I should have watched V for Vendetta years ago

Here’s another paper that I wrote for a political science course. Whereas my previous paper focuses primarily on solutions to the problem of genocide, this paper focuses more on the roots or causes. I wrote this because it is easier to remedy a problem when you understand what the fuck is going on and why. Like in medicine. Thanks for reading.

Genocide represents the very worst of what humans are capable of doing to each other.[1] It is tempting to imagine perpetrators of genocide as psychologically abnormal, as inhuman monsters. When Hannah Arendt observed the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann, she encountered not the monster she expected but a normal man.[2] Christopher Browning made a similar observation about Polish Reserve Battalion 101, which lead him to ask, “If the men of the Reserve Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?”[3] It is comforting to think that if genocide were to happen outside our own front doors, we would not participate in the evil going on around us. This might not be true. The Jewish Holocaust happened in a society much like our own, and that atrocity was accomplished through the coordinated efforts of thousands. To understand why so many people participated, we should shift our focus from “why did the Germans kill the Jews” to “why did the individual German participate in the massacre.”[JBG1] ^[4] The psychological experiments of Stanley Milgram and Philip G. Zimbardo demonstrate that ordinary people are more than capable of doing terrible things to each other in the right circumstances, but a more nuanced look at their results might lead us to a conclusion which is less deterministic. We can better understand why ordinary Germans participated in the Holocaust by acknowledging that the Nazis were not monsters, but ordinary people, and examining what factors bring out that behavior in an ordinary person in psychological studies and in the context of the Holocaust.[JBG2] 

The pseudoscientific premise of eugenics is that it is to improve the human race by removing carriers of defective genes from the gene pool. At issue is what constitutes a defective gene. Out of sheer collective narcissism, people of European descent thought of other races as naturally inferior, and wanted to prevent “contamination of their bloodline” with genes from other racial groups, also the physically or psychologically disabled, homosexuals, alcoholics, delinquents, etc..

Also at issue is how far we ought to be willing to go for the sake of “improving the human race.” Eugenics is most dangerous combined with the philosophy that “the end justifies the means,” the rationalization of necessary evil for the sake of the greater good. In the United States, from which Germany learned many things, “racial hygiene” was enforced through public policy and medical practices like segregation, limits on immigration for certain groups, stigmatization of inter-racial marriage, forced sterilization, etc. Under post-WWI Germany’s “Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Disabled Offspring,” the Aktion T-4 program was created to euthanize infants and children with disabilities.[5] The program was later expanded to children up to seventeen years old. They were a “burden on society,” and their lives were not considered worth living. Children were taken away and killed without parents’ consent. When the public found out, moral outrage ensued, and the program was allegedly shut down. Six killing institutions for disabled adults continued until the end of WWII. Technology used for the euthanasia program was later used in killing camps.

That “end justifies the means” logic requires ignoring the sacredness of the things we find it necessary to violate. We might comfort ourselves with notions like “some lives add more value to this world than others,” or that “there may be a point past which life is no longer worth living.” Allowing one’s conscience to be guided by preconceived notions without paying attention to the details of real life is irresponsible, but that irresponsibility is entirely predictable.

Speaking of overreliance on preconceived notions to justify violation of the sacred for the sake of the greater good, the Holocaust could not have happened without the old and pervasive tradition of anti-Semitism in Europe. Slight, arbitrary differences in outward appearance between Jews and other Germans were only the beginning. Differences in religious and cultural practices, ethnic history, folklore, socio-economic status became the basis for potent stereotypes. Because of theological differences with Christianity, Jews were allegedly blamed for the death of Jesus. A long history of persecution, as well as a rich doctrine of cultural practices which set them apart, meant that Jews tended to live together in separate communities. Jewish financial practices helped them emerge as outstanding in the financial sector, and when states were in economic turmoil after much expensive war-making, blaming the folks who managed the banks was much easier than repaying their debts. Karl Marx had Jewish ancestry, which allowed Nazis to connect the Jews to the Bolshevik threat. The Jewish identity knew no borders, and the existence of such an identity group within a war-torn Germany was seen as a threat to popular loyalty to the state.

Adolf Hitler was an eloquent populist who blamed Jews for the loss of WWI and promised to “make Germany great again.”[6] He combined ancient anti-Semitism with new eugenics pseudoscience and called for the “purification of the German race.” Jones writes that Hitler once told a journalist, “Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews.”[7]

Anti-Semitic propaganda like Mein Kampf at once preyed on and worsened existential fear in Germany. Wherever there is uncertainty and turmoil, shaken people find solace in belonging to a group. Identity groups are defined in terms of who doesn’t belong, and insecurity strengthens wariness or indifference towards outsiders.[8] We “assuage our fear of death through the death of the other.” Hitler’s conviction that Germany would be better off without Jews swayed Germans because prejudice towards outsiders was heightened, and the promise of a better world for their families was comforting. Jews were outside of the in-group identity that was German loyalty to the state.

Nationalism was rampant, fueled by Hitler’s rhetoric and the third Reich’s anti-Semitic propaganda campaign. More Germans voted liberal in their semblance of a democratic system, but the socialists were so busy fighting the communists that the left lost an election to the Nazis. After the Nazis took control of the government, public policy quickly became blatantly anti-Semitic. The Nuremburg laws stripped Jews of their citizenship; they couldn’t vote or hold public office. The “Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor” made eugenics and “racial hygiene” into public policy. Intermarriage or partnerships between Jews and other Germans was forbidden. “Any action could be taken to enforce these laws.” Many Jews were sterilized.

As Germany expanded in WWII, so did their Jewish population. Germany relocated Jews to hundreds of ghetto communities, but the sheer numbers of people made relocation to livable conditions difficult. Bureaucrats managing refugees protested, “we’ve got too many of these people, don’t send any more!” and “how long do we have to live with this?”[9] Nazis considered exploiting Jews for labor, but many were unfit to work.

A direct order to exterminate all Jews was never given.[10] At the Bonzi Conference, high-ranking Nazi officials settled the “Final Solution” to the problem of what to do with these people, a problem which the Germans entirely created for themselves. Letting the Jews go, allowing them to live freely in Germany, may not even have crossed their thoroughly indoctrinated minds. After the abuse Jews had already suffered and witnessed, and with the popularity of Nazi ideology in full swing, the risk of catastrophe was high. But it would have been a catastrophe either way.

Killing millions efficiently required progressively refining methodologies. Einstatzgruppen rounded up, massacred, and buried the Jews in mass graves, but routinely shooting thousands of people point blank took a toll on firing squads. Gas vans and gas chambers distanced perpetrators from victims. In the camps, those not sent to the gas chambers were exploited for their labor, worked to death under abysmal conditions. Some were forced to dispose of the bodies of other victims.

Among the Nazis, there were a few sociopathic monsters who joined up purely for the fascination of inflicting pain on others. Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death” at Auschwitz, helped select which people should go to the gas chambers when they arrived.[11] He performed experiments on twins, “without anesthesia and without their consent.”[12]

For most people, it is “difficult to look another human being in the eye and kill or torture them.” To bypass social inhibitions, Nazis thought of Jews as only seeming human, not “human on the inside, where it matters.”[13] One holocaust survivor recounted being forced to dig up mass graves, and being forbidden to refer to the dead as human.[14] A German doctor who refused to experiment on Jews was asked by a colleague, “How can you look at them and see someone who is like you?” to which she replied, “there are many people who are not like me, especially you.”

Something happens when one group is given complete dominance over people they are conditioned to see as inferior, sinister, different, alien, or wrong which may help us understand how ordinary people can do these things to each other. Philip G. Zimbardo studied the social behavior of Stanford college students in a simulated prison environment. Students were arbitrarily assigned the role of “guards” who had authority and responsibility to keep “prisoners” in line, enforcing rules designed by the experimenters to dehumanize prisoners. The resulting brutality of the guards towards the prisoners was so severe that the experimenters stopped the study prematurely.[15] As Wilson says, “If you give a person power over someone else who is powerless, someone who has been demonized or made to seem less human, then that absolute power corrupts absolutely.”[16] The blatant anti-Semitism of Hitler’s propaganda, rhetoric, and policy demonized the Jews and made them seem less human. Giving Nazis absolute power over the Jews created a permissive environment for unspeakable atrocities to take place.

With backwards logic, some guards blamed the prisoners for their own abuse. i.e., “if you weren’t breaking the rules, I wouldn’t have to keep you in line. I don’t want to do this. It’s your fault that I have to do these things to you.”[17] Blame creates desire for retribution, which makes it easier to justify abuse.

