The change cometh...
The magnitude of this election is obvious, but you should've seen the effects on the street...
On 14th and U Street (downtown Washington, DC), up through and past 3am, there was a crowd of perhaps 2000+ people, laughing, cheering, high-fiving, hugging, and just staring in disbelief at the suddenly-new world having now unfolded before their eyes. There were drummer circles, with bustling rings of embrace swaying and flowing outward. There was a crew dancing on top of a bus-stop, waving a Kenyan and American flag. There was every race, background, age, and creed. There were young U Street blacks, Georgetown preppies, aging Counter Culture hippies, and downtown professionals with vestigal ties still hanging around their necks--artifacts of the old Dark Age when peope still had to go to work and worry about day-to-day realities.
Today, everything was new.
The most striking thing was the spontaneous, un-selfconscious, exhuberant outpouring of pure joy. People hugged total strangers. Black and white embraced on the same corner of the fiery and ruinous race riots a generation ago. There was none of the normal, unspoken awkwardness and hesitation between them. It was surreal.
Cars careened through the street, with revelers clinging precariously out the windows and sunroofs. Every driver, including my cabbie, navigated the carnival with his hand rapping horn to the beat of the onlookers. Its a wonder to me that many of these swerving celebrations on wheels didn't plow into crowds of the chaos. The police, normally triggerhappy to pile such madness into paddy-wagons, merely looked on with a mix of shock and bemusement.
Tomorrow, the afterglow begins to fade. Reality sets in once again. Those people in ties did have to go back to work, after all. Hanging out of a moving car or dancing on a lightpole will once again be illegal. Distance will once again set in between strangers. Obama will have to live up to his reputation as Holy Savior Return'd to the Earth.
But the memory will remain. And, after holding its breath for eight long, dark years, America can try once again to be its old, hopeful, naive, and amazing self...
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