What brings me hope these days

on telling small truths to yourself

The other day a stranger asked me what brings me hope these days. What brings me hope. Amidst all this.

And I thought I don’t have hope, I’m depressed, life is scary, I’ve always been broken, this world has always been broken, we have always fought each other so harshly for such scraps of temporary safety or power, and I can’t imagine how it will ever change enough to feel safe or free, not in this lifetime, not in this body, not with this brain, not in this country, not in this world, not with this history, not with all the fighting, not with the wokeness, not with the scarcity, not when even two people that love each other madly can sharpen knives and wait for the right time to strike, when even love is a resource to plant your flag in and defend with blood, not with my own hypocrisy and not with being so lonely in the midst of such love and being so infatuated with my own broken words.

And then I thought, you are lying to yourself. You are lying. Stop doing that. Nothing has ever been protected by lying to yourself, and no one has died of a truth overdose.

(Recently I quit my pandemic smoking habit by asking myself do you want to smoke? No? Then don’t. But you make everything confusing doing things when you don’t want to and not doing them when you do. Don’t want to smoke. Don’t smoke. So I quit. Truth telling)

Tell the truth quickly, stream of consciousness style, get ahead of the old stories. Your truth. Not a big Truth that rallies armies, or needs any defense, or needs any agreement, not even from a future-self. Tell a small truth now, while you have the chance.

So I did answer what brings me hope. Just for now:

• That love grows deeper and that I’m imperfectly embedded in a community of people that consciously practice how to see and love and celebrate each other.
• Absurdity.
• The way I feel sometimes when I’m stoned and biking with headphones on.
• Finding out that at 41 I’m literally just getting started understanding my autonomy.
• Holding the rubber bullet in my hand from the first night of the Mpls uprising and remembering that we won a bit this time, for one of the first times I’ve ever been in the street.
• The fact that though marriage is literally the hardest thing I’ve ever done and a decade ain’t a joke and there are days and nights of two separate selves banging against each other with claws out, our bodies still somehow seem to fit together in a way that I don’t understand.
• That mysteries exist.
• That the Mystery is endless.
• That other people can write things across time and space that makes my heart break open and…someone understands me.
• That fear and sadness and pain don’t seem to do damage, if you can let go enough to feel them.
• That people are still being born that are better than I ever will be at figuring out different selves and systems.
• That global capitalism seems more fragile every day, even if some of the things waiting in the wings scare me.
• That some people face death bravely.
• That some people really do figure out how to heal.
• That the better world in our hearts demands we make it with such insistent clarity.
• That I have stopped giving much of a shit about activism, and I’m working for my own liberation. Yours too, but my own.
• That people make things because they are weird or beautiful.
• That I make things because they are weird or beautiful.
• That translation exists.
• That poetry exists.
• That music, applied at the proper dose and the proper time, can make a group of people go wild with love for each other.

But again most of all, love. Some days it brings me hope, and some days it demands my hope, despite all odds, and some days in the midst of everything, love swoops in completely without consent, pushes me against a wall, stares directly in my eyes and whispers “who are you?” And if I’m scared it smiles kindly and says “it’s all just us…all just us…nothing is wrong, and you are not alone”