Dreams from my Father

"Billie [Holiday] had stopped singing. The silence felt oppressive, and I suddenly felt very sober. I rose from the couch, flipped the record, drank what was left in my glass and poured myself another. Upstairs, I could hear someone flushing a toilet, walking across a room. Another insomniac, probably, listening to his life tick away. That was the problem wiyh booze and drugs, wasn't it? At some point they couldn't stop that ticking sound, the sound of certain emptiness. And that, I suppose, is what I'd been trying to tell my mother that day: that her faith in justice and rationality was misplaced, that we couldn't overcome after all, that all the education and good intentions in the world couldn't help plug up the holes in the universe or give you the power to change its blind, mindless course." (Obama, Dreams from My Father, 1995)

It's passages like these that make me actually want to say that I feel safe, and close to our new President. Even when I say that I feel "close" to a President, I know that it's all in my mind, and I'm really not close to anything at all. I feel big, and very very small at the same time. But at least I know that he has felt (struggled with, come to accept) the same smallness, and is now touching the very very big.

It's passages like these that make me excited. To hear a guy who had to go through the motions of catering to all kinds of American subgroups in order to win votes (emphasizing (while gesturing with his thumbs) that he supports _______ while trying not to alienate ______, bla bla bla, trying to impress everyone) talk about smoking pot and wandering around his apartment at 3am, looking at the moon.

And, oh, yes. There's this, too:

"In our weekly meetings [my boss] would remind me of the choice I'd made, that there was no risk in my modest accomplishments, that the men in fancy suits downtown were still calling all the shots. 'Life is short, Barack,' he would say. 'If you're not trying to really change things out here, you might as well forget it.' Ah, yes, Real change. It had seemed like such an attainable goal back in college...only now, nothing seemed simple. "

This excerpt sounds a little more like the memoir of a president. This is more the standard story of a man who dreams big and works hard, andbeats the odds, succeeds, turns out to be a real role model for kids everywhere.

Kids my age, though, I think we appreciate hearing about how "[He] blew a few smoke rings, remembering those years. Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it...Everybody was welcome into the club of disaffection."From these words, we can know that we have a few things in common with this guy. Insecurities, sadness, mistakes, half-assed self-destruction, these are all things that make a person real. Let's not (feebly) try to hide our faults from the rest of the world behind an old white guy who won the election by convincing everyone that he is perfect.

Let's be real.

Ok.