Local Weather XIII

What is there to say? The current moment is an infinitely-headed hydra of chaos and despair. There are so many personal hardships, profane statistics, and carpet-bombing judgment ready to lay on a populace made up of ordinary demons and angels and everyone in between. It’s exhausting and debilitating.

Yet the animals don’t seem to mind. Like a dog on a movie set, the animals can’t tell the difference between normal and this. The air feels likewise. The soil. The natural world remains so uncaring and enduring to this unimaginable disaster unfolding. The trees stay standing, the rain still comes.

There’s a joke among people right now — what month is it even? But it’s not so hard to tell. The air is so hot and humid right now you can’t tell if the briny scent is coming from yourself or a warmed-up gust tracked in lazily from the gulf. Downpours in the afternoon—hard and fast—followed by a litany of double texts from the city claiming no responsibility for the damage of the water.

The governor texts us too. And the mayor. And a particularly robotic account that tells us the caseload and death toll every day at high noon, with a note of admonishment or encouragement if the character-count allows. I get these so often I don’t read or notice them anymore when they come in, but I wonder if I’ll notice when they stop? Or if I’ll text STOP before it’s all over?

There’s not much I fear more than a loss of control. It used to be that a road trip or airplane was enough to send me into a panic. I often have nightmares of being locked in prison for a crime I’m not sure I committed. Every time I break a bone (I think I’m on nine?), the month or two immobilization of that particular limb pains me more than the pain itself.

That’s all to say — when will this end? Optimistically, we’re a quarter of the way through, yet I’m already breaking the rules, and I feel like the last to do so. The white people in my neighborhood have been holding get togethers and parties ever since the studies told us (obviously) that racial privilege still exists in a global health epidemic.

Every time I move to a new place I become more radical in my anarchist belief— something I’ve believed in longer than anything else. There’s something about isolation and loneliness that makes me daydream about how much better society could function.

And now, in this global what-should-be lockdown, the writing is on the wall, in hot pink, digitally-streaming, available-on-all-platform-letters so bright I thought it’d burn the retinas of even those with their eyes closed, but the people in power and privilege just continue to refuse the premise itself. There is no writing, there is no wall. Be quiet. You’re dividing us. You’re making it worse.

And what do you do with that? Especially as a member of this supremely privileged people? I’ve marched on the interstate, sent texts to my uncle, asked my workplace to fund antiracist training, talked to my therapist, yet it’s not enough, and I think that’s the point.

Still though, I have to remind myself that this isn’t my fault. That capitalism has created all this. That people aren’t naturally so awful, ugly, smugly uncaring of their fellow human. But it’s become a daily affirmation for me. I need to believe this because otherwise, my Lord. And if it’s not true, I’m totally hosed. What’s the point in being part of this species if this is who we are?

I just can’t believe that this is how people are — despite my long-festering, gangrene suspicion that these people I’m seeing are indeed standard issue models of humanity, no defects present. That there is no them, only us.

I just feel so let down. So hateful. I hate these people who give in to all these toxic, prejudiced ways of thinking because it’s easier than just simply acknowledging the injustice in the world. I hate that they’re the majority (and I’m sick of proving this with Gallup polls). I hate that my really myopic, base level, supremely partial understanding of the world is somehow considered woke.

There are storms every day and, now that I don’t leave the house much, it’s been nice to open the doors and windows and watch it flood the courtyard for an hour or so every morning or afternoon. I turn off the air conditioner and fans and just listen to it beat down on the plants and the brick. And then the sun comes and in an hour everything is dry—a new freshness in the air.

And as I’m writing all this, people are dying. Some of them I know. And others I know are getting shot at with tear gas and rubber bullets. Thrown in jail. Ostracized from their families for calling out what isn’t right, or simply being who they are. And so much else.

Of course, the people in power and privilege still don’t care. They’ve never cared. Intellectually I understand it, but spiritually, I just don’t. I just don’t get how a person can look at a chart of American COVID cases versus the world, American incarceration rates versus the world, American health outcomes versus the world, and not care.

I don’t understand how a person can watch any of the half dozen of videos per month of people killed by the police and not find an ounce of care in their bones. The aftermath of a drone strike. An impoverished tent city on the lawn of City Hall.

There’s a ticker tape of American violence and failure somewhere and it’s spinning impossibly fast, day and night—a de facto perpetual motion device — and the majority of the populace can’t smell the motor as it’s burning up.

It’s enough to drive a good man mad. I think that’s why they pretend not to notice. Why they make excuses. That denialism is their panacea.

I still feel so let down. My voice cracked the other day when I said, “I just hate America and I hate white people.” I didn’t expect such a trite sentence to bring a chill to my arm, but the truth has a way of doing that. Still though, I can’t help but feel insane at times, seeing all these people smugly dismiss the humanity of others. Casually accept the deaths of hundreds of thousands.

I know the odds of us winning are impossibly long—but you see, I focus so much on the devil I forget the angels right beside me. I forget where you are and where you chose to sleep tonight. I forget how the gift that is your tenderness, your regard, makes the long-shot of justice something worth betting on. How our shared touch turns simple survival into active resistance.

The air in this room we share is stale and humid, but I’m sharing it with you. Your body on mine is wet with sweat, but it’s your sweat, so I don’t mind. And I know the virus could take us eventually, but even if it does, it’d need weeks to do its work. That’s all to say — it can’t take us just yet.

No, we have this morning together, right now, and there’s coffee ready on the stove. I’ll get it for you, don’t move. Just stay there and wait for me.