The question of how Nazis got their power over the Jews is difficult. The narrative that the victims went “meekly to their deaths”[18] is too simple. Aside from notable resistance[19] and uprisings, consider what it must have been like from their perspectives. The shock of being taken from one’s home and community and everyday life, the fear and denial and dread of getting off a train in an unfamiliar place and being separated from families and not knowing what was happening or why, disorientation and exhaustion of living and sleeping in poor conditions without adequate sustenance.[20] It was brutal. In Prague, there is a museum at the old synagogue, and on display they have children’s drawings which were salvaged from the ghettos and carefully preserved.[21] That there were people trying to go on with the everyday business of giving the kids something to do, in conditions like this, is in itself a profound kind of resistance.

Still, there is the problem of the Judenrate, the Jewish councils whose job it was to ensure that Nazi orders were carried out in the ghettos.[22] They helped round up and select which people should go to the camps, distributed rations, and enforced rules. Purely from a logistical perspective, their assistance helped make the coordinated mass killing possible. If they had somehow refused to cooperate, it might have slowed the process down. They were choosing the lesser of two evils: dying and subjecting other victims to the whims of the Nazis, or living and at maintaining a small amount of power over the treatment of innocent people, at least for a while. Alternatively, they might have enjoyed having power for power’s sake, or perhaps they were obeying authority because they felt they had no other choice.

One unsettling possibility is that ordinary people – victims and perpetrators alike, although the line between those two things isn’t always clear – participated in the Holocaust because they were “just doing their jobs” and failed to stand up to authority. Milgram’s experiments tested the limits of human obedience when we are told to harm another person. On the false pretense of studying the relationship between punishment and learning, subjects were told to shock a stranger with increasingly strong jolts from a generator when he made mistakes. The majority “obeyed the orders of the experimenter to the end, proceeding to punish the victim until they reached the most potent shock on the generator.”[23] Ordinary Germans participated in the Holocaust because of a psychological tendency to defer to authority, even when that authority is wrong. Those who opposed the Nazi régime were vulnerable to being executed or sent to concentration camps, so this tendency not to question authority was likely compounded by fear.[24] This might help explain the sheer number of people who were involved with the coordinated annihilation of a group, who didn’t stand up and say, “I refuse to do this, this is wrong.”

In Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Daniel Goldhagen chastised Christopher Browning for portraying Holocaust perpetrators as devoid of individual agency, helplessly swept along by circumstance. It is harder to hold people accountable when we don’t acknowledge the role of their own agency in their behavior. Goldhagen focused on the image of Nazis as ideological zealots motivated by bigotry and hate and blood-lust. His “famous answer to ‘why did the Germans kill the Jews’ was ‘because they wanted to.’”[25] To his point, members of Reserve Battalion 101 in Poland were allegedly free to stop the killing and go home whenever they wished. Most of them chose to stay.

To some extent, indoctrination is a matter of circumstance. The Nazis were not born, they were made. Through experience, through exposure to ideological perspectives through parents, classmates, teachers, friends. Through books, food, and tradition, through conversations and stories and lyrics of songs. Through the state of the word they were living in. Everything that happens to a person from that first gasp of air and light and cold to the moment when she finds herself staring down the barrel of a gun at a mother holding a child at the edge of a ditch, or carefully writing down a list of names, or selling dark hair and small shoes and gold teeth to the highest bidder. Everything that has ever happened in her life has made her what she is.

In the Stanford Prison Experiment, some of the guards were kinder to the prisoners than others. A significant minority of Milgram’s subjects were given the chance to harm innocent people and chose not to. Subjects cheated and administered lower shocks when the experimenter wasn’t looking, and if even one other person in the room refused to cooperate, others were more likely to follow. When one Milgram subject was told that he had “no other choice” but to continue, he replied, “excuse me, but I do have a choice. I’ve probably gone too far already.”[26] It’s no coincidence that this man worked as an electrical engineer, and knew what it felt like like to be shocked at a high voltage.

The circumstances which turned some people into monsters brought out the best in others. We know there were ordinary people who protected the Jews,[27] who gave them money or food or somewhere to hide or the necessary paperwork and a safe path to safety. Would-be accomplices refused to cooperate when they realized what they were being asked to do. Even within the ranks of the perpetrators, there were those who tried to help victims wherever they could. Afterwards, many said things like, “I did what anyone would have done,” or “I didn’t have a choice,” or “they would have done the same for me.”[28] The characteristics which set this kind of person apart, or perhaps makes them truly extraordinary are: a “universal sense of the altruistic bond,” a keen sense of their own autonomy, and often had a[29] personal acquaintance with some of the people who are being targeted.

In hindsight, it is possible to pick out the large-scale political, economic, and social forces which culminated in the genocide, but explanations for these forces are best understood in terms of each of the people who were making all of the small, individual decisions working in tandem. The massive coordinated effort to destroy the Jews could not have happened without the participation of thousands of devastatingly ordinary people – and the same can be said of the resistance which did everything from saving lives to making a few moments of the life of a child living in a ghetto a little more easy to bear.

Given the catastrophic evil that happened in spite of that resistance, we might think that there is good in this world, it’s just that this time it wasn’t enough. But tell that to the innocent person who survived because there was somebody there who was willing to help him. As Loren Eiseley once wrote, “it made a difference to that one.” Imagine for a second what this world would be like, if what goodness we’ve got wasn’t here.

Bibliography

Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.

Baum, Stephen K. Psychology of Genocide: Perpetrators, Bystanders, and Rescuers.

Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men: The Reserve Police Battalion 101.

Browning, Christopher. “The Nazi Empire,” The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies.

Dudai, Ron. “Understanding perpetrators in genocides and mass atrocities.”

Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl.

Goldhagen, David. Hitler’s Willing Executioners.

Jones, Adam. Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction.

Lanzmann, Claude. Shoah.

Milgram, Stanley. “Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.”

Pierson, Frank. Conspiracy.

Paxton, George. Nonviolent Resistance to the Nazis.

Waller, James. Becoming Evil.

Zimbardo, Phillip G. “The Stanford Prison Experiment: A Simulation of the Psychology of Imprisonment.”

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[1] Adam Jones, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction

[2] Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

[3] Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

[4] Ron Dudai, Understanding Perpetrators of Genocide and Mass Killing

[5] Adam Jones, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction

[6] 45^th president of the United States

[7] Jones, Genocide. pg. 247

[8] Stephen K. Baum, Psychology of Genocide

[9] Conspiracy.

[10] Jones, Genocide

[11] Marcus Parks,

[12] Personal notes taken at Auschwitz I Museum

[13] David Livingstone Smith, “On Dehumanization,” Unmuted. Transcripts of interviews by Myisha Cherry.

[14] Shoah.

[15] Zimbardo, “Stanford Prison Experiment”

[16] David Wilson as quoted by Jones in Genocide, 402

[17] Jones, Genocide.

[18] Jones, Genocide.

[19] George Paxton, Nonviolent Resistance to the Nazis

[20] Eli Wiesel, Night.

[21] Personal notes on visit to The “Old Synagogue” in Prague, Czech Republic

[22] Jones, Genocide.

[23] Jones, Genocide.

[24] George Paxton, Nonviolent Resistance to the Nazis

[25] Dudai, “Understanding perpetrators.”

[26] Jones, Genocide, 400

[27] George Paxton, Resistance to Genocide

[28] Stephen K. Baum, Psychology of Genocide

[29] Baum, Psychology. See also Diary of Anne Frank.

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 [JBG1]Excellent

 [JBG2]Superb introduction!

I wrote this paper years ago for a philosophy course on nonviolence. One of the assignments in that course was to develop a strategy to remedy a specific kind of contemporary violence. I feel like this paper is relevent to current events. I don’t know if the strategies put forth in this paper are enough to change the course of history, but at least it’s a place to begin.

Sorry about the formatting, especially the bib. Consider this a rough draft.

I visited Auschwitz once. Roughly eighty years after most of it was reduced to rubble, I could still smell the ashes.

A project of the scale and complexity of genocide can’t happen without the participation of many people working together.[1] It is so easy to think of the perpetrators of genocide as evil, psychologically abnormal, inhuman. But the unsettling reality is that genocides tend to be carried out, not by monsters, but by ordinary people.[2] As I left the concentration camps, I was thinking about each person who didn’t speak up and say, “I refuse to do this, this is wrong.” I haven’t stopped thinking about them since, and it’s been about two years. I can’t shake the feeling that, under the right circumstances, this could happen anywhere – I could find myself participating in unspeakable atrocity, and so could everyone else that I know.[3] I want to believe we could find a way to resist, if we needed to. Since I have also walked in cities which the Allied powers bombed into the ground, and there were children in those cities, and I don’t care whose children they were: I want to find a way to resist the worst of humanity in a way that doesn’t bring out the worst in ourselves.

