i know. i'm blushing.

Let’s hear it for good speeches that get me hopeful and excited for the future of our country. The pundits can say what they will about President Obama’s inaugural address, but as for me, I loved it.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.  We are the keepers of this legacy.

So? I’m an idealist. I like speeches that promise integrity, temperance, and tenacity. I like to believe that President Obama speaks with complete earnestness when he says, “On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.” I think he’s telling the truth. Or… at least I have high hopes that he is.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions — who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage. What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.

I can’t deny that there’s definitely a cynical vein that runs through me. I understand the tendency towards cynicism. It’s true that politicians—yes, even our sparkling new president—will make mistakes and may likely break some promises. But I’ve decided recently that this elevating feeling of hope is far more productive than cynicism, even if the cynics ARE right some of the time, even if I am left disappointed in those moments. I’ve decided to not base my hope in faulty humans, but rather in a belief that we have a greater potential that requires some shade of idealism to be realized. I think this hope is a better choice.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.

So I’m sorry if this post makes you roll your eyes. At a different time, it probably would’ve made me roll my eyes too. But for now, I feel happy and hopeful. I feel grateful to be a part of this America.

The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

Amen.

Here are some things I’ve noticed this past week, in no particular order:

1. I’m never too old for a Cinnamon Toast Crunch breakfast, and I’m never too far removed from college life to crave a bowl of Ramen noodles.
2. You know those packets of apple cider mix?  You know how when you rip one open, some stray powder escapes and swirls around in the air?  It seems that smell induces instant nostalgia.  I’m back in a Connecticut winter.  Ice skating on the pond in the woods behind the Wirz’s house.  With my brother.  The ice creak-cracking as he shovels off the heavy snow.  I’m on hockey skates, NOT figure, thankyouverymuch.  Frozen-red fingers and toes.  The hot, sweet taste of cider thawing me from the inside out.  Blowing the steam from my mug onto my face.  It’s amazing to experience those feelings again all while standing at my kitchen sink.
3. When I ask Bryant to pick up a gallon of milk at the store, he will always come home with 2%.  He will also come home with much more exciting groceries than I would’ve found.  It’s definitely more fun when he does the shopping.
4. Little kids are cool because however timid they may seem, they’re usually pretty convinced that they can learn how to do anything.  And they will ask you to teach them.
5. The terms “feminine” and “masculine” are completely useless.  They’re stupid, completely subjective, and (largely) arbitrary words with no good definition.  I’m removing them from my lexicon.
6. It’s actually pretty easy to avoid subjects I don’t want to talk about.  I wish I had realized that a long time ago.  Could’ve been really useful.
7. The internet is a great time vacuum—a black hole of productivity that takes control of my consciousness and prevents me from being useful. (It’s also a convenient scapegoat for wasted time.)

It is feelings like this that I most want to hold on to but am least able to maintain. Feelings like this are the most fleeting.

It’s a feeling born of the warm, persistent press of the sunlight on my skin despite the chill in the air; the crunching snow underfoot as the sun stakes out its place in the sky; the lilting song of birds and the strong scent of evergreen pouring from a towering fir tree. Such a giant of a tree—it’s a wonder that it has escaped my attention until now. I stop and gaze up and can’t even see the top.

And suddenly, or not-so-suddenly, I’m filled with peace and clarity. I feel realistically optimistic about the future. (Realistically optimistic? It’s amazing that such a feeling exists.) I can clearly see a path laid out in front of me. And what’s more, I don’t feel afraid to start walking down it.

The thing is, I’ve had these fantastically exultant moments before… and so I know that they pass. They pass, and I’m left with life-as-usual once again, trudging through the problems of the day (most of which are problems of my own making). My view of the road ahead becomes obscured again with my doubts, my second-guesses, my mistakes.

But I’m not pointing this out to be a pessimist. Not this time, anyway. I’m pointing this out because this time, I think I understand this feeling better.

Thank goodness for these moments of clarity, these times when the world feels so full of lighted windows and open doors. These moments are exactly the kick in the pants that I need to continue on even when the world turns dark again. The feeling may be gone, but the memory that I had it remains. There’s a “white ring of mineral ash left after the water has boiled away,”* which serves as a real reminder that hope can be constant even while my feelings vacillate between contentment and desperation.

You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
-Kahlil Gibran

So for now, I get it. I recognize it may not be as easy for me to grasp next week, or maybe even tomorrow. But for now, I get it, and I’m holding on.

*another quote from Louise Erdrich’s Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

Do you ever feel a need to say something, to express yourself or some idea, but don’t know what it is you ought to say? …It’s not that you don’t know how to say it, which is a different problem altogether, but that you really don’t know what to say in the first place.

Maybe I should take that feeling as a signal to keep quiet.

