Never got around to typing this up
5 November 2008
1:31am
Hello World
I was walking across Congress Avenue on 6th tonight, heading back to my car after taking a small part in the public celebration going on outside the Driskill Hotel. As I stepped up onto the curb, my eye was drawn to a dark, malformed shape lying in the gutter. I couldn't figure out what it was, at first, and I realized it only just before the man next to me spoke up. He was an African-American gentleman in a navy blue suit adorned with Obama stickers. He said, "That's a dead bird, brother!"
"Yes," I said. "Yes it was."
My brain wanted to make an allegory of it.
Everywhere around the world are bursts of joy. The Austin celebration was small, but still boisterous, inclusive, friendly - and young. A spontaneous street jam and dance circle morphed into chants of "O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!" that changed again, after the music stopped, to "Yes we can! Yes we can!" No sooner did that end than the crowd spontaneously and with full, newfound sincerity, collectively recite the pledge of allegiance. The music then began again, punctuated with a new chant: "Si se puede! Si se puede!"
I watched it unfold on tv tonight, sharing some of it with my parents and some with friends over the Internet and some just by myself, alone with my private thoughts. I saw the striking sight of Jesse Jackson, who must have been feeling a dramatic storm of emotions we cannot begin to understand, trying so hard to control his emotions that he held one finger pressed stiffly against his lips, as if to literally hold it all in. It was, too, and curiously, akin to the gesture meaning, "Shh." Maybe he was trying to quiet the voices ringing from the country's past as he stood there, bearing witness not to the future but to the undeniable, terrible (in the poetic sense) and history-shifting enormity of the present.
So many faces beaming with joy, so many people whistling and stomping, dancing and kissing, whooping with celebration and pride, all over the world, in gatherings huge and intimate. This election changed the whole world's mood, if just for one night. The smiles I saw were so open, so genuine, so wanting to share. "Obama!" they shouted, as if saying, "Hello world!"
A scan of the original journal page.
Addenda:
1:31am
Hello World
I was walking across Congress Avenue on 6th tonight, heading back to my car after taking a small part in the public celebration going on outside the Driskill Hotel. As I stepped up onto the curb, my eye was drawn to a dark, malformed shape lying in the gutter. I couldn't figure out what it was, at first, and I realized it only just before the man next to me spoke up. He was an African-American gentleman in a navy blue suit adorned with Obama stickers. He said, "That's a dead bird, brother!"
"Yes," I said. "Yes it was."
My brain wanted to make an allegory of it.
Everywhere around the world are bursts of joy. The Austin celebration was small, but still boisterous, inclusive, friendly - and young. A spontaneous street jam and dance circle morphed into chants of "O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!" that changed again, after the music stopped, to "Yes we can! Yes we can!" No sooner did that end than the crowd spontaneously and with full, newfound sincerity, collectively recite the pledge of allegiance. The music then began again, punctuated with a new chant: "Si se puede! Si se puede!"
I watched it unfold on tv tonight, sharing some of it with my parents and some with friends over the Internet and some just by myself, alone with my private thoughts. I saw the striking sight of Jesse Jackson, who must have been feeling a dramatic storm of emotions we cannot begin to understand, trying so hard to control his emotions that he held one finger pressed stiffly against his lips, as if to literally hold it all in. It was, too, and curiously, akin to the gesture meaning, "Shh." Maybe he was trying to quiet the voices ringing from the country's past as he stood there, bearing witness not to the future but to the undeniable, terrible (in the poetic sense) and history-shifting enormity of the present.
So many faces beaming with joy, so many people whistling and stomping, dancing and kissing, whooping with celebration and pride, all over the world, in gatherings huge and intimate. This election changed the whole world's mood, if just for one night. The smiles I saw were so open, so genuine, so wanting to share. "Obama!" they shouted, as if saying, "Hello world!"
A scan of the original journal page.
Addenda:
- I am remembering now that one of the things I wanted to do when I went walking around downtown looking for celebrations was to grab a random pretty girl and kiss her, like that soldier on the Life magazine cover at the end of World War 2. There probably were some likely candidates, but of course I did no such thing. Some weeks later, at a Fat Man Jam, the subject of Obama's election came up, and Robert kept repeatedly saying, "Anyone who was a Democrat could have gotten laid that night, easily. If you're a Democrat and you didn't get laid on election night, you weren't trying!" Hmm, yes. Indeed.
- There actually were two women that night going up and down 6th street, arm in arm and laughing, greeting everyone they saw with the word "Obama!" It meant "Hello!" it meant "Woo-hoo!" it meant "Howyadoing!" it meant "This is awesome!"
- Pedants will of course be bothered by my use of "enormity," even though I'm aware that one is supposed to use it only to describe great atrocities even though, historically, it meant the same as "enormousness." In fact, I find the "wrong" usage of it carries additional shades of meanings that I wanted to employ, because I couldn't find any other word that worked as well. I noted with amusement when typing this up that dictionary.com has a Usage Note for "enormity" which says: "Writers who ignore the distinction, as in the enormity of the President's election victory... may find that their words have cast unintended aspersions or evoked unexpected laughter."