There were many little things that went wrong for me today. My car doors were frozen shut when I arrived at the car already running late and hands full. The gas line must have been frozen, too because the needle said I was on empty but the tank only filled halfway. There was traffic with no visible reason. A little patch of skidding on a side road. The matter of burning my rice in class and having to start again (complete and utter mortification on my part.)
None of that mattered.
Not when something so huge, so important, so utterly life changing and humanity affirming was about to occur. The director of my school allowed those of us who wanted to watch the Inauguration to turn off our pots and head upstairs. Crammed into a small, dark office, we watched the BBC feed of the inauguration ceremony together on one small computer monitor. I'm glad it was dark. I allowed myself to weep. Three big sopping wet tissues worth of tears and nose dabbing.
Somehow seeing this event unfold made me feel like we've just cracked through a hard shell like a coconut's. After years of banging away, finally there is progress, an entrance. We can finally quench our thirst with the sweetness within.
The sweetness IS there. In all of us. Sometimes we neglect it. Forget it. Tell it to take a flying leap. This time we should all take a sip and pass it around.
Did you love Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem? I've printed it out and will carry it with me to read again and again as I pause in my day. I carried this bit around in my head this afternoon.
"What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.
In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun."
These ideas of new beginnings, possibility, progress, growth are totally electrifying to me. I've been crying every day for about a week. Snatches of poetry like above, a radio report, a message of love from a friend, looking at our new president, feeling and believing his words. So many things are moving me now. I feel tremendously human and vital.
I am grateful I had the chance to experience this inauguration as a citizen and not a journalist. For once, I did not have to analyze, compare, break down, produce. I just participated in what was happening in that little dark office, the school, the city of New Brunswick, the state of New Jersey , this country that I have just begun to realize is great, the United States of America and the world.