(the title is from a line of an Arthur O’Shaughnessy poem, which was subsequently borrowed by Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.)

I don’t know where the time goes when I sit at the piano.  It feels like the clock freezes for me but not the rest of the world.  I swear there’s a parallel reality that exists when my fingers are touching the keys, and only after I manage to wrench myself from that world do I find that hours and hours have passed when I thought no time had passed at all.

When I peeled myself away from the keyboard today, my mind stumbled clumsily across a vague memory… a few passages I once marked on the pages of some book or another.  I pulled a couple of my favorite books off the shelf and started sifting through the pages until my restless memory felt satisfied.

This is from Louise Erdrich’s The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, where the character Agnes, who had been suffering from some form of amnesia, finally regains the knowledge that she is a talented and passionate pianist:

She stood in the entrance to the new church one afternoon, regarding the placement of the piano with an uneasy, critical eye.  Later, she was sure it was the long summer light, the full golden quality of afternoon light that wakened her hands and set them moving about more restlessly than they had for some time. …The key to the keyboard was hidden in the piano’s odd claw foot.  An aperture behind a toe.  Suddenly, Agnes bent and removed the key.  She then opened the keyboard.  All of a sudden there it was, the notes spread out before her in the slant light of afternoon, the discolored ivories of the sad keys gaping at her, the breath of the thing sighing out like an animal.

There was a small brown bench Sister Hildegarde had found and placed before the creature.  Agnes sat, adjusted the distance, and watched the keys carefully.  Nothing happened.  There was nothing to be afraid of, after all, except that her hands sprang out of her sleeves.  Then they jumped off her lap like claws and crashed down in an astonishing chord. She clutched her hands to her chest.  The sound reverberated.  With a soft and, she feared, insane longing, her hands crept forward again.  This time, quite movingly, they brushed the keys in the secret contradictory melody that opens the Pathetique.  Her hands moved on and on.  She crouched over the keyboard in amazed concentration and played, or allowed herself to be played by, the music that had racked her inside and struggled for release.  …As her hands assembled and disassembled their patterns of old harmony and counterharmony, the mystery of their motions became entirely sensible.  She understood the intricate purpose of [this] language….  Music poured out in a rational waterfall.

Time passed, or no time passed.  Absorbed in the rush of knowing, Agnes felt eyes watching.  Perhaps children, she thought, unable in her awed greed to quit.  Or one of the sisters, or an Ojibwe curious or gripped by longing.  She played in the embrace of that special sense of being heard, that expectancy, but when she finally set her hands in her lap and looked up to acknowledge the listener, no one was there.  Only the still new leaves faintly twitching between the studs and the haze of gold light through the tremulous scatter of clouds.

And from E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View, about Lucy Honeychurch’s love for the piano:

It so happened that Lucy, who found daily life rather chaotic, entered a more solid world when she opened the piano.  She was then no longer either deferential or patronizing; no longer either a rebel or a slave.  The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.  The commonplace person begins to play, and shoots into the empyrean without effort, whilst we look up, marveling how he has escaped us, and thinking how we could worship him and love him, would he but translate his visions into human words, and his experiences into human actions….

[Lucy] was no dazzling exécutant; her runs were not at all like strings of pearls, and she struck no more right notes than was suitable for one of her age and situation.  Nor was she the passionate young lady, who performs so tragically on a summer’s evening with the window open.  Passion was there, but it could not be easily labeled; it slipped between love and hatred and jealousy, and all the furniture of the pictorial style.  And she was tragical only in the sense that she was great, for she loved to play on the side of Victory.  Victory of what and over what—that is more than the words of daily life can tell us.  But that some sonatas of Beethoven are written tragic no one can gainsay; yet they can triumph or despair as the player decides, and Lucy decided that they should triumph.

A very wet afternoon at [Lucy's hotel] permitted her to do the thing she really liked, and after lunch she opened the little draped piano.  A few people lingered round and praised her playing, but finding that she made no reply, dispersed to their rooms to write up their diaries or to sleep. …Like every true performer, she was intoxicated by the mere feel of the notes; they were fingers caressing her own; and by touch, not by sound alone did she come to her desire.

Mr. Beebe, sitting unnoticed in the window, pondered over this illogical element in Miss Honeychurch…. [He remarked to Lucy] when she closed the little piano and moved dreamily towards him: “If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting—both for us and for her.”

I don’t imagine that I play with much skill or accuracy, or even that it’s enjoyable for others to listen to me, but playing fills me such a release that my inadequacy has never bothered me much.  Playing brings me to a strangely ephemeral yet “more solid world” where “time passes, or no time passes” and my mistakes are okay.  It’s where my worries melt neatly away, where reality looks beautiful, and where I begin to believe that I may one day find the courage to live with passion.  What an exhilarating notion.