On the Inauguration
Jan. 20th, 2021 11:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiger_spotO my friends and o whatever future self + posterity looks back on this, I am having some feelings.
I have been having some feelings all day, including the part of the day where Morgan needed a blood draw for some medical testing, had a freakout about it, and wound up with three technicians plus me holding her down. “Gosh, you’re strong,” said one of the strapping young men.
That kept me busy enough that I didn’t watch the inaugural speech live, which is probably for the best given that even from the perspective of several disaster-free hours later I was evaluating the whole thing in terms of “Okay, if what you have said up till now is your last words, what’s the cumulative effect so far?”
I determined that I needed to Art about it if I ever want to sleep, but I couldn’t quite figure out how. Crashing chords? Some sort of poetry? Try out the set of oil pastels I found on our walk the other morning and see if by some miracle that is the right thing?
What is there that will let me express this sense of relief — we’ve made it! the institutions of democracy have prevailed! — and grief for the hundreds of thousands who didn’t make it, the COVID deaths, the friend of friends who killed herself when Trump was elected, everyone in between those points of statistic and anecdote, every precious life stunted and ruined and harmed. How can I steer between the joy that the work can finally begin again, that there are people in power who share my goals and values, who want the best for the country and the people in it, who want to do their jobs and do them well, and the despair at how much of the previous work has been destroyed, turned back, dynamited and used to build a wall where there should be bridges, at the magnitude of the work in front of us, the size of the problems we as a nation, as a people, as a world, are facing.
How can I do it without completely abusing commas?
The correct form of art here is, it turns out, a letter to my representatives, and I think this page of scribbled first draft I have in front of me may be enough to let me sleep even before I go looking up the quotes to put in it and revising the semicolons out and so forth. There may need to be more art later, but this is good art to be starting with.
I think I’m going to be practicing rather a lot of this form of art over the next two years.
Longer than that, if all goes well. God willing and the creek don’t rise, inshallah, etc., cross fingers and knock wood.
So how are you?
I have been having some feelings all day, including the part of the day where Morgan needed a blood draw for some medical testing, had a freakout about it, and wound up with three technicians plus me holding her down. “Gosh, you’re strong,” said one of the strapping young men.
That kept me busy enough that I didn’t watch the inaugural speech live, which is probably for the best given that even from the perspective of several disaster-free hours later I was evaluating the whole thing in terms of “Okay, if what you have said up till now is your last words, what’s the cumulative effect so far?”
I determined that I needed to Art about it if I ever want to sleep, but I couldn’t quite figure out how. Crashing chords? Some sort of poetry? Try out the set of oil pastels I found on our walk the other morning and see if by some miracle that is the right thing?
What is there that will let me express this sense of relief — we’ve made it! the institutions of democracy have prevailed! — and grief for the hundreds of thousands who didn’t make it, the COVID deaths, the friend of friends who killed herself when Trump was elected, everyone in between those points of statistic and anecdote, every precious life stunted and ruined and harmed. How can I steer between the joy that the work can finally begin again, that there are people in power who share my goals and values, who want the best for the country and the people in it, who want to do their jobs and do them well, and the despair at how much of the previous work has been destroyed, turned back, dynamited and used to build a wall where there should be bridges, at the magnitude of the work in front of us, the size of the problems we as a nation, as a people, as a world, are facing.
How can I do it without completely abusing commas?
The correct form of art here is, it turns out, a letter to my representatives, and I think this page of scribbled first draft I have in front of me may be enough to let me sleep even before I go looking up the quotes to put in it and revising the semicolons out and so forth. There may need to be more art later, but this is good art to be starting with.
I think I’m going to be practicing rather a lot of this form of art over the next two years.
Longer than that, if all goes well. God willing and the creek don’t rise, inshallah, etc., cross fingers and knock wood.
So how are you?
no subject
Date: 2021-01-21 04:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-21 04:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-22 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-22 05:36 pm (UTC)Commas are sneaky. They invade everywhere.