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Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Somewhere around my birthday in November of 2004, I had what turned out to be the last substantive conversation I would ever have with my father - we argued, about whether I should help him fund the con woman who was busy taking him for all he had. When I refused to send him the $30,000 she was apparently asking for, he was quietly sullen for a bit. Then, after a moment, he asked, with a slight lilt in his voice, "So how'd you like the election?"
The nasty triumphalism of that question, and the irrational anger that fed it, became for me a symbol of everything that had gone somehow haywire, in my country and in my life. My mother's death a month later, and my father's soon after, cemented a sense of despair that was so pervasive, so encompassing that it was no longer even noticeable: it was simply the way life was. And the state of the world around me repeatedly confirmed that conclusion.
I'm writing this because of late I've begun to feel the miasma lifting, if ever so slightly, to find myself believing that while the world is a very complicated and difficult place, despair is perhaps not the only and inevitable response.
No one could be more surprised about this than I am. Yes, Mr. Obama, apparently we can.
posted by jeev |
2:44 PM |
 
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