On the train to sanity

What happens when an unexpected number of reasonable people show up at our nation's capital? We move slowly, tell stories, gently chastise those who misbehave, make witty quips, and have a very good time. We probably didn't change Washington very much or even create something that's repeatable in another place or time. We had a very good time with a lot of other people doing the same.
We arrived in town on Friday and toured a few of the sights in Washington. At each turn, we chatted with enthusiastic folk who had traveled short and long distances. We met a young couple from Fargo at the Natural History museum and talked with a woman and her niece from New Jersey. All were eager and, above all, hopeful.
Sandra's cousin, Arnold and his wife, Jane, live in northern Virgina and hosted us for the weekend. When Jane brought us to the Metro station, the line was an hour-and-a-half long. We talked with a family from Georgia, a quirky dude who'd driven from Wisconsin, and a Newton emigrant. Wisconsin Dude's mother called twice, making sure that he was ok and asking what he'd had for breakfast.
Even after we were inside the station, the line stretched out for probably two hours behind us.We found our way to the trains and watched packed car after packed car passed us by.
We seized upon an idea shared by several hundred others, grabbing an outbound train and making the return trip. Finally, we were moving in cozy intimacy with many good-natured passengers. I chatted with a woman who'd earned her master's at WPI, a group of guys from Kentucky, and sundry others.
Wisconsin Dude's day was starting to slip. When we reached the Federal Triangle station, we last saw him trying to walk up the down escalator and in an unpleasant conversation with a no-nonsense transit cop.
At the edges of the crowd, people were camped out, Woodstock-style. We'd already figured out that there were many more people than the organizers had anticipated. We moved forward, sideways, forward again, in rivulets through the masses.

If the crowd was, as CBS estimated, more than 200,000, we stood at the 120,000 person mark, too far back to hear anything but the loudest moments. Stewart told the crowd, "If we amplify everything, we hear nothing." The trouble was, we couldn't hear him say that. The loudspeakers were too few and too far away. We chanted as though we were at an AARP convention: "Louder! Louder! Louder!"
I posted a few tweets, but only a few; the available bandwidth in the ether was jammed by everyone else doing the same. 
It's like a football game. You get a much better understanding of the event by watching television. The experience in the crowd is something else altogether. What you see and hear gives you more insight about yourself and others than it does about the game being  played.

Our view of sanity

In a crowd of that size, local ecosystems develop. A guy tried to climb a tree.
"Yes, you can," shouted the crowd. "Yes, you can."
And, when he slipped back to the ground, we continued the affirmation. "No, you can't. No, you can't."
The assembled sanity-seekers tried to figure out what was being said. We knew it was important, as though we were listening the Sermon on the Mount.The news choppers flew overhead. "Helicopter, be quiet!" shouted one guy.
We welcomed back Yusuf Islam. The moment let us set aside his past difficult comments because his anthemic Peace Train was the right song for this moment. We needed Ozzy because he's still alive against all of the laws of physics and chemistry. We sing along with the O'Jays, even though their song, Love Train, is most often heard as in an commercial for an alleged beer.
When it was time to go, we meandered back to the train, tired and pleased. I wish I could say that we had been at the place and time when sanity began. I wish a lot of things. Wishing is good. Even if the specific wishes don't come true, we clear away some of the clutter and are on the lookout for good things that in our lives already.