(The Obama inauguration day @ one of his alma maters)
Due to the brazen lateness and laziness of this entry as a piece of quasi-report on the historical Obama-inauguration, I shall be brief. :)
I regretted not bringing my camera to school on January 20, 2009, not for the sake of the spectacle of the new-found political zest of this country, but rather the stand-in opposite of it: the uncontainable apathy, unwittingly betrayed and astutely captured by a CU photographer from whom I borrow the picture that is inserted above.
Apathy? Yes. As Obama acknowledged Mr. Bush's efforts and legacy of his two terms, as the camera panned over to find the by-now EX-president, the Washington crowd politely and generously applauded and cheered. Yet, some 224 kilometers eastward, at the heart of one of the Obama boot-camps, in front of the grotesquely huge "Jumbo Tron" screen, a tacit crowd, as you see in the picture, remained silent. Unanimously and apathetically silent.
Unanimous except a dozen of security guards scattered on the plaza making sure that people were behaving and the order maintained. One of them was trying hard to keep people off the turning corner of the stairs leading up toward the library so that an exit remained clear. Being stuck behind the security guard and after listening to his "order-keeping" for nearly half an hour in the cold, I was growing paranoid. Suddenly in that moment of collective silence and apathy, I finally heard what the guard was saying, "You gotta move!" Allegorically, "You gotta move".
As the EX-president finally boarded his plane and submitted to his destiny of "you gotta move", like the crowd, I reached out for euphoria. After all, it is the worst of times; it is the best of times. And we have all got to move. Maybe Yeats was right:"Brood on hopes and fear no more". We gotta move.
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