Friday, August 17, 2012

HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL


Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Damn!  That Alexander Pope knows writers, doesn’t he?  Especially about man (I assume he includes woman) being never blessed, just hoping s/he will be, sometime in the future, maybe.  His/her uneasy soul, stuck at home (and maybe in a few coffee shops), will make atonement in a life to come.  For what?  For the sin of spending hours in front of a computer, fingers tapping as s/he waits for the blessing of fame and fortune undoubtedly lurking just around the corner?

Wait. How is that a sin?

Maybe today it just feels like it.  The sun is out, I hear a singing bird and a happy barking dog.  Edith is again stuck in a limbo of confused POV’s. I should be outside, my soul let loose, my fingers moving across an iPod to find walking music.  But I can’t get out of my chair.

I’m waiting for the pop of an email, maybe an important one, not from the Obamas who have been very attentive lately, but from a woman who just might. . .(Oh, god, there it goes again, the springing.)  If the response is positive, I just may have. . .(Stop it!  You know you hate marketing!) 

I come from a family for whom hope meant that Dad got inside painting jobs in the winter so we could eat and maybe see a movie once or twice.  Blessings came: good health, lots of summer work, a Pendleton skirt for school in the Fall.  Don’t think any of us thought much about expiation although my ninety-seven-year-old mother has recently told my sister and me she was sorry for a couple of things she did sixty years ago and which we have no memory of.  Maybe I will too, a few years from now.

But now it’s about Hope. Maybe Pope had it all wrong.  Maybe Hope lives not in the breast, but in the soul, an infinite entity nourished by dreams of what is possible.  I’ll wait one more hour and then the dog and I will go for a walk.

Jo Barney Writes
www.jobarneywrites.com

3 comments :

  1. Is that why the Obamas aren't e-mailing ME? Because they're giving YOU too much attention?

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  2. I'm apparently on the same Obama list as you are. And is this the email a result of what you were talking about recently? Let me know what happens!!

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  3. I've been deleting all political e-mails--in fact everything that comes to me now goes to junk after my fiddling with my settings--oh well better than tens of junk e-mails sitting in my inbox, I suppose--

    I know the feeling Jo, and I commiserate--I may be coming for a short visit at the end of September (if all goes according to my latest revised plan about the release of Book II) Shoot me an e-mail and tell me what's happening with marketing and writing and all...I hope to have a visit in person, soon!

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