To a Creative People
“You can’t love me if you don’t love politically.”
Central California, May.
Southwestern Colorado, June.
At a work party, June.
On Big Little Lies, June.
On Chernobyl, June.
Eating Thai with friends, June.
This is an account of all situations I can remember over the last month or so in which conversations around me or the media have been about environmental collapse and governmental hand-washing. Shockingly, I didn't even start most of these conversations, though I am always—always—this kind of person at a party. Then, of course, there are ICE raids and people dying along the border. People caught in dirty detention centers. Fathers and their daughters drowning as they swim for a better life, for hope.
I found myself, the other night, again feeling the weight of the phrase, "the audacity of hope." I thought, "God, isn't it real? Hope feels devastating." If every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth, how long will we keep lying to ourselves, to each other? When will the weight of our debt be too heavy to bear? When will it literally choke us?
Thankfully, there are people who teach us to hope, who model how to speak things into existence when our eyes barely strain to see tomorrow.
Octavia Butler, for instance. On June 22, what would have been her 72nd birthday, she still taught us to speak what we want to see, even from beyond the grave. And there's poet, Jericho Brown. He writes, "Hope is always accompanied by the imagination—the will to see what our physical environment seems to deem impossible. Only the creative mind can make use of hope. Only a creative people can wield it." Tamiko Beyer, too. In Tamiko's latest newsletter, there's this quote from Gloria Anzaldúa: "By creating a new mythos—that is, a change in the way we perceive reality, the way we see ourselves and the ways we behave—la mestiza creates a new consciousness." In other words, a new way to see yourself and the world. Going back to Jericho, he claims that "Poems change landscapes rather than photograph them." In other words, poems don't merely capture what currently exists; they speak new worlds into reality.
I want my imagination to be the last thing to die within me. I want that writing it here every month—which is really what I'm doing—will help me retain a hold on what sometimes feels like the little I have left. Are we creative enough to dig for hope when it feels most impossible? Will our art not simply be an expression, but an architecture? Will it be a framework on which others can build safe places to live? Will we fight to keep our imagination when we are so very tired?
Will I?
I hope.
I hope for you, too.
