I hope:

Uunprecedented gets shaken out of the lexicon between now and January 20, 2021, when we are, in fact, unpresidented. Can we maybe not use that word for a bit? Just give it a rest and possibly switch to unparalleled, extraordinary, groundbreaking.

And speaking of that last one: Kamala Harris. I’m adding thrilled, elated, and proud to that list. Her election to VP makes me so happy while Joe’s makes me relieved. So there’s that.

Polls Until people can figure out how to fix the political ones, I’m choosing to only use poles (the kind I’ve danced with and swung around, the type firemen come down, the North and South ones).

Limbo (the state of mind): All of 2020, so far and with the exception of two months at the beginning, have seen time become weird. Mondays are Thursdays and Tuesday afternoons rolled into one. Saturday is maybe Wednesday or possibly already Sunday. Friday’s just gone. Everything feels suspended. Like we’re hanging out. Doing the best we can. So with these last three+ days where we waited to understand for real that President-elect Biden and Vice President–elect Harris would in fact become that, limbo was a state we’d all had some practice with. But personally, that didn’t make it any less excruciating. I was marking little milestones, like the absence of full-scale incursions at voting locations, a seeming lack of foreign interference, little violence at vote-counting facilities. These things helped, but still, the MW definition: d: a state of uncertainty was unnerving.

Limbo (the dance) over the last four years the US and global people (those who’ve understood that his ideology was made of destructive, bully-boy narcissism and fear mongering) have been increasingly required to go lower and lower to clear the bar of daily life. Every day, week, month, year a humanitarian gnashing watching children in cages, the pulling out of climate talks, lifting up oligarchs and authoritarian regimes and leaders while belittling democratic allies. Some of us fell on our back trying to clear the space, but still we got up and carried on as well as we could. Now, we have a helluva lot of work to do. (So. Much.) But we can start, go forward. Watch the bar become lifted again and step toward a kinder more inclusive and accomplished way to move (please click on way to move for a Soul Train clip if only to climb on the “Love Train” for some fierce moves and some awesome pairs of bellbottoms).

Acknowledgment. To know that tens of millions did vote for the man to whom we’re showing the door and who did so much damage is a truth to be acknowledged. Of course four years ago we realized this country’s divide and although it was actually more shocking to me this time around that he retained his base so fiercely despite having killed people with Covid (and I mean that literally: there have been at least 30,000 coronavirus infections and 700 deaths as a result of 18 campaign rallies he held from June to September as documented in a peer-reviewed Stanford study) and lied and lied and lied and lied (again, literal: As of Aug. 27, the tally in The Washington Post database that tracks every errant claim by the president stood at 22,247 claims in 1,316 days). So, yes, there are some folks out there who are sad, upset, disbelieving. (There are some who will say those links about the Covid deaths and lies are untrue and media-manipulated. And that is scary unto itself because it means he’s done his job to toy with their ability to seek out their own proof rather than rely on one mouthpiece or channel.) What I hope is that there can be those same five stages of grief that are generally used to move through to a better place. (I employed them four years ago and truth be, got pretty stuck in the bargaining phase, which just spun me round like a stuck LP.) There are also seven stages for those who want to take a little more time with the whole thing. But better this than three steps toward riotous rebellion. Any of you working through the stages, let’s not do that last one please.

This NYTimes piece: I Am Shattered but Ready to Fight “The support for President Trump is a disgrace, but the future is not hopeless” by Roxanne Gay is spot on as a clear-eyed vision of how skewed we are as a country. I was tempted to include some numbers about how Black women in particular were the driving force in electing our new President and VP, and I do know that to be true from things I’ve read, yet any link I would have included come from polls (see above re: nope, not using those right now). So factual/anecdotal evidence is what I honor them with.

All-in-all, here we are: FINALLY. I’m taking the day to breathe and take it in. Feel my shoulders relax. Try and figure out what day it is. Eat a cookie. You know, living stuff. I hope you all do the same and thanks for being here!