those words of Adrienne's I'm so glad to've come across again this weekend

An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love” — is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.

It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.

It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.

It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.

 . . . 

It isn't that to have an honorable relationship with you I have to understand everything, or tell you everything at once, or that I can know, beforehand, everything I need to tell you.

It means that most of the time I am eager, longing for the possibility of telling you.  That these possibilities may seem frightening, but not destructive, to me.  That I feel strong enough to hear your tentative and groping words.  That we both know we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us.

The possibility of life between us.


-- Adrienne Rich, 1975
 

hope

It was a hopey day. I remain politically suspicious and angry, but something of Inauguration Day got to me.

And it's MLK Day. Transgenerational hope.

And it's the coldest day of the year so far, but days are getting longer. And there was powdery snow.

And it was the first day of the new chorus season, with the sightsinging, or "reading it down," as Dan calls it. New members next week. A forward-looking time.

And I reconnected with someone who has been very important to me.

The Inauguration poem didn't suck. That's not a thing of hope, but it's a happy surprise, so I'll throw it in.

Up too late. Don't care, now. Sleep soon.

[ETT]

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