Seven days ago

The job today is to get outside the self in the style of a woman like Andalib Adwan Shehada of Palestine.

http://www.ipyl.org/activites/community-media-center

Artists are selfish, they have to be, and writers are the most selfish of artists and also the most giving. A writer is an artist who knows better than anyone the feeling of coming to an end, the exact place where one can go no further no matter what, no matter how long he or she sits there writing. A writer is the one most acutely aware of hopelessness, since he or she is always coming to an end which has no possibility of being anything other than an end.

There's a Jack Gilbert poem that begins with the line, Imagine if suffering were real, that's stayed in my mind since I first read it 30 years ago. I can't remember the title, but it's a really short poem, maybe 5 or 6 lines. The line came to mind again last week when I was caught up in all the political stuff and faced the possibility of having a leader I didn't want and the country didn't need. It was like I was standing in front of a wall and there was nowhere to go, that I just had to accept it, there was nothing I could do but to let time pass so I could make some new beginning. It almost felt like the world was going to come to an end. And that was only seven days ago.

The job is not to feel sorry for yourself and others but to love the world enough to see it as it is, and to keep going.