i regret not having written about this sooner, while it was freshest in my mind, but not having a personal computer and the presence of several pairs of over-shoulder eyes are a pretty strong deterrent for me. rob, micah and i woke up tuesday later than we'd planned. left fairfax (finally) at 10 and arrived at the national mall at 11:15, just in time to penguin up and waddle to a spot near a giant jumbotron. during the hour-long metro ride to D.C. i’d had nothing to hold on to but rob's shoulder and a stranger's back. that made no difference though, since there was no way i could have fallen. too many people packed into that tube for anyone to fall over.
i wondered: how long would it take this many humans to convert all the oxygen in this train to carbon dioxide?
the ceremony itself both disgusted me and filled me with an incredible sense of empowerment. each time the giant tv's showed george bush, the whole mall booed. a collective display of verbal insult at one of the most important ceremonies that takes place in our country. why was this necessary? i'm not a gw fan, but i certainly will not publicly humiliate the man. especially in the last minutes of his presidency, when it no longer matters. i was ashamed.
just after we had chosen our outpost, i left the friends. with a camera on each shoulder, i walked and weaved through masses of people. i'd hoped to come home from this with a couple of portfolio-worthy shots, but i was intensely frustrated when the typical news shots seemed to be nowhere to be found. flags waved, kids sat hoisted upon dads’ shoulders, every face gleamed with so much pride. it was there, i just wasn’t seeing it.
after a while, i decided to rejoin my friends and participate in the inauguration as a citizen, not a photographer.
during the ceremony, all i could see were the heads of those surrounding me and the jumbotron a few dozen meters ahead. but no matter, i was there, a part of history. that’s what i’d come for. whoops of joy and ‘amen’s echoed around me as, with teary eyes, i watched my president being sworn in.
perhaps my favorite part of all, though, came after most people had already begun walking toward the mall’s exits. my compatriots and i gawked at all the trash on the ground and wondered how people could have trashed the space so well in one morning. i noticed a lone girl carrying a trash bag and decided to follow suit. as more people saw what was happening, more took the initiative to join in. in less than five minutes, all the trash in the area had been collected into a few bags and i was touched by the teamwork of complete strangers. working together to make change!
it took at least an hour to get off the mall. this was a surprisingly calm process, as was everything else that day, but i was glad to be out of the mess.
we worked our way through all the various monuments and memorials that inhabit the space between the lincoln memorial and the washington monument. took many photos, found left-behind scarves and gloves (some keepers!) and i placed my tiny flag in front of the vietnam memorial. i have so much respect for that place, and i credit it all to reading rainbow's episode about its creator.
after pizza and much more walking, we metroed back to fairfax, said a quick goodbye to the friends we'd stayed with, and got on the road, saying to ourselves the whole time that we were simply so glad we'd made the trip.
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