COMING TOGETHER, ONE WEEK LATER...

COMING TOGETHER, ONE WEEK LATER...
By William Fredrick Cooper
(Inspired by The Beatles ‘Come Together’)
Written: November 12, 2008

A week later, and the instant of shock felt still remains. The earth still trembling as millions are still weeping and sharing euphoric ‘My God’ shrieks, the celebration commencing the arrival of a prince born from imagination and hope continues. Seven days after making an ordinary Election Day anything but, a brand new hum along and dance revelry make us sing our blues away. Somehow, the sobering road ahead, while filled with problematic war-driven potholes and hazardous economic hills to climb, challenges that are the greatest of our and any lifetime, seems as simple to route as the complicated completion of a complex jigsaw puzzle.

If we come together, the President-elect says, we can overcome. And I believe him.

Seven days after echoing Kevin Garnett’s ‘Anything Is Possible’ championship scream from Boston and redefining a global landscape in the process, his humble words about us, not him, have a country in confusion praying for a solution that start, not come, from him. A savior Barack Obama is not: Some guy named “W” left a stench so strong at the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue residence that even the greatest of air fresheners cannot fumigate completely after four years along with a mandated, project building roach bombing with Raid while we’re all at the movies job that may last….um… forever. (You’ll get that when you get home tonight.) Inheriting an avalanche of problems from an administration constructed in asininity, our next president boldly asks us to put our arms around the chaos and embrace the dilemmas with sacrifice and pain from the get-go. Coming together with the cognizance that a tip-toe through the tulips cannot be done, there is a need to follow the lead of a man with a cool confidence and calculated composure of a man not unlike a Sergio Leone character in one of those spaghetti westerns portrayed by Clint Eastwood.

We’ll see the Good, the Bad and the Ugly while stitching together a country going off in many directions, but if we come together…

The Audacity of How might scare us, but behind him we stand sans the fear to fail. While media skeptics demand immediacy in terms of solutions (hell, was watching a CNN reporter the day after the elections now holding him accountable for another president’s mess. Shaking my head in bewilderment, a grin creased my lips as I simultaneously recalled how Black Men have to always, always be twice as great, and the brilliantly flawless campaign Barack ran with the queen Michelle building him up every chance she got behind the scenes.) all the while holding him to a more critical standard because he’s the first of his kind, the victory under enormous pressure acquired last week with a remarkable coolness punches me in the gut whenever a negative thought begin formation.

Nothing is beyond reach, the blow declares, if a country comes together.

A week later, the voice of victory remains the same. From the mouth of Obama to my ears, the road ahead will be arduous, tough to comprehend at times. His eloquence through speech may endanger me to a deep let-down in action, but the microwave immediacy must be quelled by an understanding patience that bridges constructed in valleys so deep take time to construct. Encouraging signs of aid coming from all over the world, many see that our country needs its nerves settled as we reconfigure a sense of deliverance from its present gloomy state. That alone serves as a benefit.

The detriments are many: Racism not unlike what David Dinkins, a New York Mayor experienced when being called a ‘washroom attendant’, terrorists thinking they can get over like fat rats, and cynical people scarred by the stars and stripes in the land of the free, weary of a negative past and wary of what the future may hold. Islamic terrorists, casting him as another infidel, hover while threatening with more planes, trains, or something into buildings. With each passing day in decline, Wall Street cries out for reassurance.

Leaving our next President no time to rest on his laurels, like him , I take a deep breath and, with a shovel he hands me, dig into the malarkey, knowing that despite all, we’ll be okay if we come together. Fifty-four million people have already, I tell myself as I shovel with Joe Biden, Michelle and others in an effort to find cohesive transparency and unity amongst all Americans. But again my thoughts go back one week, to my moment of change. That magical, memorable moment in time gives me a clue.

At Harlem’s First Corinthian Baptist Church, at almost 11:00 PM, the Praise Team was singing “God, You Are My God…”, a joy unlike no other erupted when the ‘CNN Breaking News’ projection came up. Looking around the place, all I could see is relief, happiness and a emotional euphoria that resulted in about twenty embraces from strangers during my nine-block walk to 125th Street. Hope running anew once more, I received the feeling that many have adopted Malcolm’s ‘By Any Means Necessary’ mantra in an effort to make wrong right, and that a honeymoon with a Chief Executive doing all that he can muster to make America right has full and total support of many that are simply ‘sick and tired of being sick and tired’.

Singing a back- in –day melody from the Beatles, people came together on November 4th, 2008.

What makes you think they still won’t do so after January 20th, 2009?