election day

hey mr. police-man
please don't take my stuff
it cost me too much money and it prob'ly ain't enough
to get me through election day
let me hear you say
it's alright it's alright it's alright
- lyle lovett

i am thankful for the good fortune of living in chicago on election day 2008. it was surreal. i'd love to say that i was jubilant and that i felt like i was part of history and that it was the most important day of my life (as some of my friends have said). i want to write about something like that. but if i'm really going to be honest then i have to admit that it was fun, it was exciting, it was emotional, it was an exceptional day and an historic night. i'll say that i did feel the grip of anxious excitement that morning when i lined up to cast my ballot. i did feel a thrill of collective anticipation when i walked around downtown after an early-out day at work. it was electric. it was a very well-behaved spectacle. but i did not weep with joy. my tremor of excitement was akin to the buzz of the michael phelps medal race this summer.

i don't know. i think i was just sort of exhausted after so many months of run-up. it was such a decisive and speedy victory, it felt a bit anticlimactic. and i was twinged with disappointment that i did not brace the crowds and become part of the undulating sea of celebrants.... i had to be up at 5:30 this morning, so i decided to be responsible and stick closer to home.

so overall i'd say it was fun but not spectacular... i would, however, like to try to write a bit about what it was like to be in chicago yesterday. just for fun.

yesterday was unlike anything i have every seen before in chicago. the air was different. cautiously jubiliant. everyone was distracted at work, and the cubes were atwitter all day and then abruptly silent. the loop was ordered to be empty by 3 to allow for street closings and the insurge of people. the unseasonably warm skies smiled down on the grinning swarms of people shuffling from every direction towards grant park. kids, octogenarians, celebrities, all races, all SES groups. even people who may not have voted for Obama were drawn like moths to the bustling flame. to see it. to brush up against it. to wonder aloud - is it really going to happen??

it did of course. celebration rippled through the entire city, complete with fireworks, impromptu dance parties, and cheering in the streets. the pub where friends and i had gathered to watch the returns erupted into an inter-racial line dance.

election day is one of those rare occasions where we mix and mingle with our neighbors in ways we rarely do in our orderly little lives. on election day we are chatting up in the poll lines, high-fiving each other at the bar as the state returns roll in on the jumbotron, dancing to each others' music and laughing at the surreal sight of seeing people spill into the streets with noisemakers and screams of joy.

my whitekid friends and i were the minority in our local pub last night, and i actually feel more emotional and more priviledged for having celebrated with neighbors for whom this victory was more personal, more triumphant, more revolutionary than i can even imagine. that may have been the best part of the whole day - to stand in a room both exultant and raw with emotion and watch history unfurl. did i even ever wonder, before 2 years ago, whether i would see a black president in my lifetime? did it matter enough to me to even ponder? i don't remember that it did. and then suddenly as i saw our new first family waving from the bullet-proofed podium with victorious grins, the tears really did start to well up. the clutch of collective pride. a choke of the significance of how far we've come and how far we have to go.

and the politics and platforms and debates and arguements paused for a few sparkling moments. and faded back into exhausted excitement for the *change* ahead. we'll make it happen. oh yes we can.