and I quote

Our country is: "bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction..."

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed — why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent Mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world ... that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet (it)."

America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

President Barack Obama, January 20, 2009.

And probably will be for life

Never have I felt so adrift.

I look at this picture and I ask myself, "What the fuck?" Mostly I wish I lived there: closer to my mother, further from this icy tundra, and able to stretch to my full wingspan in the grocery store without decapitating the elderly. But part of me is convinced that if only I could cut the mustard here, where I am now, I would not need so desperately to escape.

Somewhere along the line I must have gone incredibly, irrevocably wrong.

I hate my job. I'm cold. I'm claustrophobic. I want to change directions, but I'm exhausted. And I know that I'm going to have to make a running leap at something soon, but what...

post mortem

So Christmas is over. We've covered that. But now there appears to be some kind of hooligan marauding about greater SoHo attaching these snarky tags to all the abandoned Christmas trees waiting on the curb for the Sanitation Man. Son of a bitch.

now I lay me down to dream of Spring

In this weird hinterland between Christmas and New Years everything is possible and yet there is nothing to do. I'm at work because I have to be, perched at my desk feeling leftover queasy from my holiday bug, but I may as well be anywhere else for all the work I'm doing.

Being this idle leaves scads of time to sit in the bathtub of myself until pruny, just thinking. This week is always a good—albeit obvious—time to redress the vagaries in my life, to do a systems check, plug up the holes, and recite to myself a little State of the Union address slash pep-talk. For the most part, I think I have 'me' under control, but I can't seem to shake this omnipresent feeling that something is wrong.

And life is too short for that feeling.

So I've set a few Plan Bs to boil on my back burners. And while they bubble, I'll start taking my own advice. Today is all I've got.

2008, I wish you farewell. You were a lousy mistress, but you weren't all that unkind, and for that I am grateful.

I wish I had a river

And now the world has to take down its twinkle lights and pay their taxes.

in the bleak midwinter

As an unabashed fan of Christmas I realize that this year 'tis not the season. The economy is toilet-bowling, people are hurling their footwear at lame duck heads of state, and New York City has decided to do everything but chase its wanton citizens into the suburbs with a budget full of absolutely criminal tax increases. Meanwhile we've pissed off enough world leaders that I won't be half surprised when some nation, rogue or otherwise, points a nuke at us and calls it a night.

Not to mention the bills, the debts, the rising costs, and the families who can't afford to feed their children. Or the insurance companies who drive up the cost of basic procedures and then refuse coverage. Or the lack of jobs that pay just enough to afford apartments that cost just too much.

To top it off, the weather oscillates between seventy and seventeen degrees. All snow promptly turns to sleet. The streets and stores are filled with shoppers who plod through by rote. We do this because we've always done it; we cut down trees, drag them into our living rooms, try to keep them alive until New Years... We drink too much, we overindulge on cookies and cocoa, and we spend our feebly accrued savings on gifts. Lather, rinse, repeat. And we grow lonelier by the year. Is there not a Cindy Lou Who in all of us wondering "Where Are You Christmas?"

Meanwhile, sensible people turn away from all this pageantry. They don't deck their halls, they don't wrap their presents. They say the whole holiday is just a greeting card frenzy, an annual offering made to appease the retail gods. So they spare themselves the sadness of trying to recapture their childhood suspension of disbelief. Cheers to them; I wish I were that sane.

Humbug. This is the season of hope. Of twinkle lights. The summer of the soul in December. When we try to be the people we wish we were. We owe it to ourselves once a year to be as good, as generous, as kind as we can be to the people we love. To let ourselves feel a little smaller. To remind us that we are more than mere mammals.

Christmas has never been easy for me. I've always had my heart broken by my own bungling hand in trying to make myself believe: in Santa, in flying reindeer, in brass choirs. In mistletoe and love triumphant... but more than that, in the human capacity for goodness. It's not even about Jesus—I'm not particularly religious and anyway his birthday would be in April—it's about us. And we're in trouble.

Every year our illusions are peeled away until, aging gracelessly, the world is bare and we become lost in it. Here I am, twenty five years old (and not particularly thrilled about it), living in a city I hate, a flop of an actress. My father just came out of ball surgery and my mom is hundreds of miles to the South living in a swamp with a bunch of senior citizens. My family fell apart, my dog died, and I've made so little of myself so far. But, goddamn it, there is still this resurgent effervescence once a year. I still am overcome with the urge to spoil the world rotten, come ruin or rapture, and that gives me hope for myself. I am a good person at Christmas. That much I have.

So I hang my socks on the fireplace. I watch cheesy movies. I cry at the same old swells in the same old songs. I leave cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve and I pretend I'm not aware of who makes the bite marks and drains the eggnog. And someday when I have children of my own, I will make sure they never feel this way.

yes, we did

I have never been prouder of my country.

