The Inauguration of Joe Biden 2021
Spring air teases the forsythia and bluebirds forward. The white cold light of winter still shines slantingly through my Southern facing windows this early dawn. It will soon shift to the northern side of this house and morning will be less of a call to attention as the days drift on for hours, eventually bleeding into night.
On this day that Donald Trump departs he will take despair with him. He will carry the crushing weight of hate away on the country’s helicopter. His departure will unclog the suffocating sludge of contention that has sucked the oxygen from our people.
It will feel that way for some of us. Some of us will follow the fumes kicked up by his dust, hoping to stay in his reality star story. Some will choose lies but most will roll over with exhaustion hoping for an unbroken rest now that he’s been replaced by a human being whether it be in defeat of their vote or victory.
Will we emerge from the bunker rolls of toilet paper and paper towels to wonder at our prison walls? Will we stare in confusion at the storehouse of swabs, sanitizers, soaps and wipes stuffed into corners?
Will we ever look at a communal bowl of food without horror? Will we find the old friends waiting and pick up the pieces as they’d never broken?
What do our jobs that were lost mean now? Were we necessary and is there a place for us? What do the jobs we’ve done from home feel like when we take them back to the circle of others? Are we glad for the company of others or too tender from our quiet time in solitary?
Who do we trust?
I know yoga but yoga has not saved me this year. Love has been buried beneath fury, joy subjugated beneath fear.
It took most of the year but on insurrection day January 6th, that news overriding the daily death toll that remains consistent, it seemed hopeless and forever that I’d live in a wasteland after so many wonderful years in this beautiful country. This yoga teachers’ circuits are fried but not irreparable.
The mother board is undergoing a systems analysis. The memory will be rebooted, the dust blown away, old programs discarded, the hardware upgraded.
Could this moment seem so potent if not for the last four years plus of trauma?
Perhaps the breakdown, the degradation and shame of our collective national consciousness is for a moment, the pathway to equity, community, and yes, love.
Let’s stay here in this moment. Draw it out with feathery breaths. Soak in the possibilities, breath out the past.
Love, Hilary