Dress me in chaps and call me hell bent for leather--Hope Part I

March is the cruelest month. The taste of spring shows a little leg, but not enough to warm you like you need it most. Hope can be every bit as treacherous as the third month. If hope is a twig without a green fuse, and not made for lasting, it's kinder to offer none. I believe that.

But then, I also think it's wrong to rescue someone trying to euthanise themselves--just who do you think you are to meddle with such intimate, personal decisions. Talk about pro-choice! But that's another day.

Back to hope. Sometimes seemingly clever people can be thick as muggles. Exhibit A is audacity and hope just made a Reese's PB Cup in my brain, and they are greater than the sum of their parts.

My tendency runs to the depressive. I don't like it, but I know how to do that life. Not well, but I get through. My two speeds are on and off, and my new experiment is to devote myself to the practical application of hope and optimism whenever I want to.

Hope has potential to become the most radical and revolutionary way to take control of your life while also saying get your pious ass away from me, too. And no shit, this just appeared in my mind as if I created it from whole cloth. This is a choice.

When Michelle Obama spoke to a group of African American women at the beginning of the campaign, their overriding concern was that Barack be shielded from the skinheaded Nazis you know just have to be out there with evil intentions in their black hearts.

I had a friend with hokeyism is one of its worst forms. Anyway, she used to say, "I just know God didn't bring me this far to drop me on my head now," she'd exclaim without realizing God's dropping folks on their heads every day and every way imaginable.

The danger of hope is the risk of dashing it. I'm doing my best to remember to consciously encourage and sustain it, Chia-like, at least through the holidays.

Despair may often be more realistic, but is it liveable? Can you still remember to buy catfood when you're slogging through the slough of Despond (crack your Pilgrim's Progress, friends, it is Sunday)? Or are the cats happier on your more hopeful trips to market? Are you a force for momentum, or do you stay up for the View and hide under the covers until Days comes on?

I'm a charter member of the revolutionary, bring-it-here, fuck-you-and-your-pretty-pony-too, society of smart ass misfits with opinions and a voice that carries. That entitles me to full formal regalia, so I'm dressing in chaps and breaking all the commandments in one sitting. I'll drink dirty martinis till Tuesday, sing some Edith Piaf in a bias cut beige glimmer of a gown that hangs perfectly and makes me look naked without genitalia.

I will slap the floor with a purloined feather boa. And everything is gonna be okay because of hope, I hope.