Days After Inauguration

What's the bird's eye-view around Washington, D.C., on presidential inauguration? Dizzy that there are more people, under their wings, a sort of delirious and happy panic to feel something more than historic? Can they sense something in that panic that makes them feel a bit human, be with them, flock with them? Does flying feel like traps, and walking fresh escape? Do older birds feel like something is invigorated, or re-invigorated down there, an idea, the shadow in a notion? It could be argued that attaching the word 'truly' to the word 'democratic' has reached a point of overused, but that emphasizing this overused can be considered unethical: because there's simply no such thing as over-used in this context, because these mouths are just celebrating, aligning themselves to something what they thought is impossible. There will, indeed, be prognostications of new dimensions, and the polishing of existing paradigms, while old habits remain, like a certain blindness among taxi drivers in many American cities not to let in some people in their backseats, a blindness that doesn't have the positive ring of color blindness. It's the most exciting time to use hyperboles, to chant the greatness of this and that, about a system that works, and takes itself seriously. There'll be inebriations of affirmations, both implicit and explicit, most would be optimistic, but a percentage of them too-optimistic and competes with incisive doubts about the new man in that house of American houses. The normal flow is to, indeed, be get caught in the excitements, to give in to the contagious yes-we-can spirit. What we hope also is that there's power in being skeptical, especially in the depth of this change we think we're in. We hope our eyes do not have the affliction that adores religion of surfaces. The 4th of November 2008 has questioned that religion, and the world has a reaffirmed awe about a country named United States of America, that, indeed, despite its recent history - often observed in horrific, archived footage of Selma, Alabama 1965 - the U.S.A. can be used as a paradigm of having a unified, national spirit.

© 2009 Michael Caylo-Baradi