In this paper, I will go to the roots of why genocide happens and explore patterns in human behavior which may help explain why ordinary people participate in genocide. I will develop ways to interrupt those patterns by nonviolent means. Nonviolent methods of resistance can help to counter indoctrination into genocidal ideologies, especially when it comes to fortifying communities and changing the way we respond to genocidal rhetoric and discourse.

In texts about Just War Theory and the strategic usefulness of nonviolence, genocide is a classic example of when arguing for a nonviolent solution seems futile. If violence is ever justified, it seems as though violence is justified for the sake of preventing or stopping a genocide. Gandhi challenged the notion that “the ends justify the means,” because just as an acorn will grow into an oak tree every time, violent means are likely to produce a violent outcome.[4] One of the five conditions of Just War Theory is that war is only justified if we have first exhausted the non-violent alternatives. I tend to believe that it’s rare that we have truly exhausted the peaceful alternatives, because I think there is usually an alternative path forward, if only we take a moment to look. Precisely because nonviolence is so often dismissed as not being useful in this instance, I think it’s worth taking the time to think about it more carefully.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote about the idea that in order to effectively use nonviolence to push back against the things which are unjust, it is first necessary to spend time learning about them.[5] Understanding a little bit about the roots of genocide, particularly the individual capacity to help perpetrate genocide, gives me a framework for thinking about how to go about creating effective resistance.

The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as … [certain] actions undertaken “with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a racial, ethnic, national or religious group.” Genocide is an indiscriminate attempt to annihilate a group of people – usually noncombatants – based on their identity, based on who they are.

Gan discussed the old and pervasive myth that there are “good guys and bad guys” in this world. The belief that a group of people is irredeemably bad or incapable of goodness is harmful because it allows us to justify using violence against them.

David Livingstone Smith said that it is “very difficult to look another human being in the eye and kill or torture them.”[6] It’s also nigh on impossible to look into the face of another human being and not recognize them as being one of us. Since it is often advantageous to violate and destroy other people, we’ve developed a cognitive mechanism for overriding that inhibition: we think of the “other” as “appearing to be human, but not really being human on the inside where it matters.”[7] Dehumanization is “closely related to the commission of … atrocities which would be difficult to commit unless we thought of the victims as less than human.”[8]

On a similar vein, Nussbaum writes about anger – the retributive instinct which accompanies a perceived injury against ourselves. During tumultuous times, we go looking for someone to blame for the problems of the world. With that blame, the impulse to get payback, the attitude that “it-doesn’t-matter-if-they-get-hurt-because-they-have-hurt-me,” also becomes a dangerous mechanism for decreasing inhibitions against violence, for increasing indifference to the suffering of a group.

Genocides consistently happen in places where it feels like the world is falling apart, when people are shaken and scared and insecure. Shaken and insecure people find solace in belonging to an identity group. Especially when we’re afraid, our “universe of moral obligation” is confined to the people we’re closest to, the people with whom we most identify. When times are bad, we take care of our own. The problem is that identity groups are defined in terms of who doesn’t belong. Existential dread increases wariness towards outsiders, intolerance of differences. In times of upheaval and turmoil, we turn inwards towards the warmth of what is familiar, wary of unknowns outside in the cold. We “assuage our own fear of death through the death of the other.” Indifference towards the suffering of people who are outside of our in-groups is heightened when we are afraid.

Humans are vulnerable to the sort of rhetoric, discourse, and propaganda which portrays other people as being to blame for the problems of the world, or incapable of goodness, or somehow less than human.[9] Anyone who is interested in inciting violence, in getting people to bypass their inhibitions against violence, depends on that vulnerability. And there will always be people out there who are interested in taking advantage of that human capacity to look into the eyes of another person and, somehow, justify destroying them.

Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic propaganda resonated with an old tradition of demonizing Jews in Europe. In Rwanda, a Hutu newspaper and radio station fueled an ideology of prejudice and hatred against the Tutsis – or “cockroaches,” as they were called. Facebook helped spread propaganda which demonized the Rohingya people in Myanmar. It only took a few weeks of non-stop news coverage of planes flying into the towers for the murders of Muslims in the U.S. to exceed the death toll of the attack on the world trade center in 2001.

One way to counter genocidal ideology is to try to stop it from spreading: to find the loudest voices in genocidal discourse and work to stop the flow of ideas from the source. Philip Gourevitch speculated that bombing the Hutu power radio station in Rwanda might have slowed the genocide. Who knows how many lives this could have saved.

One of Gene Sharp’s “pillars” which upholds the spread of this kind of ideology is the discourse and rhetoric in the media, as well as social media platforms. Bad news sells advertising. News media both thrives on and exacerbates public existential dread. It’s in the interest of for-profit news media to draw our attention to the worst things that are happening, all the time – even if that means becoming a platform for dehumanizing propaganda targeting a particular group. Decent public access to information may conflict with the best interests of the mediums which provide that service.

Online spaces create epistemic “bubbles” or “echo chambers” where ideologies are shared and reinforced. In a sense, each one of us is carrying around a printing press in our pockets, and each one of us is a radio tower – rebroadcasting the things we’ve heard, amplifying perspectives, constantly sharing the thoughts of strangers with everyone we know. Instead of having to travel to meet people who have also bought into eliminationist rhetoric, it’s possible to connect with people from halfway across the world.

Perhaps we ought to boycott mediums which make money off of existential dread, especially if they’re providing a platform for propaganda which dehumanizes specific groups of people. Doom scrolling on social media or constantly watching the news is such an ingrained part of the lives of so many that I think asking people to stop might be impractical, because engaging with the world like this is like an addiction for many people. Coordinating large numbers of people who log off for short periods of time, perhaps on a routine basis, could make a noticeable dent in the analytics at social media headquarters. This might help people who feel the same way about this issue realize that they’re not alone. It may become a starting point for conversations challenging the messages of bigotry and hate.

Even if we do somehow manage to change the nature of the platforms where this discourse is so often exchanged and shared, I’m hesitant to say that this will successfully stop the spread of genocidal discourse. The relationship between public information and the internet and news media “wasn’t always like this. Not very long ago, just before your time/right before the towers fell, circa ’99,”[10] the mediums that we used to share ideas with one another were different – but variations on these same ideas, in one form or another, have been being exchanged for millennium. The “myth of good guys and bad guys” is old and pervasive, and maybe it has always existed.

I’m at the epistemic disadvantage of being approximately the same age as the internet, as it exists today, and much of my connection to current events in my adult life – beyond my immediate surroundings – has happened through the lens of a small rectangle of blue light that fits into the palm of my hand. People have been engaging with genocidal ideology through other mediums for millennium. So “get off your phone and go lay in the grass and talk to a real person” may not be the revolutionary breakthrough that I want it to be.

This practice might be more useful at the individual level – taking time away from engaging with that feeling of existential dread is useful. We can focus that time and energy and attention on other things which are tremendously important. Also, sometimes current events are so awful that “it can be damaging even to look.” I believe that our minds were not built to hold an awareness of the suffering of billions from all over the world all at the same time, but we now have the technology which allows us to do this. I am not suggesting that we turn our backs on the problems of the world. But when we engage, I think we ought to hold onto perspective with everything we’ve got. Do this carefully. We are of no use to anyone if we’re overwhelmed with despair, and we are perhaps more vulnerable to being indoctrinated with genocidal ideologies if we’re full of existential dread. In order to fortify ourselves against indoctrination into genocidal ideology, we need to learn how to take what we hear on these platforms with a grain of salt.

In the long run, trying to mediate the spread of ideas is too much like putting a band-aid on an old and festering wound. At the heart of this issue, there is something uncomfortably human that needs to be dealt with. The problem is not just that genocidal discourse is out there, it’s that humans are uncomfortably susceptible to this kind of ideology. While we may focus on restricting circulation of this kind of discourse, effective strategy ultimately comes down to how we respond to the ideology when it comes across our path.

