Hope is Wounded Optimism
It’s been awhile since the election, and still I write in my journal with my red fountain pen: What is expected of us who resist fascism, racism, misogyny, cruelty? What must we do to be good people in these times? I am someone who is, for better or worse, irrevocably wedded to hope. I work on my poetry. I write query letters and panic about sending them. My skin feels thin, my eyes flutter in the florescent light of my apartment, I resist the urge to whip out my phone and text my mother.
Emily Dickinson said that hope is the thing with feathers. I suckle on those words, try to extract the milk that flows underneath. The poem tastes of mint and lavender. I am free to careen through its stanzas. Falling, falling, falling. Not to say that I know more than Dickinson, but I sometimes think that it is more apt to say that hope is the thing with bones. Bones grinding along their meddlesome joints, bones caught in the whir of motion, bones strung up in a museum. Hope is the frame that we throw our coats onto in the wintertime.
Hope is not optimism. I wish I knew who first said hope is wounded optimism, but when I cannot remember her name, I seek out the answers crowding and boiling within me. I hope Project 2025 is relegated to the trashcan of history where it belongs. I hope that I stay for the love that humans can hold between each other, little balls of flame and peace and a candle that we daisy chain from soul to soul, from human to human, ribcage to ribcage. The flame shudders and draws us in to dance like the moon dances with the tides.
I’m not really sure what I expected of the election. I worry for my LGBT+ friends. I worry for my Mexican American family. It has obviously taken me a few weeks to marshal my ideas into something coherent, even if it is simultaneously something longing. The best I can do is toss myself into my work. I have poems to edit, an essay to draft, and a beat sheet to put together for my poetry collection/screenplay project.
Even so, the despair creeps in sometimes. Perhaps my favorite Dave Matthews Band song is “American Baby.” Of all the horror and then the art that came out of 9/11, this song means the most to me. “Stay, American baby. Beautiful baby.” It reminds me that we cannot allow our horror to turn us away from our humanity. I try to be hopeful when I think about the fact that so many in this country are working around the clock to speak truth to power, to push us forward, to never give up on our darling communities and the power that the individual possesses to create change. We are windchimes, I think: We are pushed about by the wind, but that is why we make music.
What do we want to be in a world of desolation? Do we want to be teachers? Dancers? Chiropractors? I know that my answer to this is that I want to be a linguist and a writer. I am almost done with my application for graduate school. Baby steps in the general direction of life. I think in the womb of despair, we must find things that give us meaning and offer up a space to make the world a better place. I humbly hold up my poetry, cupped in two shaking hands.
I belong to a writing workshop. My wonderful friend, Charlie, sent us all emails offering up support after the election. I know history will judge us for how we spun about in times like these, but I love these kindnesses. To quote Rumi: The wound is where the light enters.
In our workshop, we have entertained philosophical conversations on literature and our individual stories. I’m presently working on my short story, “Manifest Destiny” for the next workshop. But we also started a conversation today on marginalization, who gets to tell which stories, and all of that. It’s something I have been thinking about, embracing those things that fight to ground me and acknowledging my various privileges. It is nice to have these brilliant friends, they who showed such humanity and sent out gentle emails.
I operate in a small corner of the internet. I’m not someone with thousands of friends liking every post and photos of my sandwiches. I like this quiet peace. I can ruminate on the emails, the song lyrics, the paeans to the smell of the earth after rain. There, there is no querying terror, my mother and I are talking about books, and my fountain pen never leaks on my fingers. It’s all I can hope for.
