Honesty Would Be Chill" was a catchy, bouncy little thing with a "b" which sounded like a "d" (in "hod," in fact), the way a "d" sounds in "Benedict" or a "t" sounds in "Bond," and it was about how cool it is to get your dick sucked or "swallowed" or "sucked off." The chorus was pretty good too: All I gotta say Is hey, you got to be strong And you got to say no Then you can walk out and you got to know that it's okay All I gotta say Is hey, that was a ball And that was just sex And don't call me in the morning. ## HOPE IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR I've been thinking about hope the last few nights. Not my own personal hope, which always seems to come across as a little too smug (like the title of the other book), or naive (if I say I hope for this or hope for that, what if I've just gotten delusional?), but rather about what hope can mean to somebody else. I've been doing some reading about the concept of the "public square" in the Middle Ages, and what it was, and the "marketplace of ideas," the concept that anybody can come up with an idea and put it out there for everybody to see and accept or reject, and it's been kind of interesting, mostly because I'm finding out that there's no end to it. First of all, there were these two big guys: Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine. It seems like some pretty big dudes. I don't think I've ever read anything written by them, which is probably just as well. I bet they were pretty boring. They debated it a lot, trying to come up with ways to "prove" that their view was right, and each of them thought they had the absolute answer, the way you think you've got it figured out when you're about nine years old, after the teacher tells you about how it's the planets that cause the sun to rise and set and everything, and how it's the solar system that causes gravity, and how it's gravity that causes the rotation of the earth and everything. I bet those guys felt pretty certain of their answers when they were younger, too. I have these friends—let's call them TJ and Matt—and I know that when I think of them in terms of hope, my thinking is always in the negative. This is the way I think: "If something doesn't happen soon, Matt's going to get sick and die, and TJ's going to have to be the best friend he can be for Matt's wife and kids and try to understand their pain even though Matt's not there anymore." That's pretty much what I think when I think about these guys, and maybe you've always thought that's what you were supposed to think about your friends, and that makes sense. So the way I think about hope is always as some kind of hopeless wish, a wishful kind of wish. And that makes sense, too. There are the ones who were always the most optimistic, the ones you could always count on, and then there are those who always seemed to be waiting for something bad to happen. I guess you could say that optimism is hope writ small. The idea of the public square is kind of amazing, though. It's that idea that everybody's voice counts. And what makes people listen to each other and believe the ideas of others and act on them is that these ideas are put out there in the marketplace of ideas, so everybody's ideas are going out there and everybody can see them. But what can make it work is hope, it seems to me. If you believe there's a chance that someone's ideas might just work, then maybe they'll be listened to, and maybe if the ideas turn out to be wrong, then maybe you can come up with better ones in the future. But at least then there's a chance to listen to everybody and make sure what we're doing is right. Maybe the best idea is not the one that is best, but the one that is accepted. It may be the best of the worst ideas that wins out. It can also be the worst of the best ideas. It's not as simple as it sounds. I guess that's why this whole concept of public hope makes me nervous. It kind of makes me sad, too. It's like hope is this little window you can open to see what the public has to offer, and all of a sudden there's this voice coming up behind you, saying: "Don't open that window! Don't throw anything out there!" This is what we were talking about the other day, the problem of not being able to turn it off once it's started: you really can't ignore it, because you never know when it's going to stop and you've got this mess sitting there, and what if you wake up one day and it's all gone and there's no way to get it back? And I know this is a different kind of thinking, but what if there's this idea, maybe just a little hope that starts to build up and the first little thing that you say is just a kind of dumb joke, like when I first met you and I said I hope the weather doesn't rain, and you said, "I'm sure it will." That's how some people are, and sometimes it seems like they're the first to show up at the public square. Or you meet someone and you say, "Man, I hope your son's out of jail" or "I hope that wasn't one of those plane crashes that we hear about all the time," or you're having dinner with someone and you say, "The food was really good" or something, and they say, "You too!" And they're the first to show up at the public square. And you think: "So they're saying, Well, what if you're right?" and you think that hope can be that contagious, and the next thing you know you're talking about how you hope there will be a better economy, and all of a sudden hope's like this big, spreading fire that could jump out into the world and burn everything. So what can you do? How can you keep it from burning everything? Because these are the kinds of things we need, you know. The stuff that's been hiding out and lying low all the time and is suddenly popping up all over the place. That was a joke, right? That last part? Because really hope is really just . . . hope. It's the first one who shows up at the public square. You hope everybody else shows up. You hope they've got a good idea or two to share. What if they can share them. What if . . . like . . . what if they start doing it? What if it's like the best of the worst, like that other guy, what if it gets so bad you have to give up everything? The idea that maybe this is hope is sort of like the idea that when it all falls apart and everybody says it's hopeless, this is hope. This is why you have to keep that window open. You have to keep that little kernel of hope that you could be the one who helps everybody see that we can all get a lot better if we just all try. What I've been wondering about lately is the one who keeps everything secret. The one who keeps it all from everybody. The one who stays the same, as in: "I hope that he's okay. I hope that he's still the same person." And maybe he is. Maybe he isn't hiding it. Maybe that's why he can be so mean. Maybe if he opened his heart, he would really open the doors to something bigger and better than his idea of himself, but he keeps his ideas hidden in the back seat of his car. I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means about us. I guess I'm just saying: It's something to wonder about. It's something to wonder about. What if hope makes you open your heart up to the very thing that makes you afraid? So you have to keep your heart closed or it'll get filled up and run over with hope and then you'll be dead? There are these little stories of birds that sometimes live on land and sometimes live in the sky. One time they're called a blue jay and the other time a red bird. One time they're flying across the ocean and the next time they're flying around in the forest. A long time ago some guy wrote a book about it. He said that it's like a man who has closed off a certain part of himself, and then there's a fire in his heart or something that turns him into a bird, but the bird can't fly, and he's kind of stuck in that weird mix of bird and human, and he keeps trying to fly but it just doesn't work. Maybe this is where it comes from, this place of hope. The one who says he hopes, but all he's really thinking about is hope. He doesn't say this is what I hope for, or this is what I'm afraid of. He just hopes. He hopes to be like the bird, but he's stuck inside this human body that he can't fly away from, and the funny thing is the bird doesn't want to fly away either. He just wants to be the same