It’s difficult to learn how to recognize our own preconceived notions and ideologies from the inside. In order to recognize hatred and intolerance and prejudice for what it is, we have to understand what it looks like.[11] Teaching this skill in public school and college curriculum is frustratingly contentious. However, school curriculum represents only a tiny fraction of all of the possible ways to communicate ideas. Books, poetry, music, art, graffiti, theatre, film – everything from allegory to satire to masterful subtlety – these are some of the best “methods of persuasion” we’ve got, to help put beliefs in the context of a better understanding of the world.

Sometimes it is easier to learn about this for the first time in a context that is less personal, less close to home. That way, the first time we go looking for darkness in the places we least want to find it, we already know what we’re looking for. Learn about the Nazis, first, so that when we learn about the U.S.’s prison industrial complex or read about what’s happening on the border with Mexico, we can recognize something hauntingly familiar.

I have also found that works of fiction are excellent vehicles for communicating about things that are difficult to face in the context of real life. Good storytellers are some of the best teachers, because it is the work of a storyteller to notice the world as hard as possible and then come back and tell everyone else what they see.[12] A well-told story can orient a moral compass just about as well as anything that happens in real life. This works well for children, but once in a while I stumble on grown-ups who also enjoy reading made-up stories.

Perhaps I have strayed too far into the realm of books and internet spaces, and have wound up too far away from the real world.

People are much more vulnerable to taking genocidal ideology seriously when they are frightened and insecure and tired, and we are much more likely to be in that state when it feels like the world is falling apart around us. If it feels like the world is falling apart because it actually is falling apart, as it often seems to be, then it makes sense to try to hold the world together with everything we’ve got. This is a lot to ask for, because this world seems so unfathomably broken. Just speaking for myself, I often feel powerless in the face of that brokenness. And I tend to think that in spite of the best efforts of many good people, there will be times when trying to hold the world together isn’t going to work. For the sake of the times when there’s a chance that it could work, I think it’s worth thinking about how to hold the world together when it’s falling apart.

Gandhi stressed the importance of self-reliance for comprehensive nonviolent resistance. The Stanford Prison Experiments demonstrated that “if you give a person power over someone else who is powerless, someone who has been demonized or made to seem less human, then that absolute power corrupts absolutely”[13] Relying on a broken system for support gives that system power, puts us at the mercy of bad circumstances and instability and insecurity. This at once makes us more vulnerable to being dehumanized and also dehumanizing others. Having that independence, having practices for supporting ourselves which don’t rely so heavily on those systems, returns some of that power to communities.

At the grassroots level, a more secure world involves having networks of people who are up to the task of taking care of each other, even when times are bad. When larger systems are failing to take care of people, mutual aid networks allow communities to take care of one another. Basic fluency in the skills necessary to support each other is useful for not feeling powerless in the face of a world that feels like it’s falling apart.

            Across the board, people who’ve gone out of their way to stand up to genocidal ideologies have tended to have a “universal sense of the altruistic bond.”[14] They’ve been close to people who were being targeted. They haven’t wanted to see an entire group of people erased from the face of the earth, because that would mean losing their friends. Afterwards, they often said things like, “I did what anyone would have done,” or “I had no other choice,” or “you would have done the same for me.”[15] Friendship might be like an immunization against prejudice – and personally, I have found that once I have laughed with someone, once I have loved a person who is different than me, there is no going back. I think it’s important to create strong communities which transcend the boundaries of identity groups, to build bridges between unexpected places. I suspect that the trick is to connect people, not on the basis of identity, but over things which most people have in common no matter who they are – i.e., music, food, games, stories. (i.e., the “Break Down The Walls” documentary discussed a NYC prison abolitionist movement which doubled as a nightclub in the evenings.[16]) So share food, even if you have to add more water to the soup. Teach someone how to cook, if you know how – teach them the recipes you grew up with. Make music together, even if all you have is a singing voice that couldn’t carry a tune if it had handles and a couple of top 40 songs with words that everyone half-knows. You probably know someone who has a deck of cards, and if you don’t, yes you do, you can borrow mine, they’re a little bent out of shape but that doesn’t matter. Be the person in the room with the patience to teach the new kid how to play. Catch the misfits, the people most likely to wind up in dangerous places if they don’t have somewhere safe to come home to.

Stronger communities also tend to sooth that insecurity which makes people vulnerable to being indoctrinated. Sometimes all it takes to pull someone back from the brink of extremism is one person in a room who is able to be peaceful and considerate and kind when nobody else can. One solid presence in a room full of shaken people has a stabilizing influence.[17] I guess if I could ask you to do one thing to work to push back against the prejudice which precedes genocide, I would ask you to work at becoming that presence in a room – in any room. I’ll try, too.

            How do we find it in ourselves to do this? Whatever helps each of us hold onto perspective is excellent – a sense of humor, spirituality, medicine, whatever it may be. It’s different for everyone. Thich Nhat Hanh writes about the usefulness of being mindful, and practicing that skill until you are able to be mindful wherever you find yourself and whenever you need to be.[18] The Taoists discussed the importance of knowing when and how to yield, to let somebody else have their way, because over the course of time, the water the flows around the rocks that stand firm in the middle of the river will eventually wear the rocks down to nothing.[19]

Every so often, I look down at the blue veins on the inside of my wrist and remember they’re blue because of a molecule called hemoglobin which is responsible for carrying oxygen to my cells, and that hemoglobin contains trace amounts of iron, and iron can only be forged in the heart of a star that is dying. And so those blue lines on my wrist are literally full of stardust, which became part of the earth when it formed 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years ago, and traveling at the speed of light, which is as fast as it is possible to travel, it would take 81,000 years to get to the nearest star aside from the sun, and that is only the beginning.[20] This makes all of the problems on the surface of this exceptional little planet seem smaller, somehow, and perhaps more important for all of their smallness – because of all the possible lives I could have lived, I ended up living this one. Might as well make the most of it while I’m here.

From this perspective, it is easier to see that although humans are eminently capable of believing the worst of each other, of doing horrible things to one another, of succumbing to a hate so strong that erasing a group of people off the face of the planet sounds like a reasonable idea – this is not an inevitable outcome. Far from it.

There are documented case studies of nonviolent resistance to the Holocaust.[21] All across Europe, there were hundreds of networks of people who stood up to the Nazis. There were people who resigned in protest when they were asked to do unspeakable things. There were people who stayed on in those jobs, only to use their power to get people to safety. There were marches, strikes, boycotts, there were underground newspapers. There were people who sheltered innocent families in their homes, or helped them get to safety. There was resistance. These are the people who were not won over by the ideologies of prejudice, and who weren’t swept up in circumstance. Which means that there is hope.

Bibliography

Arendt, Hannah. A Report On The Banality of Evil

Attenborough. Gandhi. 1982.

Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men.

Baum, Stephen K. Psychology of Genocide.

Barnett, Brian. Gandhi’s Philosophy of Nonviolence.

Chenoweth, Erica. “Why Civil Resistance Works: Nonviolence in Past and Future.”

Cherry, Myisha. “David Livingstone Smith on Dehumanization,” Unmuted.

Collins, Phil. Break Down the Walls.

Dudai, Ron. Understanding Perpetrators of Genocide

Gan, Barry. Violence and Nonviolence: An Introduction.

Goldhagen, Daniel. Hitler’s Willing Executioners

Gourevitch, Phil. We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families

Hoff, Benjamin. The Tao of Pooh.

Holmes, Robert. “Understanding Evil from the Perspective of Nonviolence.” The Acorn.

How To Start A Revolution.

Introduction to Astronomy. OpenStax.

Johansen, “Hitler and the Challenge of Non-Violence”

Jones, Adam. “Social Psychology Explanations,” Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction

Milgram, Stanley. Studies on the Nature of Obedience

Nonviolent Tactics Database. https://www.tactics.nonviolenceinternational.net/

Nussbaum, Martha. Anger and Forgiveness

Paxton, George. Nonviolent Resistance to the Nazis

Sharp, Gene. From Dictatorship to Democracy

Sharp, Gene. “198 Methods of Nonviolent Action.”

Sinclair, “Resisting the Nazis in Numerous Ways: Nonviolence in Occupied Europe”

Thich Nhat Han. Being Peace.

“War,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/war/

Zimbardo, Philip. The Stanford Prison Experiments: Studied on the Psychology of Imprisonment.

---

[1] Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy

[2] Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

[3] Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men

[4] Brian Barnett, Gandhi’s Philosophy

[5] After genocide was made punishable under international law, African American folks in the U.S. were the first to write to the United Nations asking that their treatment – particularly the transatlantic slave trade, I think – be recognized as genocide. The request was denied.

