image by brunosan

There is something in me that wants to complicate the manufactured common reality that is so hard to escape in our instant, media-rich culture. It is one thing to have many stories coalesce into one as years pass and history books demand the “official” story. But when it comes to telling the news, there’s an essential need for alternative reports. Alternative reports, reports that have not been manufactured to perpetuate existing values nor to react to them, allow for a deeper understanding, often a more authentic reflection of what happened.

There is an official story of Barack Obama’s inauguration that tells of the sobriety and firmness of his speech, the thrill of the large crowds braving freezing temperatures, the bungled swearing in and the overall “historic” quality of the event. My individual story does not omit these aspects of the day, but it puts them in a very particular context. Inspired by C.G. Jung, I decided I wanted to write a completely personal version of the day’s events.

Jung wrote, “The great events of world history are, at bottom, profoundly unimportant. In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of the individual. This alone makes history, here alone do the transformations first take place, and the whole future, the whole history of the world, ultimately spring as a gigantic summation from these hidden sources in individuals. In our most private and most subjective lives, we are not only the passive witnesses of our age, and its sufferers, but also its makers.” I think Obama, quoting Alice Walker in his speeches—“We are the ones we have been waiting for”—would agree.

My best friend Lex and I left our host’s apartment on R St. about 7:15 on the morning of January 20th. At first, the streets were empty, but as we worked our way down the alphabet, our ranks increased. As we approached Eye St., we saw the crowd thicken to fill the street before us from edge to edge. It was sort of the visual equivalent of that intensifying chord they used to play before movies to tout the quality of the THX sound system. It filled me with awe and excitement. The crowd sucked on us like a whirlpool. We sped up our pace and soon were one with it, moving toward the same goal—a future we were all too anxious to embrace.

As we crossed Constitution Avenue, we found ourselves in the park adjacent to the Washington Monument. The open field inspired expansive movement and expansive emotions. I thought about Woodstock. Slow-motion film clips of glowing faces moving toward something as one. I’d never shared a feeling of momentousness with so many people before. As we emerged onto the hill leading up to the Monument, the gathering reached its crescendo. A perfect circle of American flags studded the crest. In the center, towered the huge, white obelisk, ancient symbol of sun worship. White seagulls dove in undulating patterns and, from a distance, the crowds of people seemed to move in a choreographed pattern, round and round and round, spiraling the obelisk, echoing the flags and the birds and the wind. Again, there was the feeling of a whirlpool, a centrifugal force. The rising sun bathed it all in the color of a new morning. The sun brought warmth, the symphonic motion brought beauty and the moment found a place in my eternal memory.

A mitigated terror and self-loathing set in when Lex and I realized that both of our camera batteries were, at barely 8 a.m., near zero. We needed cameras! But we also needed to find our entrance to the parade. Overstimulated by adrenaline and coffee, we jerked our heads around like neurotic birds, wondering where each line led, what each vendor was selling. As we walked by a particularly long line of people, Lex stopped and asked a woman, “Is this the line to get in to the parade?” The woman said, “No, it’s the line for coffee and donuts.” We kept on, finally making it to the 12th Street parade entrance. Nearby, was an underground mall in which we sought disposable cameras. It was impossible to think that we could be standing feet from the new president and not have the means to document it.

We got our cameras, along with a peanut butter Twix and a large pack of M&M’s at a little convenience store in that strange, sterile mall and emerged back on the surface a little warmer but more disoriented than ever. At least now, our mission was singular: Get through the gate.

There were about 400 people standing in front of the gate, clumped in tightly. Lex and I wedged our way in and waited. A person covered up like Casper the ghost danced and sang to herself in front of us. Her friend commented that if someone grabbed her ass, it would be okay. Someone else expressed gratitude toward her friends’ large breasts which were warming her back. Unfortunately, my friend Lex did not have a lot of self to spread around and I wasn’t quite desperate enough yet to cuddle up to a portly stranger.

