The year of the Ox is beginning tomorrow, and this past week has just been a crazy emotional cap to what has been a crazy emotional year of the Rat. The Obama inauguration on Tuesday inspired me perhaps more than any other event I can remember. I can still hardly believe it sometimes, thinking what his presidency means for this country in the long term, in the historical context, and also thinking that in catastrophic times like these an inspirational leader is perhaps as important to our well being as a nation as a good military exit strategy or economic recovery plan.
I'm trying hard not to have unreasonable expectations, but my generation has never faced a crisis like this, and I think about what it must have been like for my parents to face the upheavals of the 60s or for my grandparents to face the depression and the war. Obama just could be a Kennedy or Roosevelt figure, and many even speak of Lincoln.
I had to work on inauguration day, though I did catch the oath of office and Obama's inauguration speech from home before I got on the road. Was frazzled & couldn't concentrate all day. I got home and walked down to Broadway Cap Hill to this street parade a local Brazilian carnival group had put together in honor of the inauguration. There were drummers & dancing girls, and a crowd of about 50 locals. It was so different and fulfilling to be there. Then the drumming stopped and another set of drums started up behind the crowd - we turned around and it was a troop of Mexican dancers in golden & jeweled Aztec costumes, tall feathered headdresses... they'd crept up behind us while we were watching the Brazilians. The unexpected, exotic surprise of it literally took my breath away. I forget that the world is sometimes full of unexpected wonders.
At the end of the week there were big layoffs at my job, which was just more big news that sent me reeling. I wasn't hit, fortunately, but we did lose a lot of good people. When I get back to work tomorrow I need to find out who's left and which projects I have to drop because I won't have the support I need to get them done. Very grim. But I will say that the way they did the layoffs was as well as any company could have done, and the tough choices that were made do seem to make sense. We'll reset our expectations and just keep moving. Once the shock wears off there will be no time to sit and brood about it - there's too much to get done.
I've also been making strong progress on the book, and one of the reasons I haven't been updating this blog as often as in the past is because I've tried to prioritize every spare lucid moment (and fuck knows there aren't many of those) on trying to finish this thing in the next couple of months. It's been seven years, and I'm so close to finishing.
So there won't be much traffic on this frequency for a while, but stay tuned, stay close, and stay safe.
I love you all.