let us stand together

The last couple of days have been so painful. News of another and yet another black person executed. No action taken until videos are leaked or protesters take over the streets.
The White House on lock down last night.
My own neighborhood the scene of chaos.
I want personnel change in November, yes I do.
I want systemic change.
But this isn't about me.
Please watch this powerful, motivational, emotional Killer Mike talk.

Yesterday

Yesterday I was all set to write about rain and unwatered lawns and the beauty of chaotic vegetation.
Then came a windstorm, power outages, an absence of internet, gashes of rain, and late in the night, desperate times for a good friend.
Today is better only because it is light, and I don't know whether the light can find its way through the darkness coiled around a frail human heart, blanketing and choking out all reason. I have wept and talked and begged and texted and called the authorities and run up friends and wept some more.
If only my buddy knew how many people love them, care about them, enjoy their sarcastic cackle and funny/sad poems and passion for sports and music. I've said it, I've texted it, I've tried to burn it into a fevered brain. But, I'm scared. There are other factors in play, chemical, genealogical.
Now, I'm afraid I can only wait.

stay woke

The news from Ferguson last night was not good.
Listening to the radio at my kitchen table reminded me of waiting for the OJ verdict twenty years ago, in a co-worker's car en route to a meeting, both of us holding our breaths, the jaw-dropping surprise us white knuckleheads felt when we heard "not guilty."
Last night as I listened to the prosecutor run down a painfully long list of defenses, it seemed clear that there would be no indictment.
My social media blew up. Speaking of knuckleheads, several of my Midwestern family members posted some pretty offensive shit. Mostly, among my friends, I saw disappointment, anger, not much disbelief, moms worried for their kids' safety, pissed off activists, plain-old-bewildered people.
I still feel sad and mostly helpless. The system is working as it's designed to, someone said today, and I realized she's right.
DailyKos had some good analysis:
--the questions no one asked
--prosecutor as defense attorney
I'm reading the documents released on the Washington Post.
And bits of this essay stick in my head:
--I'm deeply and profoundly disappointed and honestly lack the words to explain my emotions right now. It's a frustration in which a man doesn't feel much like writing. It's an exhaustion in which one has hoped just one too many times for justice, only for it to escape in the fleeting fashion that is sadly familiar in cases of young black men killed by police officers all over this country.
--I had hoped officers would be found guilty when they were found beating Rodney King senseless. It was on video. We all saw it. They were acquitted.
--I had hoped officers would be found guilty when they fired 41 shots at an unarmed Amadou Diallo standing in his doorstep. They were acquitted.
--I had hoped the officers who fired 50 shots into Sean Bell's car as he left his bachelor party would be found guilty. They were acquitted.
--I had hoped the officers who shot and killed football star Kendrec McDade—after they lied about him shooting at them first—would at least go to court, but the grand jury said they were justified.
--I had hoped the officers who chased Ramarley Graham into his home and killed him would at least be tried, but they weren't
--I had hoped the officers who shot and killed John Crawford in Wal-Mart would be cited somehow, but the grand jury found they were justified.
--Now, here we are, with a young man who ran over half a football field away, after a confrontation with Officer Darren Wilson, only to be shot over and over again.
--I had hoped Wilson would at least face these charges in an open court of law, but it will not happen.
Change is gonna come, another friend posted, with a link to Sam Cooke.
I hope she's right.

and around here we call it

I was talking to a trusted confidant recently about being spanked as a kid. I don't mean the occasional swat. I mean on the reg punishment, skirt hiked up, panties pulled down, full-on hit on the bottom with a ping pong paddle, a belt, a wooden spoon, a hand--hit and hit and hit until my father or mother deemed the penalty was sufficient. I wasn't allowed to cry, either, to "beller," as my father put it. Afterward, whoever had dealt the beating would read me bible verses and tell me they loved me, and then I'd cry. I felt so humiliated and ashamed and angry.
Spanking has been the topic du jour in the media the past few days, with a football player in trouble for beating his four-year-old kid (article on WaPo). That led me to bell hooks on Justice: Childhood Love Lessons.
And to this: why you should never.
Even the New Yorker weighed in.
So what about me, now? I don't know what it all means, exactly.
Except as my confidant put it, around here we call that abuse.

that voice

I struggle with anger and resentment. Does everyone? This much? I'm not sure.
It's like realizing you'll never see yourself as others do--you'll also never know exactly how anyone else feels.
Some work situations have changed and I find myself so confused.
I find myself actively disliking a person or two.
One person I've known only a few weeks. It feels like plenty. Like we could never ever meet again and I'd feel like we'd gotten as far as we ever would. Some days I feel like if I have to hear that loud cackle just one more second I will punch out my eardrum with a dull pencil.
What I should remember is that some of my best friends are people I loathed originally.
I think my default setting is a reflexive "get the fuck away from me."(With exceptions for dogs and kids.)
When I'm fighting with my fella--and we fight, oh my god we go at it--the words I hear myself yelling sometimes are the words I am telling myself. The inner monologue, the super critical voice that says I'll never be skinny enough or nice enough or a good enough writer or friend or sister, and that everyone knows what a hypocritical fraud I am. Man, that's scary.
I know, on an intellectual level, that I can't love anyone else until I love myself.
That just feels like a whole lot of homework. And I laid off my shrink back in January.