Today's Sharp Sparkle - or - Say It Plain

I think there's too much burden placed on the orgasm, you know, to make up for empty areas in life.
- Woody Allen, Annie Hall

It's the Wednesday morning after the inauguration. Depending on whom one asks, the party is over or the party has just begun.

School began last week, but I feel as if today is the first day. There is a lot of work to do, from here on out.

I felt many emotions during the inauguration. For some reason, I began the day thinking that something extraordinary was about to occur; whether it would be good or bad, I did not know. I packed a lunch that I did not eat; I packed a phone charger, which I did not use, in case there was some catastrophe; I brought my iPod shuffle in case I was stuck in the immovable crowd that never appeared. For some reason, I thought that sensationalism was the name of the day.

Instead, everything happened without surprise, without mysticism.

The potentially groundbreaking message I assumed would come from our new president was muted by pragmatism, history, and wisdom. Although I never thought negatively of the speech, critics said that it lacked the "umph" that other inaugural addresses contained. Maybe, for us who pray to messiahs and bow to the shock and awe, withholding the "umph" was exactly what we needed. Much of what Obama promises is far-fetched and could be construed as pandering. What he does less of, though, is promise that solutions will be easy. Instead of creating the catch phrase, he chose to retell our story with a comprehensiveness that we have not seen in a long time. Obama could not start out with fantastic solutions because his plans for us first require us to reacquaint ourselves with our past, with our identities. Only by knowing ourselves, both individually and as a nation, can we begin to consider what we need to accomplish to reach greater heights. President Obama invoked Lincoln and Washington; he referenced slavery and the hopes our relatives had when they came to this continent. He tried his best to reintroduce us to ourselves, which can only be accomplished by remembering that we are not mainly 9/11, Pearl Harbor, the Super Bowl, the season finale, or the orgasm. Instead, as the inaugural poet laureate Elizabeth Alexander said:

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks,
raised the bridges,
picked the cotton and the lettuce,
built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Instead of shiny solutions, maybe we need to relearn what a solution looks like and for what reason it's sought.  

Maybe we need to relearn that it is us, not Him, who should do the striving.