Fragments and Impressions

He always sounds so rehearsed and he speaks in iambic pentameter, holding his chin arrogantly. I called him Metaphor Man. (I'm thinking it's no coincidence that Elmer Gantry was showing on one of the movie channels last night.) Although...when he smiles...and his shoulders, as Mary pointed out (over the phone), are frail. As my mother, who I know would have loved him, would say, "We shall see, darling, we shall see." He does seem inclusive (although he did not look over at Hilary when he shook her husband's hand) and non-punitive (is it because she's in trouble today?), and these things, if true (outside the parentheses, that is), would have to be good.

I love that he and his wife allowed their daughter to bring her camera to photograph her big day. I would have been saying something like, "What? You want to bring what? What kind of impression would that make? Are you crazy?!"

Joe Biden's "Thank you, Mr. Justice." Could he have been warmer? I loved him to the point of an exclamation mark.

Paternal Itzhak Perlman evoking Jascha Heifetz in that movie about the music school for poor kids. And happy, handsome Yo Yo Ma, hair blowing in the wind, smiling down at Obama. And who was that attractive clarinettist -- all of them playing John Williams' special-occasion and beautiful "Air and Simple Gifts" right on through the noon hour, the official inauguration time. Perfect.

Brilliant sun, waving flags, smiling faces, bomb-proof cars. George Bush flying away, looking more real than I have ever seen him. Bombastic ministers (one especially). The pianist's chilblained hands. Good manners. Aretha Franklin, and her diabetes. Mother-in-law in the White House, and what's not to love?

The 21 gun salute, and Don saying to me back in 1980, "If you check, it's only the locals who don't know that there's a cannon buried in the cement outside The Dispensary door," and my, "There's a what?"

And what has become of poetry? Sarah said (over the phone) it sounded like Deep Thoughts -- "A tree grew in my yard," she said -- and we howled. Dreadful dreadful dreadful.

That lunch would have made me throw up. Too rich. (Mind you, my flu came back in the middle of the night -- stroke-inspiring vertigo, should you be a worrier -- and I cannot function in any reasonable way today.)

After all was said and done, do you know what made me cry today (besides Yo Yo Ma, that is)? Glen Campbell and his two sons, sitting on the Bonnie Hunt stage, performing Gentle On My Mind.

In the meantime, we shall see.

And it's knowin' I'm not shackled
By forgotten words and bonds
And the ink stains that have dried upon some line...

<:^)