After Obama took the primary, I put my back into the Fourth of July as I had never done before. I made an all-American cookout happen in a Manhattan apartment. I made cupcakes, wore red, white, and blue, donned my Obama For Your Mama t-shirt and drank domestic beer. I was full of this alien enthusiasm for my fatherland. Suddenly, I was remembering the great words of great statesmen a hundred years dead, white, landed men of priviledge who once tried to make of a new land mass something better. They were human, of course, but they tried and those first steps, however imperfect, however fallible, created the rubric for a country that has always stood for that intangible something better, even—and especially—when it failed to.

I was reconnecting to the America of the history books, taking my private ownership of her—for better or for worse—and thinking that maybe this time we had something to hope for. I can't say I was all that optimistic that he'd win, or even if he did win, that he'd be any different, but I can say that I had hope. I had hope that the evils we've orchestrated on our own soil and abroad may yet have taught us something as we endeavor to grope our way into this uncertain century, that our worst moments may yet have been the birth of our best.

I remember feeling renewed by a candidate who, for the first time in nearly a decade, seemed to have our best interests at heart.

Now, a lot of conservatives and right wingnuts will tell you I don't know my own best interests from a hole in my head. They whine about the big, bad government taking away their hard-earned cash to build schools. They say America is dead when she restricts in any capacity the individual freedoms of her citizens, their right to hold onto their God-given winnings and their God-fearing guns. When their talk-radio virulence is drowned out, and the Jesus rhetoric dials down, there are some good points to be made there. This country was founded almost on a dare. It was an experiment, a government of restraint and informed citizenship. As Lincoln said nearly a century later: of the people, by the people, for the people. The government of our founding fathers ought to be protected, ought never "perish from the earth."

Some of these McCainiacs and naysayers are well-meaning fiscal conservatives who support the left in social matters, but draw the line with guns and taxes. Libertarians. They tell me I am misguided for voting my conscience. They tell me I am sacrificing my birthright in this great country for a few useless social dictums that shouldn't be decided by the federal government anyway. I say they are hypocrites. Forfeit certain freedoms to safegaurd others? To save a few selfish dollars—on principle—they'll vote dog-eat-doggystyle down the line for a candidate who condemns their best friend, their brother, and their heart. What does it matter if women, gays, and peoples of color are denied a few civil rights? Rights which really should be inalienable, but mean nothing if you can't bear arms and keep your tax money, right? And so these cynics vote their wallets and in so doing throw their support behind the Republican Party and damn the rest of us.

The old adage tells us that a young conservative has no heart, sure, but an old liberal must have no money. (No, Churchill never said it.) And, it's true, I am young and poor and idealistic. But I'm also not an idiot. I weighed every issue in this campaign before succumbing to Barackoholic Obamania, before rallying behind the audacity of my hope. I don't believe he'll pay my mortgage or my gas bill. I am not a knee-jerk pseudo-socialist out to rob the rich to feed the poor. I just read the last line of the Declaration of Independence with pride: "we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." I am more than willing to pay taxes I judge to be fair. And if Joe the Plumber (who is not even a plumber) has to pay $257 more this year when he buys his business, or some corporate wahoos have to sacrifice half a million or two from their bloated salaries, I can live with that. To quote Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr: "I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization." I cast my vote for civilization yesterday.

Some people are afraid this morning. They think the big, scary black man with his rowdy fanatics will steal their pensions and spend them on inner-city crack whores. (or, you know, schools and health care and infrastructure). They think he'll invite the terrorists over for tea and Oreos. Who knows? Maybe he will. Maybe John McCain and Sarah Palin would have done worse, much worse, for our broke and fragile country. Two men laid out their best plays and we chose one. We won the coin toss and we gave Obama the ball.

I still believe in the dormant American Dream and every citizen's right to that pursuit. The president I picked inspires me to work a little harder to get there and wants to give everyone a fair shake. But I need no longer justify a vote that I cast in the company of 63,372,482 others. This year we are spared the narrow margins and the back-and-forth of populace vs electorate. We can forego the blue state/red state battles. The coasts and the Middle can agree to disagree now (to the tune of some very close races in Indiana, Iowa, Virginia, Missouri... Montana.) Electoral maps and long-established demographic lines in the sand have been redrawn. Maybe we have a shot at some semblance of unity as a nation so we may reclaim our place in a world that has watched us anxiously for months and last night started the slow clapping.

We have elected a leader worthy of leading for the first time in a very long time. What surprises me is not that he won, a stunning victory in its own right, but that this morning I feel proud to be an American—in theory and in practice.