Dear Friends,

On the 20th of January, I spent the morning as I typically do. (Well, I assume it was typical because I don’t remember anything unusual about that morning.) It being a weekday, I must have pulled myself out of bed a little after 6am, brewed the coffee, took the dog out, and then settled down with a cup to watch the dawn and backyard birds come to life. I expect snow was on the ground, although I can’t say how much. Reliably, I would have seen chickadees, cardinals, juncos, and a lone nuthatch at the feeders. Eventually, inevitably, I dressed, ate, and walked the dog.

I worked for a few hours in our home office. Perhaps I spoke with my colleagues or attended some other online meeting. In between work tasks, I checked a couple of news websites on the progress of President Biden’s inaugural ceremony. I was waiting for something to happen. Was I feeling relieved that morning? Not sure. The roaring flame of the past four years had ignited into a white supremacist insurrection in the halls of Congress just days before. Is relief what you feel when the country is hanging on by a thread? I glanced at the live stream. I have an image in my mind of Bernie sitting on a cheap folding chair, legs crossed, his hands resting on his lap clad in those wonderfully ridiculous mittens, holding a manilla envelope, and waiting for the ceremony to begin, alone. Like a pensioner in a queue at the social security office. Or maybe that image is just a product of the memes that soon followed.

Later, I came out of the office into the kitchen for some lunch. Leftover soup? Meredith was streaming the inauguration on her laptop at the table. Amanda Gorman had just begun reciting her poem in honor of the day. Her presence on the screen was striking: bright – so bright! – red attire, and her face a smooth brown just as bright; the milky marble of the architecture surrounded her like a halo. I don’t remember much of her voice or of specific phrases in her poem, but for me her song was a radiant balm aimed squarely at the terror of the former presidency. Her person and her song were power enough to transform the tectonic psyche of the nation for me, if only for those brief moments.

I watched and listened. Amanda Gorman carefully laid word after word on top of me. Phrases and images accumulated and became heavy. Magnetized, her poem gathered together experiences and vignettes from recent events, and my mind struggled to shape them into a coherent narrative. As she spoke to us, I heaved. My chest cracked, and a dark buried thing escaped through the fissure. All of the dread and anger and incomprehension and worry and sadness coughed out of me like billowing smoke. I wanted to feel that burn in my throat. I wanted to dwell in the pure presence of that pain as it scrubbed me raw, drawing the toxins out like a lit smudge. So I stood immobile in the middle of the kitchen sobbing into my hands.

Feeling my way to 2022,

Jeremy

OK, I fact checked my memory of her appearance: she wore a red satin headband and a golden overcoat – bright indeed.