Inauguration

I watched the inauguration with Joel, I woke him up for the Yoyoma/Itzak Pearlman performance, he missed Aretha Franklin. I want to post her performance here. I was tearing up through the whole thing.

I voted for Obama, so did Joel (it was his first time voting!) but I've been cynical and hopeless about our governement for forever. I felt like Obama is just a puppet to placate the masses so the oil/plastic, drug and seed/insecticide companies can continue to do their dirt and destroy the earth and keep us all down as their worker slaves, increasing our bad health and mental health and ignorance, so we can increasingly fill their pockets with wealth and luxury while we slaughter each other and each others' cultures, freedoms, and environments in order to survive our little individual lives.

Early in the morning, procrastinating on getting to my 6:30am boot camp excercize class, I was playing with this cool new application I'd found on MSN's news page they'd put up to look around the inauguration's site, empty except for a few security soldiers. I listened to ebullient reporters on NPR's morning news that came on the alarm clock. I didn't make it to boot camp, I wrote in my journal and chillaxed instead (I'm dropping the class today, its raining, its too much pressure to get up that early trying to do 17 credits, today is the 4th class I missed. I'll try it again next semester. I'm proud I managed to make it to 2 classes to check it out and didn't keel over from the earliness.)

Later the place filled up. I watched live through the internet, as Obama and his family were seated. I felt alot of fear and adrenaline looking at his bare head in the open space and huge unmanagable crowd, knowing that terrorists and the powers that be, have access to even radder webcams than the one I was looking at. I felt so naked, so vulnerable for him, no matter who he's really working for. How could he just stand there in the open, asking to be shot, just like MLK and Kennedy? How can he not be wearing a helmet? Or be ensconced in a bullet/bomb proof glass bubble car like the pope goes around in? How can he take on this job? Take on the Atlasean (right myth?) pressure of the whole world's hope and fears on his shoulders? no matter who he's really working for? I teared up seeing him there being reminded of Ghandi (or rather Ben Kingsley's portrayal of Ghandi in the movie, which is all I really know about Gahndi.) I felt greatfull for the emmense faith and love in his heart for humanity, his loyal response to the call of duty for peace greater than his will to live, his desire to do what he can to give humanity and the other animals that share the earth a chance to survive, this desire over rulling the importance of his own survival. Its like the story in Sidhartha by Herman Hesse, about Buddha letting maggots eat his flesh, and like one of the monks at Suon Mokkh, Thailand telling us that mosquitos don't disturb his meditation anymore because he gave up smacking them; he realized he's got plenty of blood to share and the mosquito mamas love their babies as much as our mamas love us.

I teared up at all the speeches realizing they can kill him now, but they can't take away the fact that MLK's dream did come true. Obama stood yesterday as President of U.S. when just 30 or 40 years ago his father couldn't even get served at a restaurant down the street. Our country has progressed at least that far. Poverty, racism, and human suffering has not been nearly iradicated but it has been diminished. There are alot more people working today with success and more realistic plans to irradicate it than ever before.

By the time that poet told her poem, she had me balling.

Granted, I hadn't gotten enough sleep, and I have no business being up that early, so my emotions and hormones were all screwey. But I felt some layers of my cynical hermit crab shell start to shed or stretch with hope to give me more room to grow. I wept layers of fear off of me. Joel didn't know about Maya Angelou's address at Clinton's inauguration. I wonder if there's a UTube of that to plug in here?

Today I wonder if he really might be working for me, the way a president is supposed to, representing my interests as part of the masses. He cut those exorbitant salaries down. Now I feel better about getting one of my 3 shifts at work cut so that some stupid other worker can have shifts (my boss cut all our shifts not just mine.) He closed Guatanamo and told the military powers we need to get out of Iraq (oh whoops, no he didn't.) If he's working for the same people as Bush squared and Regan were working for, they sure are doing a good job of placating and wooling me. Those shifty wolves may actually succeed in lowering my guard down. I may start believing and hoping for stuff and have babies. Congrats to Sarabee for her Obama baby, born this day!

Thanks Bruno for the rad hermit crab photo, its the original metaphor I meant to use, then I changed it to turtle, then I changed it back to hermit crab when I just saw your photo again. Your chick is so Barbi beautiful. I wanta use your enlightenment photo somewheres too. hope you don't mind.