[6] Myisha Cherry, Unmuted. 160

[7] Cherry, 159

[8] Cherry, 160

[9] Cherry, 162

[10] Bo Burnham, “Welcome to the Internet.” Inside.

[11] David Livingstone Smith

[12] Ursula Le Guin

[13] Wilson

[14] Stephen K. Baum, Psychology of Genocide

[15] Baum, Psychology of Genocide

[16] Phil Collins, Break Down the Walls

[17] Thich Nhat Han, Being Peace

[18] Thich Nhat Han, Being Peace

[19] Benjamin Hoff, The Toa of Pooh

[20] Introduction to Astronomy

[21] George Paxton, Nonviolent Resistance to the Nazis

There’s this thing that I do with my partner. It’s become a habit, something we do without thinking about it.

Whenever either of us is leaving to drive anywhere, we have a ritual. It starts out with the usual things – a longer than necessary hug, a quick kiss on the temple followed by “I love you” and “drive safe.” Then later it was “text me when you get there,” then “I’ll watch for your text.” Then – we don’t say goodbye, we stopped saying goodbye when one of the cleaning staff at the school where I work said “never say goodbye, it isn’t like you’re dying. Say it like you’re going to see each other again.” So we say “I’ll see you later,” or “I’ll see you soon,” because we will. Then usually fingers brush on the doorknob as one or the other is grabbing the car keys hanging on the hook on the way out the door, and then – for all that I dread leaving for work so much that most mornings there is vomit in the bathroom sink and my body can’t stop shaking and get warm – I always walk out of the front door smiling as I make my way into that apartment complex parking lot sunrise. There’s a glance back over my shoulder before the front door closes, there’s a reassuring smile.

And it’s like – the sameness of that moment is comforting. It’s like a spell we cast to make sure that all the chaos in the outside world leaves us untouched until we can make it home and see each other again. Because – “it’s a dangerous business, stepping outside your door.” And yet we must step outside, almost every morning. We navigate polluted highways where everyone is driving too fast, we drive past flashing lights in the rearview mirror at the scene of accidents like the ones that claimed my mother’s mother’s life.

Never say goodbye. It isn’t like you’re dying. Say it like you’ll see each other again.

“Call your representatives! Ask for a cease fire! It feels pointless, but just try. Tell Republicans this is unchristian and fiscally irresponsible. Tell democrats you won’t vote for them next election if they continue to support the bombings in Gaza.”

~ S.M.

The fifth of November

I’ve been restless all day.

Steve Rogers gave me an undercut because I trust him to cut my hair for me. Yoga, meditation (doesn’t work so well when you’re staring at a bookshelf full of your partner’s analytic trigonometry textbooks) and also calisthenics. Today I’ve roasted three pans of sweet potatoes and another full pan of pumpkin seeds with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, brown sugar,, and salt.

Breakfast was croissants with lemon curd, omlette with red onion and mushrooms and gouda, and veggie breakfast sausage. Dinner was salad and soup with garlic bread (garlic confit).

Tonight we’re watching Silence of the Lambs. We also carved a pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern with crooked teeth. Currently enjoying a chocolate beer which tastes like drinking trick or treaters’ candy.

I put a witch hat on my bright purple, life sized, 3D printed skull – which will suffice for any further seasonal decorations. This is easily one of the best things I accumulated in college.

My favorite thing about star wars was Carrie Fisher’s portrayal of the princess. Especially her silly side buns.

Cigarette smoke from the window of a passing car

Dry leaves rustling over the pavement

A cool breeze

Blue jeans against the skin of my calves

Soles of my shoes on the sidewalk

And the warmth of the sun.

The price per gallon on the sign at the gas station around the corner from the school (right across from Carter Street) has been exactly the same for three months.

It’s snowing.

“Match to the fifth.”

– homemade potato soup with vegetable broth, smoked gouda, garlic bread, and crackers. Grilled cheese with mustard and Sweet Baby Ray’s.

– blankets on the couch

– beer & wine

– flannels and blue jeans

– pumpkins

– grading stacks and stacks of papers. data collection for the gradebook.

– reading poetry at night

– watching old episodes of Gilmore Girls and tuning in to watch NFL games on TV (for free, with our antenna)

– watching Bob Dylan play the harmonica, live in concert

OKAY SO THERE’S A NAME FOR THIS

As if Florence and Andrew Hozier Byrne had a grandmother with a vocal prowess far surpassing Allison Krauss or Julie Andrews.

Many thanks to my community college librarian for the tickets. I hope they’re feeling better soon.

“The consequences of sin are often most keenly felt by the innocent.”

~ from a recent sermon at the church, heard live over the airwaves, pertaining to the bombing of the hospital in Gaza.

Watching the Karate Kid and eating pizza.

Currently obsessed with an online (probably very unethical) clothing company called Cider. They sell pretty dresses. In spite of the number of flannels in my closet, I am secretly fond of pretty dresses.

Attending a Loreena McKennitt concert in the city tomorrow.

My sister has turned 21. This happened weeks ago, but we’re partying anyway, even if that means we are partying late.

I’m taking her out to get a beer at a local restaurant and brewery that is about three minutes from my apartment, and just about ten minutes from her trailer park. She is old enough to drink beer now. This is all very exciting and new because she has never had an alcoholic beverage before very recently, definitely not, no ma’am.

Dinner’s on me, anyhow.

We’re getting cali wings dressed in country sweet sauce and fries with gravey and cheese and bacon all over everything. And probably macaroni and cheese, or perhaps potato pancakes. I’m really, really psyched about the cali wings. With blue cheese dressing. This is gonna be so good.

Earlier today I baked the oatmeal chocolate cake recipe which has been in the family for many generations. I may or may not have smuggled over some cake in a Tupperware container and – at the suggestion of Steve Rogers – I also brought a lighter and a birthday candle.

She ought to be here in about five minutes. We’re going to have a good time.

Pal, this time

It is real.

Things my students like.

Koi swimming in a fish tank
Orange leaves falling on the sidewalk
Fire and violence in the middle east
A child graffitis the name of the girl she likes in sharpie on the walls of the school
A room of kids, twelve years old, sitting for their October history exam
Testing to see how much they’ve learned about the world
Anticipating pumpkin pie for dessert
Warm blankets, tea, and a cat at home
My hands shake a little
As the weather turns cold.

If I had known

When I sent you out of class, because

You couldn’t sit still in your seat,

because

you can’t sit in a chair like a normal human being, because

You can’t stop talking to everyone around you

Calling them rude names

Like you’re desperate for everyone to see you

Just to see you

If I had known that your mom was going to pull up to the school

And find me in the hallway

Saying, “I just want to apologize to my daughter. I took care of it,”

And then show me the battered old belt in her hand

I would have just let you be.

Keep writing her name next to yours. Don’t you stop.

It doesn’t matter if we find out what color the walls of the school used to be when the custodial staff scrubbs off the graffiti

Never give up on her.

There are poems I want to sneak into your backpack

When you aren’t looking

I just feel like angry feminist slam poetry with butch lesbian energy would help you so much right now

Especially on the days when your skin is still hurting from the day before.

And if I didn’t know about the way it is at home for you then I might risk it.

Don’t stop writing her name.

Butternut squash

Onion

Garlic

Cumin

Ginger

Coriander

Turmeric

Salt

Olive oil

Coconut milk

Vegetable stock

Lime

~

Roast squash in oven with salt and olive oil for 38 minutes. Sauté onions and garlic in olive oil in a soup pot. Add spices and stock. Add squash and milk. Simmer for 32 minutes. Add lime. Blend.

~

It was a dark and stormy knight –

“Match to the sixth.”

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been exploring the zen center in the city where I live. It’s this absolutely lovely buddhist temple where everyone is barefoot all the time, no shoes ever, and there’s often hot green tea, and there’s a garden full of trees.

I really like the part where I don’t have to wear shoes. (It’s probably the hobbit genetics from my grandmother.)

I’ve heard various iterations of the stories and philosophies of the buddha since I was a kid. That part of the experience – the stories, anyhow – they’re important. But for me I think the practice is becoming the most important thing.

The instructions for meditation are basically to sit perfectly still and stare at a blank wall and count to ten and breathe. And if your nose itches, don’t scratch – just notice the feeling. And when you notice your thoughts start to wander, start over with the counting. Over and over again. And we do this for like ten or fifteen or twenty minutes at a time, and then shift into walking meditation, and then return to the seat and settle in for another round. Listen to the sound the building makes and breathe and watch the thoughts tumble through.

The purpose of this is to be more fully present in this moment, not distracted by rumination over the past or worry about the future. I like that purpose, in theory.