After about 45 minutes, they opened the gate and we got into chutes for security screening. A woman next to us was holding a three year old who had to pee “very bad”. I let them go in front of me and crossed my fingers. Finally, we came up to the screening station. The woman in front of me at that point held up the line by committing an unexplained security no-no. As the guard watched closely, she pulled banana after banana from pockets all up and down her body. Luckily, security did not pick up that Lex was secreting a large grapefruit.

When we got to the bleacher stand for our section Yellow B, it was only half full. It was 11:15 a.m. so we had about 45 minutes to wait for the swearing in. Lex tried to convince me that we should go back to the Monument where there were viewing screens. But I was afraid that we wouldn’t be able to get back in the security gates, so we stayed on the bleachers.

As time passed, cold sapped the focus from my brain, leaving me feeling somehow larger than my body, as big as the whole bleacher stand, maybe as big as the entire crowd gathered that day. We passed the time dancing to a loop of music that included Aretha Franklin’s “Freedom”, Bill Withers “Lovely Day”, Sonny and Cher’s “And The Beat Goes On” and James Brown’s “Living in America” from the Rocky soundtrack. Nestling in to Lex to keep warm. Scanning the standing crowds opposite for signs of life. Sometimes the police would break their guard and play with the crowd, keeping them a little warmer and a little happier. A corps of Army musicians in their black fur-lined bonnets marched past. There were so many different military and security costumes on display: the black bonnets, the desert fatigues, the green sweater and khakis, the black overcoats. They made the would-be parade route seem like a strategy gameboard. And up above, along the edges of the tall buildings, armed security guards loomed, looking unnaturally large for how far they were away.

When Obama made his inaugural speech, we sat huddled and listened carefully to the loudspeakers. The weight of the speech made an immediate, somewhat jarring contrast to the upbeat songs that had just been playing over the same loudspeakers. Sitting in the bleachers, cold and expectant, wasn’t the context in which to analyze the speech. We needed to be excited and light-hearted to keep on in the cold. So we quickly let its gravity pass for later digestion and got back up to dance.

We met a nice woman from Nashville who laughed at me as I peeled the huge grapefruit Lex had shoved in her bag at 7 a.m. My hands froze as the sticky juice poured over them and onto the steel bleachers, but I kept peeling, energized by the sensation. I tore off the first slice, bit in and more juice poured out. I sucked it in, thinking to myself that it was sunshine.

At 3 o’clock, well past the announced 2:30 start time, we got the news that the parade would be delayed an hour because Ted Kennedy had had a seizure at the Inaugural luncheon. An hour before, Lex had found out about a chili stand on 10th St., inside the security gates. To avoid hating Ted Kennedy for being human and old, we resolved to make it to the chili stand where we would get something warm and thick to put in our bellies. On our walk there, many of the people we passed were entirely submerged in blankets. Soldiers in ever-more ironic-seeming desert fatigues smoked, looking cold and lonely for women who might keep them warm.

We ordered three chilis, two for the two of us and a third for our Nashville friend. As we stood patiently at the side of the trailer to wait, the people behind us asked with desperation, “Do you have hot chocolate?” “No.” “Do you have coffee?” “No.” They only had chili, beef brisket and cinnamon rolls. All hot. Pick your poison. Person after person ordered their portion of chili. But ours came first. Three steaming, styrofoam cups wrapped tight in a plastic bag, knotted at the top. Lex took the bag and held it next to her body as we walked back to the bleachers.

When we gave our Nashville friend the chili, she tried to pay us, but we said no, no. Finally, she reached into her coat and pulled out two blue rubber bracelets wrapped in plastic. “It’s not much,” she said, “but here’s a little souvenir.” The bracelets read “Inauguration 2009, Yes We Did.” It was something I would not have purchased on my own, but given as a gift, it became valuable.

Sarah’s Inauguration story will continue tomorrow.