this is nice.

from the hope archive

"When trying to live hope, we believe it helps first to start where we happen to
be.

Hope works better when it's here.

Second, we believe that it is helpful to
think of hope as the acknowledgement that nothing is fixed (though much is
experienced as stable), that nothing is necessary, that nothing has to be the
way it is.

Third, we find it helpful to think that we are active participants in
our experience of meaning, power, and social interaction and in and through that
participation we are always-already making a difference. The job, it would seem,
is to make the character of those differences transformative.

How is always a delicate issue.

For us, the fourth element of hope is that gentleness is both a possible and a powerful politics.

How to begin to consider the effects and influences of our lives in the light of at least fourteen degrees of separation, especially if we don't just think in terms of people living right now?

An understanding of hope is, for us, very much an understanding of the politics of possibility and the possibilities of power. "

in other wor(l)ds, it's a sunny day of a rainy week here in oakland--half of hot mess converges at the library, i run around stealing supplies for a sex toy workshop, i smoke cigarettes, we make bread. the buckwheat groats in our oats were pretty sour this morning and i had a scrabble hangover when i woke up. what makes a life? i am feeling myself rush in small things, rush when i think i am relaxed, to do all the small joyful things i want to do. something funny in that.
there are tiny baby plants growing in egg cartons in our front lot and i feel my days to be closely intertwined with their progress, their minute but almost visible growth.
today, down the block, someone got shot in their car because they had just won the lottery. paul says it is black self-hatred. i don't know exactly what to think. similar with the japanese tsunami, nuclear meltdown, may 21 judgment day, peak oil crisis, birds falling out of the sky and cars running over bicyclists at the sao paulo critical mass...what to do? what can we do? today i will bike around, make bread, make sex toys, hug my friends, nurse my new tattoo, read some marquez. is that wrong?