Month: February 2017

People As Places As People

With a young child, you can’t skip any holidays. They are making cards at school, learning history, preparing surprises. Even if you think some of them are based on complete imperialist fabrication or others are the commercialization of a fantasy that messes up our expectations for real life. For example.

So, today we’re expressing our love for each other and remembering what that means and what we want it to look like. Traveling the globe, sipping coffee in plazas and squares in the cities of the world, hiking volcanoes, sleeping under the stars, combing the beaches. In early middle age, all of that seems both less possible and less desirable than it did when we were 20.

What we love now is time with people who make us laugh. Sitting around drinking our own coffee and swapping tales of the times we traveled and slept under the stars. Realizing that if we had only a little time left to us, we wouldn’t be getting on a plane. We would be right here.

We’re the places that we wanted to go.

Message Of Love

Three weeks. We have survived three weeks under the regime and it’s clear that our very survival–our persistence–is going to be a victory. Our health, our families, our commitments to each other and our values: all are being tested and, if I’m honest, fraying at the seams a bit.

What have we accomplished?

In the past three weeks, many of us have done more in service to the cause of justice than in our lifetimes up to this point. More calls, more marching, more speaking up. We have awakened the feeling of power when millions of feet and bodies–or thousands or hundreds or dozens–take to the streets and raise voices together. Once a body knows that kind of solidarity, it is less content to sit at home, to wait and see.

We are not yet living under martial law, despite repeated instigation and chomping at the bit to get us there. We have shined a light on Democrat complicity in this shitshow and forced them to vote as a block, a first for this Senate or any of the past few. We have inserted our bodies and our cameras into the dark workings of isolation and deportation and we have slowed the gears. We have dissented, vigorously objected, defended what is precious and important, what make us who we are.

This week, I am packing up Christmas, a much belated task that my child still manages to relate in the same tone in which he would let his father know I was inside killing puppies. As I gather up the cards full of so many beloved faces, I remind myself why we do this. Why we fight and also what we lose if the fight consumes us.

The roses that we fight for are us.