Yes we did

I'm an English major. Before that I was a kid who read like an insane glutton. The way words bounce off of each other is the shape my brain takes. When Barack Obama said, "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible...tonight is your answer," I couldn't get this out of my head:

"It's vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory, enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder."

And when he said, "It's the answer that led those who have been told for so long, and by so many, to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we could achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more towards the hope of a better day," this was on my mind.

I first read both of these--Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise"--a few months before the '04 election when I was 17, just shy of being able to vote. Despite the fact that I felt an unnerving disconnect between the hope in those words and the reality I saw unfolding around me, both took hold of my imagination and haven't let go since. Four years later my hope is that I never, ever have to read them with cynicism or bitterness again.

We were dancing and setting off fireworks on the Hill last night, but they passed Proposition 8 in California. Let's all listen to some Sam Cooke and get to work.