It's been three days now since the election of 2008.
Since that night, I've struggled with a foggy exhaustion, a feeling almost like the disconnected underwater dream of hypothermia, as the hangover of more than a year of hoping and obsessing and fixating on this election is left behind. Hard to concentrate, hard to focus, sleepy. And still, the feeling sweeps over me now and then, the tears of relief and of hope, the genuine love I feel for this calm, determined, sober and adult man who has somehow managed to prevail in the politics of a nation which had devolved to meet none of these descriptives. The semi-participatory, semi-voyeuristic waves of compassion and profound joy communicated by the images of black Americans weeping in relief, in disbelief that at last this has happened, that the lie they have told their children for so many years has become much closer to truth: you can rise as high as your merit and your effort. It's possible, even for you.
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