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Woke with a burgeoning migraine today, but couldn’t stop myself from checking my usual blogs; found a horrific report of abuse at Diary of an Anxious Black Woman, posted it on Facebook, and then came across this article in The Nation by one of my former profs, Lisa Duggan. Griotgirl got me thinking the other day about 19th-century communes, and the way artists and intellectuals tried to create utopian societies that were removed from big idustrialized cities and rigid, small town morality. Most of those communes failed, and I don’t think I’d really do well in a remote location, but I like that people tried to imagine a different set of social relations, a different way of connecting to humans and animals and the land itself. Now that our world is facing an economic crisis, it’s time once again to search for opportunities–what’s the best way forward? How can I use what I have left to build something new? I want to share the opening and closing passages of Lisa’s article with you (do check it out in its entirety, it’s short): “Out of this crisis of global capitalism, something new will emerge: new vocabularies, new organizations, new politics. But the direction of change is as yet unknown…we need to do two things: first, be political scavengers, by which I mean gather together the already existing, promising forms of egalitarian cooperative thinking, working and living; and second, make things up.” YES–the power of imagination! “If we are to build a new world out of the ashes of the old, we need to imagine and organize otherwise in the most expansive and inclusive ways.” When I’m reading BIRD to kids, I talk to them about the phoenix–a mystical, magical bird from Africa that symbolizes life in death, a new beginning right at the moment of expiration. You have to let go of the old in order to embrace something new, and I’m entertaining ideas of changing my life. My job interview yesterday was somewhat harrowing, and I got stumped a couple of times, which made ME think I wasn’t truly qualified. What my interviewers thought, I don’t know, but they got 500 applications for TWO openings…as I comforted myself with cake, I couldn’t help but give in to the persistent voice that’s been whispering “Let go!” A friend of mine just made a risky decision to leave Amsterdam and move to NYC; I encouraged her, and repeated that famous quote: “Leap, and the net shall appear!” Do I have the guts to take a risk myself? Should I incorporate and try to run my life–my writing, teaching, dreaming–as a business? I think there must be a Third Way. Will head to the park and see what the birds have to say…
a stab of panic
pierces my heart, then I wake
and sigh with relief
***
every new day brings
opportunities to change,
and grow, and learn more
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