Except that at first, I – really hate this practice. I’ve tried it before with little success. It’s one of the most uncomfortable experiences I’ve ever put myself through. Aside from one or two instances of profound physical pain, and some of the episodes when my mental illness symptoms got just exceptionally shitty, this is right up there with the most distressing moments for me.

Because my brain never fucking quiets down. This is the mind that finds patterns in dates and license plates and phone numbers, scrambles and unscrambles the letters in every brand name, connects the dots and makes triangles in the stars with invisible lines, considers the possibility of conspiracy theories, finds words inside of other words, dredges up Poor Decisions from years ago and presents them to my conscious awareness like a cat giving her gaurdian a dead bird, as a present.

Yeah. This brain. Trying to settle down.

Worse than trying to quiet down a room of 33 seventh graders. Take it from me.

At first meditation feels like getting stuck in the dark in the cold wind on the side of the mountain without a coat. It’s fucking miserable.

The counting helps.

I’m going to keep trying because there’s a promise of some kind of peacefulness on the other side of the struggle. I think – I need to practice more often at home. I may have jumped in at the deep end.

I also keep going back because the temple is beautiful.

Steve Rogers thinks so, too.

My students have last names like Rodriguez and Garcia and Jones and Johnson and Jackson (“I’m sorry Ms. Jackson…”) and if I had a dollar for every Jeremiah in the 7th grade I would have $3, which isn’t that many dollars. But it still feels like a lot.

The inside of my brain has been giving John Nash vibes recently and I really don’t like this.

The mortifying ordeal of reading things you wrote on the internet like four years ago

The other day I heard one of my students cry out as we were packing up to leave, and I turned around, and she said this group of boys had been bothering her. And ultimately it turned out that they’d only been pulling on her hair but my first thought was something so much worse and I’ve always been protective so the first words out of my mouth before I could think were “touch her again and I will hurt you,” and that might not have been the wisest thing to say to a group of twelve year old boys. Epecially as a teacher. But somebody has to teach young men to leave girls the hell alone. And sometimes it has to be that straightforward of a message. Just to get the point across.

I could never hurt a child and I’m not proud of what I said. I just needed them to know.

Steve Rogers/Remus Lupin/Calvin O’Keefe/Palamedes Sextus/Strider/William Turner is doing so good.

When you’re tired and don’t want to sleep because of the bad dreams, consider –

if you don’t sleep well for long enough, the nightmares persist in bothering you when you are awake.

Their twisted internal logic doesn’t have to make sense to you or anyone else. They don’t even have to be real. They’re just spooky and upsetting and cause tremendous grief.

When the plots are rich and full and fascinating stories and the characters are some of the people you love, you can’t help but watch as imaginary bad things happen to them

and it’s awful

And I wish I could send you good dreams.

• Need to do work in order to be prepared to teach next week
• Prospect of being unprepared for next week is stressful
• Stress makes me not want to do work and instead run away to the woods
• Running away to the woods would not help at all with being prepared for next week

Several people have recommended taking the lesson planning to the woods and doing it there. For the portion of the work which does not require a wifi connection, this is an excellent point.

Fun writing utensils only thing keeping me going today.

Today I went shopping and brought home some flowers, cleaned the apartment, and took out the trash. There are lots of ways to say “I love you” and actions speak louder than words.

It’s 6:15AM and I’m sitting with my partner in the morning, drinking coffee with oat milk and munching on a belgian chocolate waffle. My partner’s identity is a secret; for now we’ll just call him Steve Rogers. This is the best part of my day.

Befriend janitorial staff

– the neurodivergent experience of perceiving secret worlds of cryptic meaning everywhere because people don’t often just fucking say exactly what they mean –

A random thought – AT stands for apprentice teacher, as well as Appalachian Trail. I was focusing a lot of energy on those letters for almost two years as my possible future after college – and by some coincidence manifested another reality into being.

Never turn your back to the classroom.

Re: I don’t like yelling at kids – I’ve decided not to. I’m not fucking doing that. I woke up this morning and remembered that I’m the only white person in a room of like thirty black kids. I’m a grown ass adult. They’re fucking eleven. I did not sign up for this bullshit. It feels like pouring salt all over a slug.

If they can’t sit still and be quiet because they are fucking nine years old, I won’t fucking ask them to do that. They can work with a partner and take up auditory space if they want.

They’re only like seven and I can already feel them starting to dislike me from all of the screaming and also my head hurts.

Not to brag or anything but one of my (basically newborn) kids pulled me aside yesterday and gave me a picture she’d drawn and told me I’m “one of her most favorite teachers ever” and says she hates it when I have to yell at people because I seem like a nice person

So – fuck. I’m not doing that anymore. We’re going to figure out another way to do this.

Christ.

I thoroughly despise yelling at kids.

Finding out that one of the worst behaved students in my class doesn’t have a home

Noticing the gap in the front teeth of my favorite girl

Telling my scholars how happy I am that they are here

Standing in the sweltering hot gymnasium and waiting for the bus. In the wrong shoes.

Calling my littlest lady by she/her because that’s what she prefers and I’m allowed to do that because she has support at home

For the student who is new – asking a group of girls to get to know him because he doesn’t have any friends yet, and hearing them say they’re happy to include him

Teaching everyone our very own secret handshake

Kneeling beside a desk to answer a question when a hand reaches into the air for help

And teaching.

For the fist time in my life.

The printer named Leonardo is my arch nemesis.

I can measure how stressful the day has been based on the number of writing utensils in my homeroom partner’s hair.

I teach my very first lesson on my own soon. I receive a hug, unprompted, from one of my students. I wonder if she can tell how nervous I am. She and I connected over ADHD – I told her I have it too, and she looked at me with big wide eyes and said “you too!?” and we talked about how we cope in a world that doesn’t work well for us.

The beads, the braids, the styles in my students’ hair are pleasantly distracting. They’re really into this thing called shadow boxing, which is adorable. With all my heart I wish I could let them just be kids instead of telling them to sit up quietly and straight with their eyes forward and their arms up on the desks.

I love them.

Some nights I will stay three hours late at work to valiantly fight in a vicious battle with a printer named Leonardo for as long as it takes to print 120 thick ass copies of the math lesson packet for tomorrow and then I will collapse into the car in a state of bruised and battered weariness and think, this is my life now, and then I’ll wake up at 5:30AM the next day to do it all over again in the wrong shoes.

But the kids are alright and I love them. So it’s worth it.

On my first night in a new home, it rains. There’s thunder and lighting outside the windows for hours. The floor between the kitchen and the rest of the apartment is flooded.

I have brought with me about a dozen comfy flannels, some blue jeans, a toothbrush and similar, and six totebags full of books. Roughly an eighth of an entire bookshelf is filled with the works of Sir Terry Pratchett.

Also have a healthy sourdough starter, along with a carboy full of mead.

At work, I am decorating my classroom with fake plastic plants. This is all I can find. I also want to add Christmas lights.

My classroom.

“You know – I think you would make an excellent math teacher,” says the Calc I professor in the hallway outside the classroom at community college. Years ago.

The people who’ve just hired me as an apprentice seem to agree.

“At this school, we’re more to these students than just a teacher. Some of these kids, they come here and this is all of the actual love and safety that they will receive in a day. So you aren’t just a teacher. You’re like a second mom. You’re an auntie, an uncle, a father figure, a gaurdian. And you’d better believe that we spoil them here. Some of these kids can really stand to benefit from our love.”

I’m about to preside over a cohort of children who are roughly eleven or twelve years old.

All of them will know more about living in this city than I do.

On my first commute home from work, there are gunshots. It isn’t a good neighborhood, but it’s an excellent school. One of the best in the city. Half of our first cohort of seniors just graduated with full ride scholarships to undergrad.

And I want to help.

Yes.

Lentil soup with garlic bread. Yoga and push ups and crunches on the floor in the study. Music through the speakers. Baking Sourdough bread.

Last night was Yahtzee and chocolate and popcorn and fried pickles and Doctor Who. It’s been good.

Have done what feels like absolutely nothing over the past couple of days. Generally vibing with my partner, whose identity shall remain mysterious at this time. Last night we made grilled cheese sandwiches with basil, mustard, tomato, cheddar, and pepperjack cheese on rosemary bread. There’s also been a lot of red wine.

We are currently reading my old copy of The Princess Bride out loud. Alternating between watching a documentary series on the history of jazz music and rewatching Twin Peaks. This makes me happy.

