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. 🖤