November 5, 2008
"Oh, my love, oh it was a funny little thing . . . to be the ones to have seen." (Joanna Newsom from Bridges and Balloons)The Afrikaner called my mother from her final safari. "I am standing face to face with a great and wild lion. The others won't understand, but I know you will. It may kill me, but I am finally happy."She had been working as a nurse with my mother in upstate NY. They had become unwitting friends. Outside of that hospital they believed in two different worlds. But inside the hospital, every day, they brought new people into the world, and sent them off to face their individual demons alone. The Afrikaner's lion had no designs on her life. But Africa itself did. She moved to the states after Mandela was elected. Here, she suffered from deep sadnesses and a spending addiction that put her family into an irrevocable debt. Shortly after returning to work from her safari she jumped off of the top floor of the hospital.I was sitting by my mother when she received the call that her friend had fallen from such a great height. I don't know if you have ever yourself seen a person disintegrate into grief. But that is what happened to my mother. She sat shifty-eyed and and moaning across from me at the restaurant she told me about the lion, over and over again. "She sounded so alive. So much better."The Afrikaner survived the fall. My mother visited her and watched the imprisoned loathing in the eyes of her friend as the hospital's all-black critical care nursing staff moved her paralyzed body, undressed her and cleaned her bed soars. "Please, kill me." She managed through unimaginable pain. It was only a few days until she found a way to free herself from the tubes and wires that kept her breathing. Then, as I said, Africa finally took her back. I don't mean to say that it was the black attendants that drove her to her death, I mean certainly she had been hunting death for some months, but still, she couldn't escape the reality of race in the end.I sometimes feel it is those of us who have walked in the darkest corridors blindly, who have not just wrestled our demons as they place hoods over our eyes, but also loved them a little, who understand most acutely the power of a pure vision - the tiger standing before us, who decides not to strike, this time. This morning as I stood on the fire escape in the back of my brownstone apartment building in Brooklyn. I looked out to right, where there are four housing project buildings that loom 15 stories above the tree line, and easily another 15 behind the trees. Then I looked to the left where a latino worker stood on the top ledge of a new luxury condominium building with a pulley, bringing a bucket to the top from the street. The world seemed so different from yesterday. Last night, from both directions, the projects and the luxury apartments, there was a cacophony of cheering. Obama. Obama. Barrack Hussein Obama. On the television, there were people of all ages and races crying in joy because a black person named Barrack Hussein Obama was elected, elected, president . . . PRESIDENT.I felt, like the tear-stained faces on the TV, like the Afrikaner on safari, that I had seen something amazing. It is not often that joy is heard coming from the block with the projects on it. It was joy. There was rejoicing. People were in the streets, peacefully, chanting and laughing, and hooting and singing. The country was cheering for a black man with a muslim name. And he isn't an athlete. He is a dad and a community organizer and a symbol of our collective belief that if we all show up and are counted we can choose something other than tyranny and fear as our guiding principles. Hey, I hate to be so corny and cliche. But he did it. We did it. We all fucking did it, man. We did it. Tomorrow, when I return to teaching my class of lower income students that hail from the other side of colonialism - students who are first and second generation kids from places like Liberia, Guinea, the Dominican Republic, Korea - I can say, honestly, the world can be a different place tomorrow than it is today, and they can believe in me, the chubby white queer video teacher. Who would have thought, really? Who could have known? When I say, a muslim, a black person, a woman can be president, they will have already forgotten a week ago, their own disbelief. It will just be explicitly true. I am so deeply happy, I can hardly begin to explain. After all the horrible things that have happened in these past eight years, many personal, many global, there is hope, there is light. I am so very very happy. -------Just as an interesting side note: The word Afrikaner is in my computer's built-in dictionary. The words Mandela and Obama are not, each time I write them a little red line appears underneath.
Comments
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mitzibel (Misty Nuckolls) says...
I am not, was not, an Obama supporter. But I felt deeply moved last night. Witnessing the celebration of so many people who have spent their entire lives feeling marginalized, witnessing not necessarily the end of that marginalization, but perhaps the beginning of its end . . . it was awesome, in the truest sense of that word. I don't know how the next four years will turn out, I suspect they will be profoundly disappointing for many people. But for the first time in eight years there will be a sense of getting what we asked for, what we spoke up and said we wanted, be that good or bad.
November 5, 2008 at 11:53 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
smerdyakov (anonymous) says...
Damn, Billy-you can certainly put words down. I miss your writings here. This was worth the wait though. I have yet to read such a sublime consideration of what happened last night as yours. Heh...and I just got done reading this http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campai..., even if the next four years have little but disappointment in store-despite or even bc of Obama-I will be grateful for having a leader capable of this:"When I visited South Africa a few years ago," Obama said in a video message to Mandela in July. "I had a chance to go to Robben Island and stand in your cell, and I reflected on your courage, your foresight and conviction, and on your fundamental belief that we do not have to accept the world as it is; that we can remake the world as it should be."
November 5, 2008 at 2:11 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Shelby (anonymous) says...
I guess I don't understand the accolades, especially in regard to someone like Mandela, and *especially* when referring to a presidential candidate talking about prison cells.
November 5, 2008 at 3:44 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
billy (Billy Keefe) says...
Huh, didn't know John had a Nation blog. It was very Nation-like. Hehe. I don't think that Obama has really earned the Mandela label yet. I hope he never needs to, but I do feel hopeful that he may be the best president in my life so far. Only time will show for sure. We will have to keep him accountable, esp. considering some of the horrible legislation that got put into play nationwide yesterday.
November 5, 2008 at 4:04 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
alm77 (anonymous) says...
I proudly added "Obama" to my spell check on my computer and on my phone. Just one more reminder that we're living in an awesome time.
November 5, 2008 at 7:26 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
betwixt (anonymous) says...
There is so much that is swirling in my mind that I haven't been able to pin down. While state after state was being called for Obama, lgbt Californians were fighting for their place at the table. We had police threatening to arrest our poll workers and voters screaming anti-gay epithets. I screamed out loud when I heard that he took Florida. I cried when my 15 year old brother realized that he could be President. I bawled when I realized that our community could lose this election. I raged when I heard the scapegoating of the black community. From Florida and Arkansas to Arizona and California our rights as full citizens were rejected. This week has been bittersweet but I'm anxious to see what change this administration brings.
November 8, 2008 at 1:57 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )