Victory.
3:40AM, 24 hours later, and I'm still buzzed. This feels like the world's victory. So many thoughts in my head. It occured to me yesterday, too late, that being unemployed, I had had the perfect chance to go work for Obama, if I'd had a few thousand - even a few hundred - bucks to spare. Not that they needed another volunteer, as it turned out. There is nothing else that matters Tuesday as I hang on every development all day long, staying glued to the computer and the radio wherever I go.
America...Fuck yeah. Jedi messages, when the announcement is made, he with his gal in some pub, I with C and company in a friend's apartment.
I wish I was in Chicago, I say
-me too, says he.
There was a moment - just a moment - when the CBC reporter turned the camera to show the crowd- celebratory? angry? gathering outside the White House, when I held my breath. Everyone in the room listened as I outlined the dangers of the scenario. All you need, all you need, is a few agents provocateurs, turn the crowd into a mob, and you unleash the police and the soldiers you've had waiting...
2002.
I remember being in a massive crowd celebrating Japan's world cup win, in Sendai, in the middle of one of the city's massive shopping arcades, a line of Japanese riot police with shields and truncheons blocking one end as the crowd dances and sings, and kicks a soccer ball into the rafters, bouncing it off a lamp. My friend Mars laughing, plunging into the crowd, wanting to share in the moment, not understanding, not seeing the danger...if that ball breaks that light, the police will charge, and tear gas will be fired, and we're in a cattle chute five blocks long with no exits.
But the ball doesn't break the light, and the crowd stays happy and slowly dissipates, and my Canada Jersey gets high fives and approval from Japanese and Brits, the Japanese for the novelty of the world at their party, and the Brits because of Lennox Lewis just having knocked down some American Champion that day. Who is Lennox Lewis? asks Mars. Who Indeed...
But back in 2008, the moment passes. The crowd stays jubilant. We cut to Arizona. McCain impresses me, his supporters less so. Then Chicago, and Obama rises to the occasion.
O is speaking. , I message. I can hardly follow some of the words across the conversation, will read the transcript later. I don't quite catch the puppy reference, for instance.
What are those sheets? Huge teleprompters? asks JC.
Bulletproof Glass, I say.
No matter. The images are magnificent, indelible. I wish I was there. I wish I was one of them, just this once. But I'm proud of them. The world was at your back.
Later, at home, I continue reading, wanting to absorb every comment on every thread, drink in the joy from all corners of my online 'verse. I post a follow up to Charles Stross on Making Light, trade giddy articles with Rabbit at 1AM before watching Stewart and Colbert's repeat of their live show, then plunge back online. Time enough for caveats and low expectations. The homophobes still run amok, even though the count's not final when I finally crash. I know what he faces, I know just how deep the hole is, but tonight, for one night, none of it matters. Anything seems possible, and all of us everywhere have, at long last, won one. There is shit to do and we need them in the game and run by adults.
I won't be coming home tonight. My generation will put it right.
Victory.
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