President Obama

October/November is always a time of anticipation. It marks my birthday, Halloween, and sometimes, an election. This year my expectations for my birthday fell short of reality: I was feeling "old" and unaccomplished and I ended up crying at my party (more on that another day maybe; fear not my birthday was redeemed). For Halloween I slaved over a last minute spider costume that actually came out pretty fucking fabulous; however I only got to wear it once. Election Night we attempted to attend the official Obama Party in Century City and stood in line for an hour, only yards away from the door. We ended up hearing Obama's speech in the car on the way home. The speech was still moving and wonderful; I had just hoped to experience that magic moment in a crowd of cheering liberals. C'est La Vie. My minor disappointments have left me feeling a little lost and drifting in a general malaise. However, there was no way that personal concerns could dampen my spirits in light of an Obama victory Tuesday night. This decisive victory is a shining achievement for the world. Barack Obama is a symbol of what we as human beings are capable of at our best: unity, love, hopefulness.

Mentally, I'd prepared myself for a win about a month ago when the election steadily turned towards Obama in the wake of Sarah Palin's gaffes. Of course, I went into Tuesday night with the same cautions any Democrat would have post Gore/Kerry; don't rule anything out. Earlier in the day I'd written a note to myself: all we need is any paired combination of PA, VA, FL, or OH; once that happened the race was over. When they called Ohio for Barry I knew. At that moment I was at home getting dressed to meet up with John and Sarah. While I wasn't shocked, I probably screamed aloud. John called me on the phone and we screamed some more. In a sense I wanted the suspense to last longer. I guess I was--and still am--in shock. Even listening to the speech in the car on the way home from the party that wasn't, it all seemed to be a lucid dream. My passenger window was down and the car next to us had their window down as well. It was a man and a woman driving east on Olympic alongside us. They too were listening to Barack, but their station was a few seconds ahead of ours. In the crisp autumn night, Barack's voice cut through the darkness. We sat in silence, and I felt a solidarity with the strangers in that car and the millions of strangers around the country and all over the world who were listening with us. We were all listening with bated breath; listening to the sound of a changing country.

Back at John and Sarah's we watched McCain and Obama's speeches. We watched people cheer and scream and cry. My eyes teared up when I saw that Jesse Jackson was one of the latter. He looked so raw and vulnerable and humbled. I think a lot of people were feeling the same way. Cynics had reason to believe again. I felt so strange. The shock. Sarah, John, and the others went out to a bar around 11:30. I went home, wanting to gather my thoughts.

I'm doing that now I guess. Today I wore my Obama button to work and picked up doughnuts for the office. In the box I placed a picture of Barack Obama and Joe Biden. I spent much of the day obsessively reading all the blogs and newspaper websites I could. I watched Huffington Post slideshows and listened to Maya Angelou's impression of the historic victory. The world looks different today. It's a bit of a shock. Watching the TV last night, I remembered what it was like when Clinton was president--back when you didn't live with the belief that the world would end in your lifetime. I'm too young to have felt the daily anxiety of living in Cold War America. Perhaps Prince summed it up best with 1999 in which he sings, "everybody's got a bomb we could all die any day". I remember when I first became accustomed to the post-9/11 Bush Administration sense of general doom. The Obama Presidency heals that wound for me and it leaves me thinking, well, if the world isn't going to end what do I do now? Maybe that's what this feeling is. It's shock. It's wrapping your brain around the fact that the world is different this Wednesday morning. Those dark days of 2003 are long gone. Not to say that the mountain isn't high and the road isn't narrow, but I believe in this man. In light of all this, I can't help but think of this song, which seems to say it all: