I’ve accidentally fallen down a rabbithole of gay Marvel memes and I have to go to school tomorrow

Sweetheart, I knew you as T’Challa.

Warrior and leader, brother and son, friend and enemy, flawed character, hero, King.

You became dust, in a snap of the fingers. And then, at the end of the world, you came back.

I know that you were not the man T’Challa. I understand the difference between reality and fiction, between movies and comics and real life. I only ever saw your face in two dimensions, and in pictures. But behind that camera was a man, and behind those smiling eyes there was a spirit.

That spirit gave T’Challa life, in a way that nobody else could. Stories have power, and you knew this. You knew what you were doing. When you were T’Challa, and when you were Jessie, and when you were James, too.

Even in the middle of your own invisible battle, you knew exactly what you were doing, and you did what you did so well.

That was a gift, to every child in the universe. But especially to the children who needed to see you the most.

Rest in peace and rest in power, dear one.

🖤

#ChadwickBoseman

What the hell.

What in the actual fucking hell.

Christ.

This is probably not going to be an easy read. That was your warning.

Something changed in me when I walked in Auschwitz. Something fucking shifted.

I’ve suspected that something was different, since then. I’ve noticed it, I’ve been more and more aware of it, but I haven’t been sure of exactly what it is.

While I was walking in that place, a seed on the ashy wind got caught, and stuck, somewhere at the edges of my being.

It maybe got stuck in the corner of my eye, got caught by the surface tension of a tiny drop of water, salty water, leaking and pooling and falling for a girl whose name was Anne.

When I was homesick among the homeless in those freezing, empty train stations, when I was barefoot in the cold, that seed was shoved down into what you and I will have to imagine as solid ground.

For a long time, the little seed lay dormant. As I traveled, as I flew home, as I slept for a handful of winter months. The seed for Auschwitz was not dead, but it was sleeping.

Just potential, that was all.

A pandemic happened, and we all stayed home.

Later on, while we were all looking at our phones, one morning, we all heard about a Black man who was killed in Minneapolis.

And the seed felt the heat of all that shock and all that outrage like the warmth of the sun, and it started to wake up.

And then a Black woman was killed in Kentucky, in what should have been the safety of her home.

And the seed took root.

The roots went down, and down, and shoved and pushed at the dirt around them. Shoved it right out of the way.

Jesus, that shit was uncomfortable. You’d better believe that it stung and poked and itched and burned. The shifting in the solid ground hurt much more than it should’ve, for such a little thing. It hurt more than it would have been possible to expect. That tiny shift in the dirt, as the roots from a tiny seed emerged, as they took up space… that shift shook me to my foundations.

It didn’t hurt like losing a life or a loved one to a police officer’s bullets, or a police officer’s knee.

It didn’t hurt like feeling the butt end of supremacy and racism at every fucking turn.

I know that it couldn’t have hurt like that, because I have never felt those things. I must be some kind of stupid fucking lucky, in a sick way, in a way that I never asked for. But my stupid-fucking-lucky isn’t some chance roll of the dice. It never was. You’d better fucking believe that my stupid-ass white fucking privilege is a thing that came to be on fucking purpose.

On Fucking Purpose.

The system was built by a few, at first, and it was perpetuated by the many, and maybe in a handful of little ways, in my own short life, I have helped to perpetuate this system, too. And, God… Learning that, feeling the weight of that, that shit is real fucking uncomfortable.

Mine is not perfect soil for the seed that was trying to grow. It never will be.

But grow it did, a little at a time. It grew slowly, and, like most living things of its kind, it grew towards the light.

Yesterday I heard the story of a Black man in Wisconsin, who was shot seven times with the bullets from guns in the hands of officers of the fucking twisted law.

Yesterday I heard the story of a father who was shot seven times, while his three children waited in the car.

He did not die. He is allegedly in stable condition in a hospital. He is paralyzed from the waist down. He has three children.

Today is August 25th, 2020. There have only been twelve days this year when the police have not murdered someone in this country. The police have killed 751 people in 235 days. Breonna Taylor’s killers are still walking free.

What in the actual, goddamned fucking hell kind of world are we living in?!

what The HELL…

That seed from Auschwitz is still only a small green shoot, with baby leaves unfurling. It’s too soon to tell what it will become, what it will grow up to be.

But the universe shook when it broke through the surface of what I used to think was solid ground.

So I think that maybe one day it will have become a tree, whose roots grow deep into packed and well-worn soil, and I like to think that maybe the branches growing towards the light will cast enough shade for weary travelers to rest a while, and breathe air that’s just a little clearer

And I’d like to think that there are other small trees in other hearts of other people, other people everywhere, because I read once that many small people who in many small places do many small things can alter the face of the world.

Maybe I sewed my seed in Auschwitz, breathing in the ashes of the dead.

But maybe my seed was sewn a little bit before then, when I picked up the diary of a young girl in a train station in Amsterdam, because I needed something to read.

Maybe that’s – not all of what it takes, but it might be a very good start.

Listen to the stories. Bear a kind of witness to the horror, the suffering, the brilliant glimmer of hope. Shed a tear, or become angry, or feel so much love for a stranger that it hurts.

I wanted to end this with some kind of cry for justice, for protest, for change. But I think the picture of the trees is all I have to give, tonight. I can’t give up on believing that there are other trees, growing in the hearts of other people.

I hope there is something that’s growing in you.

#saytheirnames – Anne Frank, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Jacob Blake. 🖤

My therapist asked me for a safe place. “Visualize yourself there,” she tells me. “Even if it’s difficult. It gets easier with practice. Some day, when you need to, you’ll be able to imagine yourself there at will.”

So, in my imagination:

I am sitting on a driftwood log, on the pebbly shore of a cove on the east side of Seneca.

I know that this pebbly shore is on the east side of the lake because the sun sets in the west, and I remember that the sun always used to set on the other side of the water, across from us, every evening without fail.

In my memory, waves broke on the shore in a steady rhythm. They’d come rolling in from somewhere in the middle of the great wide stretch of water. At the edge of the water, seaweed collected in a thick, wide swath of green. There would always be lake-smoothed bits of colored glass, and shells, and bones, and sticks of wood, washed up and waiting. There, at the place where the seaweed meets the fine, dark pebbles, you might find a dead fish, rotting, or pools of green water, or the perfect stones for skipping, flat and smooth and round and light.

I can hear the surf, crashing, constantly and gently. I can summon up the shoreline in as much detail as I want to: the sharp curve of the beach, the steep bank between the grass and clover beside the cottage and the shore, the ancient willow tree, the creek. I can see the old wooden dock. It isn’t there now, but it used to be, and I remember. In my imagination it’s as battered and sturdy and real as it was when I was a child – the rough, wide, splintery boards, the mist-soaked beams, the thick round pillars half-submerged in shallow water, growing thick with zebra muscles and lake-weeds.

I am sitting on a driftwood log, bare feet resting on fine, warm pebbles. The sky is overcast and grey and it might rain, and the lake is calm and dusty grey and deep and faded blue, and the surf is rushing in, the waves are breaking in their steady rhythm.

This is a good place, for me. A meeting place, for all my splintered selves. There at the edges of things, at Seneca’s edges, is about as safe a place as there’s ever going to be.

And I can travel there, in a moment, in my mind.

“In this life, in this life, in this life
We leave a trail that’s far and wide
Good or bad, bad or good
Our memories decide
There are some places where I’ve been
Where you can still see the world
Think to myself as I look at the stars
Just who do you think you are
Innocent, innocent no more
I saw what I saw and I shut the door
Innocent, innocent no more
I knew it was wrong but I did it some more
In ’78 I went through a rude spell
I knew it was fate, but I couldn’t really tell
I thought that this was the way it was always gonna be
I hated everyone and everyone hated me
In ’88 I went through a great spell
I knew it was fate, but I couldn’t really tell
I knew that this was the way I wanted it to be
I loved everyone and everyone loved me
Every action has a reaction
Every life has a life to lead
Every human needs a fancy reason
Why they should live or breathe
I sit here feeling sorry for myself
For one thing or another
I’m trying hard to blame somebody else
For the miseries that I’ve discovered
I make a wish over a boiling cauldron
That I pass only strengths onto the children
And may the spirit move me to laugh and to sing
And I won’t be drowned by the little things
Until the day when there are no more desires
And I put out all my little fires
There’s nothing left but a wishful song
And there will be no right or wrong
Until that day, until that day, until that day
Sights and sounds they’ll get to me…”

~ Jeb Puryear

Getting into cold water is not something I can do a little at a time. It has to happen all at once – over in a moment, bing bang boom, it’s done, you can open your eyes.

Beforehand, I can sit at the top of the ladder for several minutes, with my back to the sun, feeling happily apprehensive about the prospect of the cold. I can dip my toes in, for a moment, to get a feel for what I’m in for. I can hesitate. That’s fine.

But the decision to get in the water is something that’s usually happened long before I reach the ladder. This can be a strange mix of helpful and frustrating, in that moment when I’m actually about to jump, standing up, bend at the knees, and shove

you’re in for it now, hon.

Once the water is over my head, it’s easy. The brain and the body adjust, and it’s nowhere as bad as I thought that it might be, and this is fine, this is good, fuck it’s cold, reach out and stretch the arms and legs and touch the bottom and stand up straight and shove a mess of wet hair out of the eyes and continue to swear for a couple of minutes and breathe

breathe

and this is alright.

surrounded by the water, there’s a certain weightlessness, a strange resistance, a persistent shift and tug, a cool and gentle force that nudges and shoves and brushes against bare skin and clumsy limbs

let it pick you up and carry you away, like a hurricane wind in slow motion. you can stay here as long as you need.

I have missed this.

Have been listening to “say” (John Mayer) and “big girls don’t cry” (Fergie)

All afternoon, nonstop, on repeat, probably forever.

For Kendall Willey.

That is all. 💛