Inauguration Day

Inauguration day. I feel nothing but nausea. And dread. Four years of looting will be replaced by four more years of looting. More war. More extortionate healthcare policies. Nothing given to the public to help with unemployment or relief from the ravages of the pandemic, but trillions pumped into the coffers of Wall Street and tax breaks for the wealthy. Nothing done to relieve suffering while funneling more money to the top. More power and money showered on big pharma and big tech. What a bummer I must sound like to people who continue to hope for better things. Me, too. I hope Biden proves me wrong. I hope his administration shocks me out of my ingrained cynicism by doing a 180 from the policies of the six previous administrations. I move the box of Whitman’s candies from the top of the refrigerator to get out a roll of twine, snip off a strand, and use it to retie the corner of the white bath towel I’m using to protect the newly upholstered chair in the bedroom by my desk from the importunities of our cat. I hear the clunk and clatter of material in a big truck and look out the door to our building to see what’s going on: I see the flashing lights of a park department truck in the alley that leads to our parking lot. I keep re-turning the heat up. It’s a cold gray day today. I take a swig of what remains of this morning’s coffee and return to the drama on Yabla. Certains ne reculent devant rien (Some people stop at nothing) pour parvenir à leur fins (to achieve their ends) Ils se servent de nous (They use us) Ils vont même jusqu’à jouer avec nos sentiments (They even go as far as playing with our feelings) Ils sont tout simplement oublié (They have simply forgotten) que la fin ne justifie les moyens (that the end does not justify the means). The word ‘inauguration’ comes from the usage in French, circa 1560, of inauguration meaning “installation, consecration,” which, in turn, comes from Latin inaugurationem, meaning consecration, or more originally “installment under good omens.” More precisely, the word inaugurationem – as a noun of action – stems from the Latin past-participle stem of inaugurare, “to take omens from the flight of birds; consecrate or install when omens are favorable; from in ("on, in") plus augurare, “to act as an augur, predict.” The augurs at the capitol today are not good: over 20,000 camouflaged National Guard troops stand guard at the capitol, more soldiers than the troops currently stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. I’ve been enjoying watching Fran Leibowitz talk to Martin Scorsese in Pretend It’s A City on Netflix. I always think I’m going to be irritated by her because of her unrepentant smoking and sour disposition, but I’m quickly charmed. I find in her a kindred spirit. A lot of the things that irritate her irritate me as well, such as people paying no attention to one another when they walk down a busy street. It’s been really bad lately because of the pandemic. Everyone has suddenly developed a passion for walking. This makes the running I’ve been doing in this neighborhood a tedious challenge, constantly dodging and zigzagging around people who pay no attention to anyone else. People seem so cut off from one another. Anyone outside their immediate tribe is a ghost, if that. Not even a vapor. I’m not sure what they see, if anything. And then there’s the sad spectacle of someone sitting in the chair at a hair salon, the hair stylist working around their head while the customer remains silent and fixated on a tiny handheld computer. The atomization of our society is complete. Conversations are called tweets. No room for nuance. Or obloquy. Which is what, exactly? A noun crawling through a sentence looking for the perfect verb.