Almost midnight. I want to write something for this last hour of Inauguration Day, drunk (quite) as I am on Dom Perignon champagne, leftover "two buck Chuck" red wine, the Ink Spots, memory, fat pit bulls, and love. I'm housesitting the house where I made my Star Trek videos last summer--now inhabited by a fat Staffordshire terrier I am crazy about-- and I invited a few people over to celebrate. Mr. Poodletail, who brought the champagne, said the thing the most poignant thing:"This will never happen again."
We who gathered to share a meal are all middle aged, and there's an acute sweetness and sorrow in that statement--this is a turning point, and we are both extremely grateful to witness it, and also a little ...well... I think also there's a sense that the future is in the hands of the kids who think, "What's the big deal? We've always traveled to the moon."
And that's this huge gift that people can give each other---to take the blows, of time, of fate, and muffle them like the wrapping on a bell.
Oh my, I am drunk, but I'm also filled with the kind of happiness that is so sweet--like liquid honey--that all you want to do with it is pour it out, so it spreads, like ink on soft paper, like red wine on a white tablecloth.
It's not that I love our new prez particularly, it's that I love the potential--glimpsed once in a while, like now-- for my short-sighted, blundering species to evolve out of brute selfishness. We are like that ridiculous lifeform, whatever it was, that crawled out of the ocean and tried to breathe--like, will this work? Is this going to be viable?
Will we make this leap?
Sorry, I am drunk, did I mention? I sat on the couch after everyone left, each with one of the little paper American flags I had bought, I sat with the adorable dog, more like a tank, really, and drank the rest of the wine and listened to the Ink Spots, and wept at thinking what silly, stupid, little things we are, and how lovely we can be, once in a while, and how, indeed, we will never be perched on quite this particular moment ever again.
