Let everything happen
It's going to anyway. Beauty, terror, a world without police, poems and also Mimsy.
This week felt often like pushing through fog, only the fog isn't fog at all it's a swamp, and the swamp keeps murdering people. It has been, at times, excruciating to move through this world that we've made—knowing how cruel it can be, how dependably violent—and to keep at our daily routines and do what needs doing, again and again.
My loves, it has been a struggle, and if you have struggled too, please know that is an appropriate response. We are over a year into a pandemic that has altered every minute of our lives, grieving the millions who didn't make it this far, wondering what could possibly come next and how it could get any uglier.
There are days I don't know quite what to do with myself. This week was pretty much made of them. I did what I had to, maybe too little else. Slept poorly. Stayed in bed too long to have a proper morning and help me take care of me. Worried about my small dog. Read too much of what angers me and not enough of what soothes. Tried and failed and just kept trying to articulate everything I believe, believing if I could say it all, maybe I’d make some sense of it.
I believe in abolition, which is to say: I long for a world that has not yet existed, that must be dreamt into existence. The dream is a future without police and prisons; the question—what else, then, must be true?
I believe what e.e. cummings said, exactly the way he said it: Always the beautiful answer who asks the more beautiful question.
I believe, more every day, that all things are always changing.
I believe we don't totally know how to take care of the world or each other. That this is by design. And I believe that if we're willing to strain through the muck and the unholy mess of us, we can keep sorting it out. That it will take a million little experiments. That we're bound to fail, spectacularly so, so we must cherish every win. That we know nearly nothing. That there's so much to learn. That a year from now will be profoundly different, and probably too much the same.
I believe in possibility. And that there's nothing but the present. And also time isn't really real, is it? Just like money, which is viscously evil, and also I'd like some more of it please, not more than I need, just enough to live generously and however else I'd like, which is untethered from anyone's expectations, and also inextricably intertwined with everyone I've ever known and loved, and everyone else I don't know.
I believe we cannot possibly know what we don't yet know, and I believe this makes me wise. Which makes me foolish.
I believe I'll be dead and, with any luck, a wonderful tree before I make any sense of anything, let alone everything, still I believe I'll likely die trying.
I believe that at least every other instance of the word "but" might as well be "and."
What I'm saying is even though this week was truly just horrible, awful, a trucksucking bucket of weeping buttholes, that many other things were true as well.
I wrote as many (bad) poems as there were days, and also a couple of good ones.
Had a wine with Ariel on the internet.
Sarah brought me figs and dates and fatayer.
A big box full of Kyle’s book arrived! While Jim was visiting too!
I screamed in the streets with the homies, got home safely, got to make a grilled cheese sandwich before logging into the prompt workshop and doing whatever Sofia told me to do with whatever words I had left.
Had a poem published, which is always nice. Here, I want you to have it.
This one sprang fully formed into existence at one of Sofia’s workshops (which are free and also public, and hosted by The Luminaries, a dope ass poetry collective). They told us to write an ekphrasis on a Bad Bunny video and so that’s what I did. You could do it too, if you want.
Everything happens so much and always. It helps, this habit of hitting pause and trying to write it down. Taking the weight of all this being. Trying to ask a more beautiful question. Believing we’re worth the effort.
Okay, just one last thing before you go.
Today is the rebirthday of my small (tiny) blind (deaf) dog Mimsy, who shivered into my life eight years ago today, somewhere in the ballpark of eight years old. It's impossible to know. Maybe she's 16? More importantly, she's alive, she's alive, and with me still, and wonderful, simply marvelous, my gorgeous ancient friend who I know, more every day, will not live forever or even that much longer, certainly not long enough, and yet exactly as long as she’s willing, which is the perfect length of life I think.
I think I’ve done alright by her. I think she’s liked our life together, and likes to be alive. I like to think so anyway, and anyway here’s an old short film about the first time Mimsy ran off leash, eight years younger than she is right now and only half as blind. It was a good day.
Alright darling animals. I leave you tender and loving this Sunday morning to celebrate what I can and today that’s mostly Mimsy. We’ll do all her favorite things. I hope you do yours too.