LETTERS FROM HOME: SOMEWHERE BETWEEN KNOWING RIGHT FROM WRONG

Aug. 22, 1996

Dear Julie,

Feelings are mixed about your decision to end your political career. I'm glad your life once again will be your own but sad for the people you represent.

It's certainly understandable. Politics has become so all-consuming and so personal. Ideology? Give us love, beauty and art.

But your words belie the agony in your decision. The fear that you'll no longer be needed, become a bag lady.

Already you're planning your next moves, though, making some vision real.

Thanks for the news for my mental Tales of Arcata. Already I construct legends around the poets and musicians who've found a nest there. Feebly I try to explain how the wildlife refuge ingeniously doubles as a sewage treatment plant. But how do you explain All Species Day, and the sweetness of the blues Fred and Joyce play?

Now Arcata has begat Internews. What a wonder, providing video equipment and uplinks to newscasters in countries accustomed to only one-sided stories. How offhandedly you say Internews is based in Arcata but has offices in Paris, New York, Kiev and Jerusalem.

Do you think people mind if only one side of the story gets told as long as that side is their side?

And devising a community health system that would not only seek to reduce heart attacks but measure how people feel about themselves, their family, work and community.

Very California, New York friends would say.

One of the books you're reading, "The Artist's Way," is familiar. I was about half way through, was writing the morning pages religiously and nurturing my creative side as prescribed until the day the greens began thawing.

Suddenly there was no more time. Once the first snowstorm hits, though, I'll be creative again.

About your James Carville book, "We're Right They're Wrong": Much as I might agree with the ideas, the attitude troubles me. It's the same syndicated disposition you see on editorial pages, often turned around to make you believe that proving Them wrong makes Us right.

We all have so much invested in being right that we'll do most anything to keep from being wrong. The truth is that everyone's right and wrong about most everything. Right when we express true feelings. Wrong when we won't acknowledge ALL the truths about ourselves.

Among the greatest wrongs: to discount another's point of view.

I find truth in the seams between right and wrong, on the chalk-mark line that separates good and bad, feel it in the twilight between day and night.

Truth is not either-or but the hyphen between.

This realization is part of the wild adventure you imagine I'm having in Missouri. It is wild to confront the past and attempt to understand, wild to search out your own soul, wilder to marry your soul to another's.

There are worlds still to be discovered right before our eyes.

At this time of year I envy your annual retreats to Patzquaro, though, imagining mariachis in the courtyards and the world spinning slowly enough for all the beauty to sink in.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.