Grab a Shovel

Power; Writing; Travel

I have been fairly sick for the past week. Despite my best efforts, I caught a cough I cannot seem to soothe. As such, I have been staying home and wearing a mask when I must. It helps in the cold, a mask; it keeps the warmth from splintering. Plus it alleviates the wearer of the need to serve face at all times, even if serving face is an effortless task.

The freezing temperatures in the week following heavy snowfall have created a cement-like sheet of ice to form on top of any snowfall that was not actively disrupted while it was still powdery. As a result, cars are still trapped on each side of my narrow street. I’ve seen moving vans get stuck, I’ve pushed SUVs from the back with a family of tourists who got more than they bargained for, I spent some time yesterday helping my next-door neighbors on either side bail out their cars.

A six year old girl covered head to toe in severe burns, body atremble from the pain for which there is not adequate medication. Her eyes are green, like mine. Open wider than you think a pair of eyes should be, whites glistening. Is this glimpse of near-catatonic shock all the world will see of her? Is she already dead?

At some point, if that point has not already been clearly crossed, it will become dangerous to observe reality and do so publicly. When I think about my year of writing and my relationship to the internet and Big Tech’s role in the State Of Things, I think about the following things:

(1) I don’t know if there is a correct answer to what success is. A broader audience/virality of some measure would, at this point in time, mean a few things: it could mean financial security, it could mean actual security (it’s hard to disappear if people are expecting you to write them)... it could also mean perilous exposure to an increasingly hostile environment. The best I can do is consider it the honing of a craft.

(2) I began writing on this platform in an effort to make sense of the normal life I was continuing to try to live while this apparent future crept in. I said it in my very first essay: “We chatted and laughed, and I made an off-color joke about how it would be slightly easier to watch the rise of fascism in the United States if I wasn’t living paycheck to paycheck.” I held it at arm’s length with a slight touch of humor like I have all my life (I have always said that my retirement plan had to take into account societal collapse). I’m trying to evaluate the extent to which that kind of dark humor could have undercut the urgency I felt.

(3) It became clear over the duration of the year, through the deployment of every law enforcement agency in D.C., losing my job and all the blah blah small talk it enabled… Violence aimed towards the People by the State was held back only by a thin shroud of possibility; it could and still can be pierced in any way and in any moment, and we’ve seen it break over and over again for decades. This is the violence that every civil rights movement had to overcome. This is Power. These are the final stages.

And now it’s a mad dash for resources. To witness how brazen it is, especially now, and how successfully it has worked on so many people that they still submit; that they still follow orders; that they still build the tools of war; to witness it is maddening. It is not surprising.

It’s baked into our infrastructure and industry, and while I do not believe the answer is to tear everything down, a greater reckoning is in store if we intend to keep the possibility of a better future. As such, I need you to do something. I need you to listen:

It is imperative that you continue to believe that people can be, by nature, good. It is essential that you believe a better future is possible so that you can continue to keep it alive.

I recently traveled to Paris for the first time. I found cheap airfare and made an impulsive decision. I’m still figuring out if and, if so, how I want to write about it. I feel this way for several reasons:

I am working through some Complicated Feelings about what it means to travel internationally as an American and at a time like this (and am aware that I likely caught this sickness in transit).

I am aware of a small feeling that it was a last-second anxious effort to see a city I have always dreamed of seeing before/in case the already-moving shadow of fascism reaches me more than it already has.

I am also aware that I feel a non-trivial amount of shame with regards to that pursuit; pursuing adventure and romance and culture while my tax dollars continue to burn flesh in Palestine and not just in Palestine.

I further do not know how to write about it because it involves other people. It involves expectations and fantasies and riding-on-the-back-of-an-electric-bike montages that I had dreamed up for myself and perhaps dreamed too vividly. A complex, human love story is not something that should be written in real time. Not publicly, at least.

Overall it was a splendid time. I took two days to be a drama queen before we talked it through. The consensus, among Parisians, is that my accent in French is excellent but I have the vocabulary of a child. I wrote some verse while caught up in the feelings:

An ironic wound, to be Lovesick in the City of It,

And in a world that needs it more.

When church bells stain the air like blood…

It lingers through the daylight,

Through the open-air Marché,

Through little heartfelt letters; toutes les grandes chansons.

After life has ended but before the night is done.

I’ll hug the curb and watch the world,

And write the words that come…

When the streetlamps strike the pavement like a billions little suns;

After tepid rainfall and before the fire comes.

I had twenty-five hours in Iceland on the journey home. I walked through Reykjavik and caught the setting sun. I thought about the freedom of movement, both in the ability to walk on cobblestone streets and the relative ease of crossing borders. I did get pulled for extra screening at customs in Iceland, but they were kind.

And that was my January. At least part of it. I continue to fret the details, the little things I miss in every communication. I want to name a problem that I see: Power that refuses to acknowledge it is Power keeps performing autopsies on a world that is not yet dead with funding that would be better spent improving actual communities. We know that Power can create positive outcomes when it is used well. We need leaders in pop culture, academia, industry, and politics to figure out how to talk about it and wield it at the same time.

I return to present tense. I have a spa night in an effort to gently coax the cough out of my body. I pace the kitchen, I feed the cat. She is doing well, in good spirits, still feral but markedly less so. I spend a lot of time with her on the porch. I worry that my thumb will somehow find a way to fracture one of these days in the effort it takes to open my front door, it’s one of those thumb latch door handles that seems to ask a lot of one’s thumb. It’s just something I’ll need to consider as I continue moving.

People matter. The world is made up of people. People are all we’ve got.

You want a better world? Grab a fucking shovel dude.