November Five. A Dream is Alive.

I WEPT. And today, I am weeping. On and off. The smallest thought or image suddenly touches me again and I crack open with relief, hope, or gratitude. Excitement. Calm.

Nobody knows for certain what lies ahead. But I think we all can agree, nothing will be the same as it was. And not in a dour, scared, “9/11 changed everything” sort of way. For once.

Something has been righted. I don’t need now to wrestle over how large or exactly what “it” is. And to answer some voices that were dampening spirits on the Twitter this morning: no, the President is not our daddy. She or He can not save our soul. A government representative cannot cure the world’s ailments. I concede this.

A government representative represents us. And that, again, is part of why this is so moving. We have for eight interminably long years been represented by horror and greed and non-sense. Inanity, perversity, and lunacy. What has trickled down is madness.

And now. To no longer be that captive, flailing at our national constraint; held hostage by the bully in the crowd who sneers at big words or at those of us who read books studiously, who yanks us forward and shoves our face in the mutilated frog that he just turned inside-out with a cherry bomb. Him and his band of thugs who, when dragged into the light where you hope someone will put a stop to the nightmare, only lies to the cops or the grownups (if we are going to stretch this bully metaphor) and continue to get away with it.

It has truly been a nightmare.

Since it was penned in 2004, I’ve been quoting E.L. Doctorow’s “The Unfeeling President,” as it hit me strongly. It’s about George W. Bush and how our President is a “moral compass” for the nation. (And thus, for the world entire.) And that’s part of what is so terrible about having such an incompetent “president.” (I will not relax the memory that George W. Bush’s presidency was never legitimate.) He set the tone. He ignored the laws. He steered the courts. He controlled our national hands, and the rocks we picked up, and the drills and the keys to the cells and the dogs. He made us watch in terror as we wrought violence on the rest of the world. He crippled us with a cognitive dissonance as deep as the Mariana trench. George W. Bush took us on a horrible, horrible lightless ride and in the tunnels of his tyrannical tenure, torqued out the worst in us. And I think after a while, we could not even see how his twisted, sullied and perverted energy was influencing our national aura, vibe, and even ourselves on individual levels.

Bush’s once seemingly-godlike abilities—remember, we’ve worried his adminsitration was going to institute martial rule and people spoke of President For Life!—last night seemed to be wholly and instantly neutralized in the face of actual massive public support for a President, rather than the manipulated support we are used to seeing surround Bush on “our television screens.” The favorable books and press releases the White House has paid for and hired groups for over the years. From Fox-in-the-Pocket to hired PR firms in Iraq to the PSYOPS “blowback” Rumsfeld was comfortable letting rain down upon the USA citizenry, collectively we reached a place where we do not trust the media.

Like Puddleglum’s foot in the fire, thousands of people cheering on the President Elect, 63 million actual votes and 364 electoral votes crushing the GOP, and after it has dredged up every disgusting idea and smear it could (against BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA the dangerous untested mole Marxist Terrorist Muslim Arab Socialist Fascist) reminds us how false the Right Wing’s ideologies and bogeymen are. (Bogeypeople?) And the process and result reminds us of what it feels like to have a legitimate leader. One who fought every step of the way for (more than) two years. We see a real fighter, not a pretendsident who straps on codpieces and struts for the cameras amidst a crowd of sailors and pilots ten times braver than his Coast Guard-skippin’ ass ever was. If Bush ever had any aura of power or superpower or inevitability, it dissolved like bad dreams in the sunlight last night when Bush told Obama he had an “awesome night.” (Although we are without illusions here and know that Bush will try to tear every wall down before he vacates la Casa Blanca.)

Yes, represented well. and represented, too, by this particular face. This “mulatto,” as a woman of color joyously blurted out to me last night on the phone, is our President. This mestizo, this blend, this face actually does represent our culture, our changing demographics, our varied stories and the winding paths that bring us to where we are in this America. No more being symbolized by an unceasing line of (Universal®) white men, too often “Fortunate Sons” as CCR put it.

So many questions compete in my mind, dancing about on the new ground. Por ejemplo: Will the complaints about the changing census get the same play in the media now that the President himself is of La Raza Cosmica?

Because this changes all the movies, all the TV shows, all the books. Children of today will see a wholly different America than we do and we did, growing up. My youngest children will see this brown-skinned man and know him as “the President.” And it will be a brown-skinned man that the world loves. And one that the nation feels proud to be represented by. One with dignity and intelligence and poise and heart.

As someone who studies and writes often on film and imagery and the effects it has on our thinking…this thought will keep me revved up for weeks. More. Months. Years. I know that Latin@s are still mostly stuck with media roles like Gang Banger, Convict, Pregnant Teen, Maid, Thug, Drug Dealer, International Drug Dealer, etc. And we know African Americans and how they are portrayed in film, for the most part. It’s been slowly shifting over time. And this changes up the dial to eleven. It’s all in play.

Oh, the pride and dreams and thoughts that will suddenly live in so many childrens’ minds with just this change. Even the way white children will see children and people of color will change, even if their parents do not change their views or thinking….This is change that is happening whether or not any particular “you” believes in it.

I cannot hang this morning with people jumping immediately into negativity. Can’t do it quite yet. I understand the process and the points, but I can’t go there quite yet. Choosing immediately to downplay this as if “of course we should be here, this is not groundbreaking” or “oh just because white people helped elect a black man suddenly they think they are off the hook” etc etc. “Reflexive outrage” as a blogmigo said to me earlier, via text message. No matter what’s going on, immediate contrariness and negativity, as if that’s the only place they want to live. You can choose a negative moment anytime. Go ahead. Right now, you can. Think any thought you want about me, him, yourself, the street, the sky, the body, the next moment. Paint it dim. Or don’t! Or think positive. And use that positive energy to get to the place the complaint pretends to desire. Not talking about being Pollyanna. Talking about orientation.

I do think we have been traumatized in a collective sense. I do think we are afraid to hope, afraid we are being spied on, that martial rule is about to descend, that nothing good can happen here; afraid dark massive shapes are hulking under any patina of benevoloence…I understand trauma. And societies can have it, too. Anyway, I’m not expert on society. But I know that this is something within myself I keep an eye on. This tendency toward negativity.

There is much to work on. As I said recently, nothing is fixed, nothing is guaranteed yet, and having a fair representative does not absolve any one person of their part in the puzzle, of course. And don’t be silly: We are not post-racial. And I won’t entertain that thought by arguing it. I will simply speak a different way. We are evolving. We are growing. That’s what we “are.” We are, I would guess, now going to benefit from many new conversations. And a large part of the population will now feel included on those conversations, and able to lead many of them. (This may be hard for many non-black pundits to get right away, that perhaps others will be leading some of these conversations; we know how power in general, and Whiteness in the specific, likes to center itself in all contexts). And they will see themselves as being a true part of the culture, and no longer dominated by it entirely. Do not underestimate the power of so many people feeling even a half ounce more positivity in their daily lives and souls. And that touches on what people reference when they talk about someone “calling to our better angels of our natures.”

We have amazing stores of power in us, of energy, of psychic, spiritual, mental energy. That’s why we can heal ourselves and sicken ourselves and others around us. Obama is not perfect, but from what I see, he believes in orienting upon the restorative, constructive, and healing properties of that energy. And any people who do that in a day or a place have my attention.

Today, I am amazed. Today, I feel anything can happen. Today, I am alive with dreams.

images from coverawards.com and HuffPost