every political persuasion, keeping their own thoughts and feelings well out of the news copy they had to write.
Silence.
TVs on all over the place, but not a one with the sound turned up, just the pictures of the yacking heads...
I've never seen or heard that before. Not in the normally buzzing Engine Room of AFP.
Bad attempts at jokes: "Now what? Iran first? Or France...?"
In the chemist's shop tonight, what a queue!
"Is it out yet?" somebody asked. "Already?"
"What's that?"
"Le vaccin anti-Bush."
"Four years!" someone said.
"Is it sure yet?" asked one of the chemists.
"No," I chipped in, still fresh out of a vast newsroom turned morgue. "But of course it is...
"Oh well, let's look on the bright side, shall we? It's only four more years."
You know who I really feel bad for tonight? The optimists. A lot of my expat American friends. All those people! The ones who'd really dared nurse a spark of hope in their hearts. The ones who wanted to cry.
God. The stench of it all, the reek of despair.
It won't last, of course.
It just saddens me to hear Americans abroad saying there really doesn't seem much point in "going home" any more. The real patriots. The ones who use their eyes. The ones who have been out of it long enough to remember decency, a dream and values that mattered enough to impress the rest of us.
7:29:16 PM link 
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