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be trusted no longer, it forces us to re-examine
the universe, to question the whole instinct and
concept of trust. For a while, we are thrust back
onto some bleak, jutting ledge, in a dark
pierced by sheets of fire, swept by sheets of
rain, in a world before kinship, or naming, or
tenderness exist; we are brought close to form-
lessness.

PPN PN PPV PN

The liar may resist confrontation, denying that
she lied. Or she may use other language: forget-
fulness, privacy, the protection of someone
else. Or she may bravely declare herself a cow-
ard. This allows her to go on lying, since that is
what cowards do. She does not say, | was
afraid, since this would open the question of
other ways of handling her fear. It would open
the question of what is actually feared.

She may say, I didn’t want to cause pain. What
she really did not want is to have to deal with
the other’s pain. The lie is a short-cut through
another’s personality.

OO DN RO DN

Truthfulness, honor, is not something which
springs ablaze of itself; it has to be created
between people.

This is true in political situations. The quality
and depth of the politics evolving from a group
depends in very large part on their understand-
ing of honor.

Much of what is narrowly termed “politics”
seems to rest on a longing for certainty even at
the cost of honesty, for an analysis which, once
given, need not be re-examined. Such is the
dead-endedness—for women—of Marxism in
our time.

Truthfulness anywhere means a heightened
complexity. But it is a movement into evolu-
tion. Women are only beginning to uncover our
own truths; many of us would be grateful for
some rest in that struggle, would be glad just to
lie down with the sherds we have painfully un-
earthed, and be satisfied with those. Often |
feel this like an exhaustion in my own body.

The politics worth having, the relationships
worth having, demand that we delve still
deeper.

N RD WD DRI PN RPN RPNV

The possibilities that exist between two people,
or among a group of people, are a kind of
alchemy. They are the most interesting things in

life. The liar is someone who keeps losing sight
of these possibilities.

When relationships are determined by manipu-
lation, by the need for control, they may pos-
sess a dreary, bickering kind of drama, but they
cease to be interesting. They are repetitious; the
shock of human possibility has ceased to rever-
berate through them.

When someone tells me a piece of the truth
which has been withheld from me, and which |
needed in order to see my life more clearly, it
may bring acute pain, but it can also flood me
with a cold, sea-sharp wash of relief. Often such
truths come by accident, or from strangers.

It isn’t that to have an honorable relationship
with you, | have to understand everything, or
tell you everything at once, or that | can know,
beforehand, everything | need to tell you.

It means that most of the time | am eager,
longing for the possibility of telling you. That
these possibilities may seem frightening, but
not destructive, to me. That | feel strong
enough to hear your tentative and groping
words. That we both know we are trying, all the
time, to extend the possibilities of truth be-
tween us.

The possibility of life between us.

RO RGO WGPV

Adrienne Rich is a well-known poet and feminist who has
published 9 books. The most recent one, Of Woman Born:
Motherhood as Experience and Institution (W.W. Norton &
Company), she described as coming “from the double need
to survive and to work; and | wrote it in part for the young
woman | once was, divided between body and mind, want-
ing to give her the book she was seeking. . . .”