Teabag voting and the Waking Phoenix.

The following is an excerpt from my campaign trail in Iowa. Please pass it on by asking everyone you know to go to www.elephantrant.com.

Eleanor Roosevelt, who would have made a fabulous President by the way, once said a woman is like a teabag, you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water.

A vote for me is a vote for teabags everywhere. I don't think a single 2008 candidate can hold a candle to my real life, messy, everywoman strength. No candidate is as in touch with the Everyperson reality as well as I.

I am very young, and very old. I thrill in the human condition. Hope. Redemption. Many, many mistakes. Bright joys. Brief passions. And the kind of personal discovery that grabs you and shakes you until your teeth rattle with Truth and your eyes pour relief, and your knees buckle willingly to the floor, completely ready to let go.

Like the Phoenix, I have repeated Burning Days, and repeated new birth from ashes, and I love it all. I think the best lesson I have learned is that life is messy, exhilarating, painful, sweet, frustrating, amazing - and it is all just as it should be. For too long I tried to avoid the Burning Days that come with being human, and the more I avoided, the slower and more tortuous the burn when it finally came.

That is the burden of the Sleeping Phoenix - denying its nature, afraid of the burn, unable to comprehend the joy of the new life on the other side. A true Phoenix chooses the burn, walks into the fire with her head held high, ready to be cleansed of mistakes and impurities, and walks out a new woman, forged with balance and strength and wisdom, ready to begin her next cycle with a firm step and a bright sparkle in her eyes.

A teabag, a phoenix - these are the character qualities that are vital in running a country. The toughest job in the world doesn't require the toughest people. It requires the wisest tough people.

Vote for Ameriga Columbus as a write in on your November ballot.