It is sunny in Washington and my eyes are wet between the lashes.

It is symbolism, and intellectually, I know how, informed by our cultural paradigms, controlled by our psychology, we are primed to react to symbolism, to make it meaningful. Perhaps it's a sign that our society is generally too well armored: my cynicism is still stronger. Beneath the calls for unity, I get snagged on nationalism, on individualism, on religiosity. Can politics ever be without barbs? Or do we need the reminders not to trust it, truly take it to heart?

Oh Obama, Mr. Justice, stumble through the oath, squint into the sun, foible visibly so you can regain the fragility of being only human - perhaps the only way to be free from that net of expectations and desperation, twined together with rhetoric as crisp as Crispin's day, to somehow evoke optimism for a tomorrow we need and fear, in roughly equal measures.