gentle mechanics to mine ear, mine eye
till thy force doth move me
My mouth has gotten me in trouble again. But I’m better at apologies that carry weight & actions that move differently. I’m less encumbered by certain egos that fraternized within previous selves. I am always itching for a new language anyway.I don’t wish harm but I got a predilection for provocation. Still, I wish for arousal, not agony. I can get a bit careless when feeling so cushy.
Presently, I’m glad to have articulations more complex than fatality for the first this calendar year. My futurelessness has taken a shape, a collaged collision course I am to transit. My latest weariness is shallow & familiar. My heart breaks into regular pieces. Petals from the everblooming daffodil. One of my mommy’s best lessons was to acknowledge Love’s expansive. I inquire, here, about the chemical properties of Love as matter. Does it change form with pressure? We know it’s in the air. I’m in love as usual & everything still hurts. All warmth showers me clean of this life’s worst of it. I submit to palpitation first, then gut.
Outside of the heart, my skin & teeth are grieving the violence white people are leveling against marginalized folks in this nation, most recently the publicized murders of the 8 Asian Spa Workers in Atlanta. The historic links to xenophobic rhetoric & legislation against Asians immigrating to & living in America trace every feature of this attack.
As the pandemic began, many Americans (white & otherwise) were quick to parrot archaic tropes of orientalism. Paired with increased pubic violence against women (of color & especially Black /Trans Women) this attack speaks to the multi-pronged insidiousness. Not to miss, the police immediately victimize the living shooter.
The living evil memorialized before the innocent slain. Like Dylan Roof, the flagrant slaughter of People of color (& in both cases Women in particular) by a white man is misconstrued & misreported. This cycle exists to perpetuate violence. Calls for solidarity must be from a genuine place. So many don’t actually understand empathy. Remember Soon Park, 74, Hyun J. Grant, 51, Suncha Kim, 69, Yong Yue, 63, Xiaojie Tan, 49, Daoyou Feng, 44, Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33, Paul Andre Michels, 54.
Related, the familiar trend of Black intelligentsia theater framed as community building has saturated my timeline again. Internet activists with liminal real-world networks continue to fabricate acclaim & audience through incendiary frameworks of unevolved, & often mutated, readings of foundational texts/traditions. The celebrity around activism is disingenuous. The untethered tactics of teaching these urgent ideologies become self-celebrating colloquy disguised as theory.
As a personal essayist, I’m confused at the lack of self these first-person post-wokes write up as a passable politic. Such obviously optical illusions infused by a perceived radicalism industrial complex. Do these Blue Check(& adjacent) writers, thinkers, activists have home bases that they turn to & rely on them? The predisposition for being in the national conversation decentralizes possible impact.
Now the loudest advocates eating good & those being advocated are left houseless. & it be your own people. It’s wild to see normative & toxic intellectualizing being reproduced by new voices. The grift is harder to call when the con artist is someone you want to feed regardless. Verbiage & vernacular become vehicles for slaughter, capital, & clout. Nothing is sacred, nuanced, or unknown. Accountability is Schrodinger’s song, you only hear it out of tune & behind closed doors.
I sometimes miss keep up with the times, but this is as close as I’ll get. Again, Proximity to the pulse. I’m trying to submit to pressure. Remember my antagonistic penchant with a wink.
timeless and timely, in the heart and on the mind. thank you 🙏🏾