dear reader,
good morning, and welcome to the first day of 2009 as history will remember it. in the near future, the past 19 days will likely be relegated to phrases like “amidst a worsening financial crisis,” and the bitter cold that so recently swept the majority of our country isn’t even going to get that much attention.
by the time i’ve finished this post, we will probably be only a few minutes away from the first words of a greatly, enthusiastically anticipated president’s inaugural address. this is a man riding an incredible wave of centrist popular sentiment, like a more global, liberal ronald reagan, swearing on lincoln’s bible and reaching hard for the heights of fdr’s historical acclaim.
but despite his every effort to enter the white house in a great cloud of history, the forty-fourth president de los estados unidos represents to the world one thing: change. america is anticipating newness. i, in a rare moment of non-isolation and waning misanthropy, am waiting for it, too, standing in my heart on the mall as one of millions. if someone, chosen as a celestial juror for his or her ignorance of irrelevant detail, looks on objectively and perceives a slight difference in my attitude, it is perhaps the eagerness rather than fear with which i expect the annihilation of the known, and the person to whom my expectation is directed.
change, as i have written before and will write again, is the principal in a great mission. it sweeps aside–abstracts out–inconsequentials too beloved and incidentals too familiar. the new details of existence it brings are despicable by design, and the lesson is clear: despise the particulars, the incidentals; or, if you must love them, do it for their absolute dispensability and for the sake of the rock these receding sands uncover.
i cannot match the power of james a. garfield’s expression at his inauguration: “we may hasten or we may retard, but we can not prevent, the final reconciliation. is it not possible for us now to make a truce with time by anticipating and accepting its inevitable verdict?”
happy 2009, good reader; happy truce.