Goddamn I am irritated. I am stressed. I am having a visceral teeth-grinding reaction to the day. The dogs are getting on my nerves, I’m shitting water as if I had too much to drink when I literally had no alcohol and went to bed at 9PM. Even though I really need a break from the dogs, the idea of being away from Worf for the night is so nerve wracking, let alone the ten days I will be traveling to see family. Man, we are flying Frontier, and I am already regretting that. Those motherfuckers deplaned like 200 passengers recently, talking about 1,000-dollar vouchers. On top of that they left with the luggage of the passengers they kicked out. I told Chase I am putting an emergency outfit for you in my carry on, because I do not trust that Frontier will be on their shit. The plus side is that it is an airbus craft and not Boeing, so the existential crisis on late-stage capitalism vibes will not be as prominent. There is the possibility more organized resistance against the genocide ends up disrupting our flight. It would be absolutely reasonable to miss a plane in support of ending despicable war crimes, but one still hopes it is not their flight. I plan for this, though, and mentioned we should be leaving a bit earlier than normal. Maybe 3 and a half hours earlier. Thankfully it is a red eye, so I don’t anticipate a lot of organizing at that time. My inconvenience is not more important than liberation.
I am very proud of the Global strike yesterday, people blocking the path to Chicago airport. There were several other blockades in the US such as Lock Heed and Martin among many. The strike touched every country, and it is a hopeful thing to witness our collective clinging to humanity. We will not be subdued to breathing automatons. We will stay soft, fleshy, eyes bright as a forest fire in the spirit of Elijah, Joan of Arc, St Lawrence, Thích Quảng Đức, Aaron Bushnell.
In Shambala: Sacred Path of the Warrior. Trungpa writes:
“If you search for awakened heart, if you put your hand through your rib cage and feel for it, there is nothing there except for tenderness. You feel sore and soft, and if you open your eyes to the rest of the world, you feel tremendous sadness.”
I do not know if I will be brave when the time comes. A wave of disquiet swept through me when I learned Ecuador raided the Mexican embassy in Quito. Lawlessness among peasants is so over-hyped, but lawlessness among world leaders—that is terrifying. About fear, Trungpa says,
“On the other hand, acknowledging fear is not a cause for depression or discouragement. Because we possess such fear, we also are potentially entitled to experience fearlessness. True fearlessness is not the reduction of fear but going beyond fear.”
I don’t know how much safety must pass through my fingers like so much sand, before dying by my own hand or at the hands of the powers that be becomes a reasonable response to oppression. Especially since my antidepressants started working 7 years ago and now instead of wishing for a swift exit from this mortal plane, I am actually scared to die. You win some, you lose some. Death is not so appealing anymore, now that I am even the slightest bit comfortable. My physical pain is not so intense, my emotional pain is not disembodied, but passes through me in a system of checks and balances that does accept bribes i.e. the sweet sweet promise of more shit coming in the mail because I can afford it. Usually books. I play a little game with myself, is it capitalism or Taurus things? I like fragrances, baths, incense, chocolate, slathering oils on my skin, lighting candles, anything thick with luxury is right up my alley, and this can be done in the back of a caravan, in a truck stop, or a trailer, I don’t care, I just want to indulge. But even with my processing skills, even with the ways I let grief and rage pass through my body and give it permission to stay for some time, I feel like setting myself on fire, or getting naked and on my knees at the voting booth is, again…reasonable. Capitalism and all it has birthed; racism, sexism, climate crisis, the theft of a life well lived to be chained to virtual survivability is exhausting, and a grief so thick it chokes. I look around for the thing that is causing my irritability, maybe my dogs, maybe the dry weather slurping all my moisture from the inside, maybe it’s Maybelline, maybe it’s genocide.
When Iran retaliated against Israel’s embassy attacks, and Palestinians in the West Bank started tearing down the wall that night, I was overwhelmed with emotion. We are so convinced liberation is real and we must have it. It reminded me of another gorgeous moment in history that happened the year of my birth, the tearing of the Berlin wall. This made me think of The Wall by Pink Floyd, specifically the ending to the track The Trial, where the judge and the children together chant tear down the wall! The album largely addresses German apartheid. Roger Waters has been outspoken about Palestinian liberation for a long time, and it felt synchronous. I ended up listening to that album the same day. The album means other things to me as well, like my father’s schizophrenic episodes at 4 AM when he would blast it a to lo que da. The song trickles in as a wispy echo whispering Is there anybody out there? battling whichever whisper was winning his beer marinated mind. It had to be louder than him. So, the whole house would shake to the base of his sound at a late hour, my hypervigilance in tow. He calls a lot, I don’t always mind, but I don’t always pick up. He called the next day, and I answered. It was awful trying to make it to school after one of these frequent episodes.
I was lucky to have such an interesting geography teacher in middle school. Mr. Koch, pronounced Coke, he’d say. His wife was the math teacher, and she eventually became the dean a few years after we graduated. I know because I ran into Mr. Koch at Barnes and Noble one snowy day in Boulder, when the girls and I were stealing a sketch book for Jimmy’s Christmas present. We printed pictures of our little group—the quad squad, glued them in the back, and we spray painted the cover in gold using a heart-o-gram stencil my uncle designed. My uncle Peter is a great artist. He spraypainted a Crass design on my leather Jacket in High School.
Mrs. Koch was amazing. I had a really hard time then, and she would let me eat lunch in her classroom. I would sit quietly and read. She would not move on from a math problem until everyone got it. Everyone would have these personal white boards for all of us to practice the problem, and we would raise the white boards with our answers only she could see, and she would come by and advise on where we are going wrong. She was brilliant. She seemed like the kinda gal that would eat her husband alive if she so much as got bored, but I also think she suffered from undiagnosed bipolar, which unfortunately translated as a bit abusive at times. It was very rare that she lost her cool, and for me not so shocking considering how off the handle my home situation was. I hope they are still together. He taught us about genocide, so fucking many of them; Myanmar, Sudan, Rwanda, the Sarajevo siege, Kony and his child soldiers, the guerrilla fighters in Columbia. Looking back, the curriculum could not have been district approved. It was the single most depressing wake up. But he was always excited, he knew things would not stay like this, with us informed and aligned with justice. We would figure this out. We are trying Mr. Koch.
Further reading