Hopescrolling + A Bonus Poem

What are you waiting for?

Morning still life, with poetry and multiple beverages.

HI

Shortly after I wrote to you last month, an injection of hope flowed into the veins of millions across America. Within twenty-four hours of President Biden stepping down and endorsing Vice President Harris as the Democratic nominee, everything felt different. $200 million in donations (in one week) later, the people have spoken: Democrats are clamoring for Madam President.

Even the usually cranky crowd of social media pundits began boasting about “hopescrolling” (as opposed to their usual doomscroll).

Doomscrolling is detailed on websites from Wikipedia to WebMD, all of which describe the health detriments of spending too much time consuming upsetting information online. In a survey of 2200 American adults this year, the American Psychiatric Association found that 73% of people were anxious about the upcoming presidential election. Only seventy-three? I jest.

I appreciated researcher and professor Brett Ford’s segment on Here & Now this week, discussing the link between politics and mental health—especially their insights on how to stay politically active without, well, losing your mind in the process. But you don’t need me to tell you how anxiety-provoking political news can be. Or what an addiction to any kind of scrolling can do to your brain.

Which begs the question: What can hopescrolling—or just plain hope—do for your brain? I love

Liz Gumbinner

’s list of the researched benefits of hope, from combating anxiety and depression to making cancer patients more responsive to life-saving treatment.

That said, speaking from personal experience in the field of *things don’t always working out the way I want them to*, just how tenuous is this newfound hope? Emily Dickinson called hope “the thing with feathers”, and I have to agree: hope can be a flighty, quixotic little beast.

Beyond my enjoyment of and contributions to the waves of hope (and the memes) brought on by Harris’s candidacy, I’m aware that political disillusionment runs justifiably deep in America. Nothing is guaranteed.

So how do we make hope lasting, real?

I want a hope (personal, political) that is durable. Flinty. That is made up of difficult, transformative conversations with real humans, face to face, offline. A hope that makes room for the most vulnerable needs and concerns of people who don’t look or live like us.

I think we begin with hope and we end with each other.

Which brings me to this month’s Poetry Fix—“I Am Waiting” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. It felt so right for this moment of mixed political hope and horror that I’m offering it as a bonus to all subscribers.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021) wanted to wrest art from the ivory tower and place it in the hearts and minds of the people; he was the first poet laureate of San Francisco (an erstwhile home of mine), cofounder of City Lights Books, and the recipient of numerous national and international awards for literature and poetry.

“I Am Waiting” will light you up.

Ready? Press play.

YOUR POETRY FIX

I Am Waiting
Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting
for someone to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep through the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped' onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for the American Boy
to take off Beauty's clothes
and get on top of her
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth's dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am waiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

From A Coney Island of the Mind, 1958.

STAY SANE

Wishing you gentleness and, yes, some hope today. Leave a comment and tell me what you’re waiting for.

Love,

Lily