Also got to visit some alpacas at a “fancy ass tea party” up at the farm. Happy to report that there were cucumber sandwich ingredients.

Had to wake up early for work this morning. There was coffee. I am finding that I like driving through the city on the expressways at sunrise. Walks after dinner listening to music, red raspberries and ice cream from a mug, flavored coffee with sweetened oat milk creamer, time in the shower, and a book to read at night.

I’ve started gardening again.

Pulling weeds for an older gentleman from church who often complains about his knees. He insists that the lily growing in his side garden is purple. I disagree, because it’s obviously pink. We argue back and forth about this for a while. He says his wife would have agreed with me, if she were still with us. She passed on of dimensia a few years ago.

Today I drove up to the farm, met baby chickens, greeted numerous cats, was stung by a bee, got dirt in my eye, and did not die of heatstroke due to the farmer’s attentive worrying. I cleared the weeds from around the blueberries and gooseberries.

Let go of every might have been and live for this moment right now.

Activities today included taking a nap, having a shower, wearing a comfy dress, eating rosemary sourdough with olive oil and salt, and sitting on the back porch looking carefully at a mushroom. Also clover and plantain.

Standing at the end of the pier at the northern end of the lake, near the college, in the company of probably the strongest friendship I’ve ever discovered. We got chicken sandwiches from McDonald’s. She blasted Taylor Swift in the car on the way home. I got red nail polish and she got a graphic t shirt featuring snoopy from the peanuts gang, from Five Below.

The air pollution from the wild fires in Canada blocked out the horizon at twilight. There were ducks. We watched the fireworks.

Another friend gave me sixteen bottles of wine. She’s just moved cities and lost her job in wine making this morning and now she isn’t sure if she’ll be able to make rent. Now I have sixteen bottles of wine, a slight headache, and also a belly that hasn’t been there since I was seventeen, but at least I’m eating again. Send good thoughts to a friend of a friend who’s having a bad day, please.

I think maybe I spent most of last winter entertaining this backwards delusional state of grace where everything made sense because everyone was secretly a little in love with everybody else and nobody was talking about this, especially not out loud. And maybe that’s what made it perfect. The not talking about it, the delightfully awful shyness.

Except I’m starting to think that maybe I was wrong. And maybe that’s alright. We move on with our lives.

I’m still grieving the way the stories I told myself made themselves make everything make sense. Back in January, I was trying to make tortellini in the microwave, of all things, only I messed up and got the timing wrong and wasn’t sure what to do and I had the meltdown of the year there in the kitchen and did not end up in the psych ward because when I got there they tried to take away my shoes.

And I was having none of that.

I can still hear my voice asking the security gaurd for my shoes back, please.

And that was probably the last straw, or the lowest moment, because there has to be a lowest moment before recovery starts to happen, before you start kicking your way back up to the surface. I think.

I’ve been listening to the Delta album, by Mumford & Sons. It’s fucking gorgeous, anyhow. Y’all should listen.

Tomorrow I have this intention to get up and drink coffee and make breakfast and go for a walk, in spite of the air pollution that has no business being here on the East coast, and listen to this album on repeat.

It’ll help me feel better.

My family adopted a dog and he’s going to the vet for some heartworm treatment, which could be rough. There’s a gofundme, which is helping financially.

As my dad put it, he is such a good dog.

Tent camping at Buttermilk Falls park in Ithaca, NY.

Hiked the gorge and enjoyed many waterfalls. Also stopped at Hector Falls by the side of the road on the way home for some photography.

Campfire with s’mores.

While visiting Ithaca, visited Liquid State brewery and got macaroni and cheese with green curry French fries and Cole slaw from a food truck called Silo Chicken.

Now we’re home and we’re cooking Italian food. Pasta, sauce, garlic bread, eggplant, meatballs.

Currently reading Arabian Nights and listening to an audiobook called The Story of Earth.

I don’t like smoking because it feels like drowning on dry land.

Still – earlier today I was sitting in the grass under a tree, smoking one of the Newports I confiscated from my sister. Weeks ago.

I spend a lot of time thinking about names.

A “new port.”

New settlement at the edge of the water, where sailors set foot on land for long enough to trade. New town, new city. New place to call home, at least for a while.

Which adjectives would you use to describe some new where, at the very beginning?

How to give a place a name…

Who’s out here doing the naming?

The folks who got there first. Or the folks who *think* they’ve gotten there first, anyway.

Sailors. Cowboys, cow herds. Astronauts. Folks who persist in wandering, who insist on having adventures without ever truly settling down, who aren’t at home most of the time. Folks who return after years at sea and find children who’ve grown so much in the intervening years they no longer recognize their own kin, except maybe the eyes.

Songs like “close your eyes I’ll be here in the morning” or “gentle on my mind” only exist because of this specific kind of person.

“You’re home! Tell me everything“

&

“You’re leaving again. So soon.”

I’m still at home, crossing off the days on a calendar that’s hanging on the wall the way my sister used to do that. Cooking, eating, sleeping, walking. Passing the time.

That’s alright with me.

I’ve never really wanted to leave home.

Wynton Marsalis, Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, Susan Tedeschi.

Leftover Chinese – fried rice with green beans from the freezer and sesame tofu.

Dry red.

Lemon sugar cookie scented candles.

That’s all.

…

given the choice between a dryer and a clothesline, I’ve never really needed the machine.

“Let me know when you get home.”

It’s been about an hour since my friend pulled out of the driveway, headed home after dropping me off from our day of shenanigans.

I still haven’t received a text to confirm that she’s alright, and I’m getting worried. Her destination was ten minutes away.

I send another text as a reminder, then lay in the dark for a while, staring at the ceiling.

I suspect she’s okay. Probably just forgot, got distracted. Maybe her phone is dead.

Still, I’m unsettled. Fifty-five miles an hour down a two lane highway, in the dark, in a car that sometimes creaks at all the wrong moments. And the deer are out in droves.

Imagined scenarios play themselves out, unbidden. None or them are pleasant.

Some time later, the small rectangle of blue light that is my phone’s screen illuminates the dark.

“Dead in a ditch,” she’s announced.

I do not throw my phone across the room.

I call her some rude names, which she deserves, and tell her that I love her before falling asleep.

Probably isn’t necessary. She knows.

Today a friend takes me out for vanilla ice cream in a waffle cone, a walk by the creek in the middle of town, a trip to a second hand store and the acquisition of a green corderoy button down shirt, a walk through the mall, grilled chicken and potato salad at her mom’s house, and Reisling and s’mores around a campfire in the backyard. Kept an eye out for bats. There were several.

Earlier this week there was an adventure out to Watkin’s Glen, for the waterfalls. Later on there was pizza and beer and good company. I got to choose the music in the car on the way home. Almost fell asleep.

I’ve been riding shotgun.

I want to remember this time.

Ian – I’ll miss rolling your cigarettes in the apartment that smelled like cinnamon scented candles over the art gallery on main street, eating chocolate pancakes at 3am, listening to vinyl Pink Floyd and Glass Animals records, losing at chess and arguing against your half baked devil’s advocate stances on philosophical concepts we would have understood better if we’d actually done the reading more often than we did. You are. the worst. and also my time here would not have been the same without you.

Jacob – I’ll miss the way you always spoke up in class with something to say, your eye for the artistic, your political awakeness, your charming conversationalist energy that could consistently be relied upon to light up a room, your desire for a better experience of philosophy, your strategies for how to make that real. One day I’ll be good enough at chess to stand a chance against you.

Emma – there are no words. I miss singing harmony with you. I wish you nothing but the best.

Anthony – I will never look at a scateboard without thinking of you and your yellow backpack. Thanks for drinking coffee and talking about writing with me.

Sky – you actual goddess from the shores of Greece. I love your shoes. Keep on making food that looks amazing. Best of luck to you in law school on the other side of the continental united states, you bad b. You deserve this. Slay, etc..

Moira – the energy you devoted to curating the philosophy club experience these last couple of years opened the door for some truly excellent conversations. Good times. Take your skills with artistic design and leadership and go forth and create something beautiful, please. I believe that you will.

Leila – I would have married you to the love of your life but you wanted our conspiracy theories professor to do that instead. this place will never be the same without your chaotic presence playing Stardew Valley in the department. I will never not think of your kisses when I hear that one specific Eric Clapton song. Until the day that I die. Some of these days I’ll have to hitchhike to long Island for a grilled cheese sandwich. I love you.

