5 February 2008
From an inexplicable but consuming obsession with the US Primary Race (via the Guardian's USA blog) to an essay by a feminist on why Hillary Clinton should be president, to Hillary's 1969 Commencement Address at Wellesley, I found this, which really resonated.
The Art of Making Possible, by Nancy Scheibner
My entrance into the world of so-called "social problems"
Must be with quiet laughter, or not at all.
The hollow men of anger and bitterness
The bountiful ladies of righteous degradation
All must be left to a bygone age.
And the purpose of history is to provide a receptacle
For all those myths and oddments
Which oddly we have acquired
And from which we would become unburdened
To create a newer world
To transform the future into the present.
We have no need of false revolutions
In a world where categories tend to tyrannize our minds
And hang our wills up on narrow pegs.
It is well at every given moment to seek the limits in our lives.
And once those limits are understood
To understand that limitations no longer exist.
Earth could be fair. And you and I must be free
Not to save the world in a glorious crusade
Not to kill ourselves with a nameless gnawing pain
But to practice with all the skill of our being
The art of making possible.
Thanks for posting this Pix, as I don't have your inexplicable but consuming obsession, I haven't been following the stories on the US primaries so would have been unlikely to come across this. But I've come back and read it several times today as it really has struck a chord...
I followed the same path you did and ended up with the same reaction. This poem was stunning.
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