The wind shakes free the last of rain from the canopy overhead and it’s getting harder and harder to justify writing here. Not because of the writing, per se. The percentage of my heart run hot with the desire to write exceeds the borderlines of that blood-fed muscle. No, I have no justification to jettison writing from my life. Only writing here, on these pages. Because of the implications. That which implies the individual life stamped as mine requests some level of attention or prominence. Seeks out providence of a definitive perspective. Asks for legitimacy, that I might possess, much less confirm, some semblance of solidity. Of a self: a thing of which I have no known conception.
I aim to tell the truth, always. Not to be a “truth teller” or “sage” or someone who should be listened to as some sort of authority. Day lilies lining the driveway have as much to say, unequivocally so, and with a better message overall. This isn’t demoralization, depreciation, depression, destitution, desiccation, deprecation, de-emphasis, de-empowerment or despondence. This is a desire to reorient away from commentary, towards a commitment to direct action, and commencement upon a different path than the literary alone.
The wind shakes free snatches of branches loosened by a storm as the world crumbles beneath them, awaiting the end of their descent. A pennant of fresh oak leaves marks the seconds between oblivion(s) as it lands and loops into a chain-linked fence.
The world is crumbling, its stone-sharp edges becoming more and more ragged—from the tenderest of razors, smiles denied by modern inconvenience, to raging genocides convening in synchronized time. Lacerations from nation-states, their ecocidal borders, the cult of law and order, the police, the military, these vampiric corporations hoarding resources and paying in poisoned scraps. The ceaseless maw of phobias. The inescapable scaffold of antiblackness. I can no longer justify advertising myself, clearing a shelf to draw eyes to what some might deem a detailed, deepened lushness to a life like a pretty trophy for my participation in the game. Such paragraphs land, to my mind, as self-serving; are, to my eyes, distractions from greater battles pressed against our doors. Living in the imperial core, ignoring atrocities made in one’s name is a pastime no one who truly cares for others should see as something in their budget to afford.
Your self-care bubble (or mine) is no shield from what is coming. From what’s already here. From what’s been here all along.
And so, the words I have written here, today, are set upon the edge of ether. They line the ridges of an impenetrable pitch-black ore. Invisible in darkness but hopefully, somewhere, still felt. When these words emerge again, I can’t say that they’ll be here. That there won’t be fewer or more of them. Or sing the same way as before.
But, then again, nothing ever can.