Remember that.

pronouns – they/them, more and more often. she/her if you say the words with all the reverence feminine energy deserves. ocational he/him from the cashier at 7-11 is totally understandable on butch days

gender – the one with the flannels (if I get a say)

attachment style – pdf

sexual/romantic orientation – usually accomplished with a map of questionable accuracy and a compass that doesn’t always point north

type – emotionally unavailable old friends, mostly

cats or dogs? – do not make me choose

quirks – anything you say in my presence can and will be written down in a fancy little notebook. might later become part of a story. words on the page are easy. the spoken word in the presence of others is usually stuck-in-the-back-of-the-throat complicated, unless it’s a topic of medium philosophical consequence and I’m in a room full of people, in which case I sometimes have Things to Say

style – just now learning how to shop for clothes and get dressed in the morning

neurotype – homeschooled! iykyk

physical affection ok? – trust is earned over time

walks? – heck yeah

dream job – perpetual monarch chrysalis

oh, so you thought trying to burn all of the bridges at once was a Good Idea?

nice going, you absolute nonsense human.

moron.

twat.

thanks so much for the light pollution from the smoke from your fires. Haven’t been able to see the stars in months.

trainwreck.

do you have any idea how frustrating it is. to call and speak with the engineers. to slowly begin the work of rebuilding the connections you decided to throw away on purpose. all at once.

dumbass.

(good thing the engineers in question still remember you helped them with their calc homework in college, or all of this would be so much worse)

anyway. they’re doing their best to rebuild in the aftermath

still might never be the same.

some of those connections were absolutely beautiful connections and now they’re –

well, here, if you haven’t checked in on them a while

you might need a drink of water and somewhere to sit down.

we are in the process of repairing and rebuilding and also it is going to take time. everything takes time.

meanwhile,

let me lay a plank of wood across a creek to make it easier for the message to get across

to both of those lonely ass braincells rattling around inside your skull.

the trees we felled for the purpose of rebuilding might still be standing if you hadn’t wasted some of these perfectly good bridges

you’re lucky that some of these people on the other side of distance between you and them are still willing to let you reach out

(more than willing, actually – absolutely dismayed when they saw smoke from your direction on their own horizons)

please remember that you don’t need to light the entire hecking forest on fire to keep yourself from freezing to death in the winter.

in fairness,

maybe it’s like – that one specific species of pine tree, I think, that can only make new trees in the aftermath of forest fires, because the pinecones containing the seeds only open when the surrounding temperature is hotter than blazes

maybe sometimes you need to do whatever it takes to stop your own blistered feet from carrying you back to the places to which you find yourself returning, over and over again, even when – upon not much reflection at all, really – you don’t actually like them very much.

maybe something new and important rises from the ashes, like a phoenix.

I don’t know.

Just –

Please don’t play with matches, anymore. not here.

_

[okay look when I said gaslight gatekeep girlboss those were not instructions]

–

It’s been almost exactly five years since one conversation and I still remember her name.

Lost one of ours, this year.

He did, too.

& I still remember another, around the beginning of the pandemic.

–

We’re adopting.

This one got abandoned in a parking lot in Texas. Good natured stranger picked him up and carried him home. He’s about one or two years old.

This one has the same white stripe down the middle of his nose. Same shape of the face. The resemblance is uncanny.

They could have been littermates.

So I think what this means is that the dog days aren’t over.

Not for me.

All I’m saying is that nobody will suspect that you’re regularly shoplifting from the arts and crafts supply store across the street from the grocers if you tell all your friends not to tell anyone that you moved to Washington and you work as an undercover agent for the FBI.

Maybe you moved to Texas and you work for NASA.

Maybe you never left, and you can’t see.

It really helps if you invest in a pair of sunglasses, some flannels, temporary tattoos, and a large and very curly wig that is roughly the same color as your eyebrows.

Why run away to the woods with a bag of rice when you could just grow a beard and change the spelling of your name?

To be fair, the woods are lovely.

Shout out to whoever is out here vandalizing the backs of the buildings next to the funeral home on main street in town with the graffitied letters of my grandfather’s name, in cursive loops of white spray paint.

What a strange true actual coincidence.

May the forth be with you.

If I ever happen to find myself in need a pseudonym, I might could name myself after him.

cried writing this.

To all of the children who’ll never exist

I think if I could leave you with anything, it would be this.

A true knight doesn’t need chainmail, a gambison, plate armor.

You will not require a sword.

Put away the leather.

Quit checking your hair, your skin, your eyes in the mirror. You look fine.

Can’t take them with you, anyway, not where you’re going.

the truth is

I think any knight worth his salt could march comfortably into the woods in a favorite old hoodie and faded blue jeans, the best good shoes with the worn out laces, finger guns, and all of the fortitude necessary to muster a smile.

If this reaches you, somewhere in the multiverse – across space and time and every tangled up alternative sequence of events, because Quantum –

Go forth.

Please have all the best adventures. I’ll still be there, when you come back. Stop home once and a while and tell me everything.

You will never be lost, not really, so long as you can still remember how to find your way back.

Yours, always.

“losing him was blue like id never known/missing him was dark grey all alone/forgetting him was like trying to know somebody you’d never met/but loving him was red….”

– TS

sunglasses!!!

the infamous grey Sebby jacket

ramen noodles with mushrooms

a souvenir from the grippy sock vacation which Definitely Happened.

The red wristband means allergies.

If it’s a gluten allergy, that would make me celiac.

As opposed to unceli – ack.

Sorry.

“Would rather die than give up the foods.”

Cowboy hat.

“Howdy, partner.“

SAND POINT SUB STATION call if you need a deputy. Alternatively you could just call a cab.

Lilac.

(Lack of lye?

For soap making!

Probably.)

It’s 5:30AM and I can’t sleep.

I’ve been listening to an audiobook and crocheting granny squares, twining interesting patterns from a random assortment of yarns. Might could sew them together into a tote bag situation, later on. I’m not sure yet.

Picked up the DVD sets of both seasons of a television show called Twin Peaks, over at the library.

(who killed Laura Palmer?)

Haven’t been writing much. Haven’t been speaking much, either. Without thinking about it, I give up my voice in exchange for something different. I experiment with other ways of communicating, other ways of being perceived.

For this round, I put down the pencils and the notebooks and the keyboards. More and more often I picked up a camera, instead.

Choose your weapon?

No, that’s not it.

Name the tools of your craft.

Which craft?

Witchcraft.

You know –

one of these days, I might actually learn how to spell.

“If I die young, bury me in satin

lay me down on a bed of roses

sink me in the river at dawn

send me away with the words of a love song

the sharp knife of a short life, well

I’ve had just enough time…”

One for sorrow

Two for mirth

Three for a wedding

Four for a birth

Five for silver

Six for gold

Seven for a secret, never to be told

“Wear them anyway.“

“who will save your sole, mate?”

…do I have a right to shoes?

“Wish I had a yellow jacket.”

“Wait in the car while I shop for groceries.”

The seats were fake leather.

Your feet didn’t reach the pedals, in the driver’s seat. Your legs were too short, back then.

While you’re waiting in the car for your mother to get back from shopping for the groceries, you have a couple of options.

Stare out the window and look at the brands of the cars, the names of the stores around the plaza. Parking lot observations – report back on what you see.

Read a book – from the children’s section of your local library, from a bookstore.

Listen to music on the MP3 player, the collection of music that matches the collection of CD’s.

Write in a diary – a diary that has a combination lock, so that nobody else can read it. Ever. Years later you’ll still remember that combination because it was yours. Not for anyone else.

You’ll start writing in journals without locks, eventually.

Your acquaintances will become characters in a story – a mostly true story.

Make believe.

Sometimes small details change, for the sake of anonymity.

Reading though the pages, years later, you’re not sure if you should believe your own memories or the things you saw fit to write down at the time.

You can’t listen to the radio while you’re waiting in the car because mom took the car keys with her “so you couldn’t drive away and leave her there.”

This also means that there is no air conditioning, even in the summer.

Sometimes she drove home with the windows down.

Never on the expressway.

Wouldn’t want to lose those receipts, my guy. Proof of integrity, or some such thing.

We didn’t have a TV at home.

There was a radio.

You knew all of the the FM radio stations where you could tune in without static.

Amd then – when they took y’alls measurements, for the dresses you wore at her wedding.

–

“Don’t write that number down!”

–

“heads Carolina, tails California…” 🍃

Character development.

“Tell me all your thoughts on God
‘Cause I’d really like to meet her
And ask her why we’re who we are…”

~ Counting Blue Cars, Dishwalla

What was that?

“Thou shalt knot steel?”

Perfect, thank you –