The Ice Flow

How many people all over the World, their lives thrown into chaos by events of the past Eight years...

Woke up today feeling better than they did yesterday?

It happened for Guru. It took me a couple of hours to identify the sensation, and certainly there are differences to the SPECIFICS for each of us...but I finally understood it.

Sweet tasting air...Women look cuddly, chow goes down easily...the plant a bit greener and the wine more crimson.  

I felt this way once before, in January 1993. A Democratic President had been inaugurated, NOT the one I wanted and yet, from the first moment that someone named George Bush left Washington, DC and took all that Reagan nonsense with him, I felt like a weight had been lifted, a grudge abandoned, opportunity opening.

It's the old effect of going out of a room where you've been getting smacked upside the head, day in and day out...the FREEDOM, from pain, from inertia, from paranoia, from shame and of course...

Nobody hitting you in the head.

Naturally, now, as then, there is that little nagging voice wondering how we actually subjected ourselves to such unrelenting torture in the first place. But that is still a threat to return, we KNOW that now...we got rid of Nixon and had Reagan six years later, tossed Reagan/Bush and managed only eight years before Babs was rearing her ugly mind and brood again on the White House lawn (it's quite obvious that she will be the Anti-Rose Kennedy and linger on well past her minions).

The knowledge that we have a CHANCE, but that chance is finite in scope and time actually ENHANCE the sensation. In 1993, I was cocky and dismissive of the possibility that Kevin McCarthy's nightmare would flare up AGAIN. In 2009, I and billions GET IT and we have to get it RIGHT, or Left, as the case may be.

This chance is made even sweeter by the quality and depth of the changes afoot.

Obama marshalling an eloquent, tenacious humility, Hillary at State, John Kerry chairing the Senate Foreign Relations committee, George Mitchell on his way to Israel...Holder, Donovan, Geithner...

Joe Biden is the Vice-President, possibly providing the single greatest UPGRADE in American History. A working class hero replacing the unspeakable menace?

Pinch me!

(not there...here. Sigh...)

And while there were certainly moments of feeling 'left out' in the love-in for the Obamas and slight residual yearning for Hillary, there IS Hillary AND Bill, looking happier and better than they have in years, something that was noticeable in their New Years Dance under the Times Square Ball with Mike Bloomberg, his daughter and Diana Taylor, his squeeze. I keep coming back to something she said about beginning her life in Arkansas way back when;

'Bloom where you're planted'

That is deep. Solid. I was one who watched in admiration as she took in the disappointments of her public years, stood honestly with neither bluster or recrimination and MOVED ON.

I was amused to hear Bill's take on things, seemingly grafted whole from yesterday's Ice Flow; 

'You know they have such Smart people, and a lot of them are New Yorkers. You've got Geithner. You've got Donovan. Hillary. So, I'm upbeat, I expect New York to do quite well'.

I was laughing at Chris Shott's piece in 'New York Observer', discussing the demise of the 'W' train;

'If the proposed cuts proceed as planned, the 'W's exit would somewhat coincide with that of the outgoing U.S. President, with whom it appropriately shared an initial, an era (2001-2008) and dismal approval ratings'  

But beyond the removal of the trash that assailed us and the inclusion of the people who have worked so well for us before is the reality of the new, of the man and the moment. Of Obama.

Guru has never been much for 'Hope', my dreaming days have been hardened over the decades and I tend towards policy specifics and away from symbolic meanings. Barack Obama, a mulatto about my age, is not a revelation in my life.

My best friend from 4th grade on was Danny Marciano, a kid with a Dad who was a lapsed Italian Catholic/converted Buddhist/Union Carpenter, Mom was a Jewish social worker and Stepfather was a Black Transit Worker. Naturally, Danny adopted Japanese culture and languge and has been married to a Japanese women, living in Okinawa for twenty five years. My romantic rival and close friend in High School, Dave Moe, had a Jewish Mom and Black Dad and was certainly my academic superior, excelling in Engineering at RPI. Black, Hispanic, Gay, Asian, this...that...the other...not a change in that for any of us who live in American cities.

But I'd have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to note that MY experiences have not been those of the vast majority of you and to see the impact of the symbolism on so many. My favorite quote amongst the millions, being this one from Basketball Legend, Shaquille O'Neal;

'I'm sure he was one of those African-American kids like myself who wanted to do something, and a lot of people told them it could never be done. And it got done.'

The greatest thing about the sentiment being that, if you remove 'African-American' from the sentence, you echo the experiences, hopes and dreams of EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US.

This doesn't 'belong' to any of us. The truth of Democracy is that we ALL get what the majority selects, the same reality that had us STUCK with the W Train has us poised to BENEFIT from Obama, regardless of how we voted. We're in it together, irrespective of whether we like it. I've voted for President every year since 1984, being too young to vote while working for Kennedy in 1980 and only have been RIGHT in the voting booth twice (1992,1996). I thought I would DIE when Kerry lost and my life actually turned around for the positive from the energy.

I voted against Mike Bloomberg and passionately endorsed Fernando Ferrer in 2001, a candidate who surely WOULD have won but for the timing of the primary day. Tuesday, September 11. When I later met Ferrer and spent time with him, we clashed a bit over the '04 slate (he was an early Dean supporter, who I ABHOR, and our progressive visions saw different solutions). Then Bloomberg came into office, pushed aside the partisan and did an incredible job. I knew what a loser Grey Davis was from my time in California and was an enthusiastic supporter of Arnold, who I have always admired for making so much of his life and refusing to adhere to any ideology other than 'what works'.

Obama, it appears to me now, is more like Bloomberg and Arnold than Dean and Ferrer. This 45 year old moderate who has been burned by his own partisan excesses thinks that is just FINE.

Teach away Professor, class is in session and nobody's absent, except for those fun Texas boys, who are determined not to sit on the laurels of having produced Phil Gramm, Dick Armitrage, Tom DeLay, Dubya and their minions and produce new geniuses like Cornyn, who blocked Hillary's role call, allowing Senators from freedom-loving paradises like Louisiana and South Carolina to provide the only 'no' votes in her 94-2 landslide confirmation.

Proof positive that, no matter what the President looks like, some folks will manage to..

miss the point,

miss the irony

and miss the moment.