SHARP SPARKLE
PART THREE
January 20, 2024
Welcome back.
It’s been three years.
It’s more than understandable if you’ve forgotten entirely what this is.
To remind you briefly, so that we can move on confidently:
In late 2020, you saw this post and you decided to do what it asked you to.
(thank you)
That meant that on Inauguration Day 2021, you read a poem from a past inauguration (not knowing that the day would later bring one of the most riveting poems the world has known).
You may have read Miller Williams: “…We know what we have done and what we have said, / and how we have grown, degree by slow degree, / believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become…”
or Maya Angelou: “…Each new hour holds new chances / For a new beginning. / Do not be wedded forever / To fear, yoked eternally / To brutishness…”
or Richard Blanco: “…hope—a new constellation / waiting for us to map it, / waiting for us to name it…”
or Elizabeth Alexander: “…In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, / any thing can be made, any sentence begun…”
You were invited to begin your own sentences, write your own kind of poem, into the calendar event that brought you back here today.
Read over what you wrote, if you haven’t yet.
Then come back here, and consider:
What did you think you could let go of that you were able to? What did you want to let go of that you’ve had to hold onto instead?
What did you hope for that has come true? What breaks your heart because it hasn’t?
What are you feeling or fearing, going into another election year that, for another time, people are saying is the most important of our lives? How does that compare to what you were feeling or fearing on Inauguration Day 2021?
(breathe in - hold - breathe out)
Now find something analog to write on and something analog to write with.
(this is the last part, Part Four — and so the last request)
Write down today’s date and anything that comes to mind about the following:
How do you want to feel on Inauguration Day 2025?
and:
What are concrete acts you commit to taking to make sure you feel that way when that day comes?
Take what you’ve written and place it somewhere that feels at little bit special. Over the next 366 days (this year is a leap year, after all), look at what you’ve written from time to time — maybe by chance, maybe by intention. Remind yourself how you want to feel, and what you wanted to do, and if you’ve done it or more, or if you need to do it and how.
Let’s build the new constellations waiting for us, together.
SHARP SPARKLE
PART TWO
Inauguration Day, 2021
Forty-two days ago, you picked a number.
Today, that number led you to a poem, one that’s been read at a past presidential inauguration.
Today is a new inauguration. A new poem will be read. Less beautiful things may happen, too. It’s been far from a beautiful time.
But for now, you have this poem. So sit with it, for a moment or two.
< a moment >
< and another >
Then, go back to your digital calendar of choice. Make an event for three years from now: January 20, 2024, 9:45-10am. Name it “Part Three.”
Drop the link to this page in, along with some notes that include today’s date and anything you want to write about the following:
What are you holding on to / That you can let go of / And replace with hope / At the start of this new time?
The intention is to respond around the state of our country. But you can do whatever you’d like.
Wait three years. Forget this ever happened.
If our digital calendars still exist in the future (and our country does, too), your device will remind you of how you felt on this historic, complicated, but hopefully still hopeful day. You’ll remember how you felt, and remember how you can feel again, if you commit to Part Four: spending the election year working at it.