Of Two Minds

i am breaking open. i am breaking open. my cells ache to break apart. this corporeal manifestation longing to be dust. i'm not sure how much more i can transmute. a musty filter in a decaying house. i'm not sure how much more i can weather. a dry tree sweating against wild fire. every bit of my willingness strained to avoid rotting or burning up without any awareness what is in between disassociation and fury. i want to offer you something to help you keep going. i want to offer you something to help me keep going. i want to write the words that bring understanding. that invite love. that breed courage. that melt hatred and fear. i want, with gentleness, the goo of transformation, the digestion of the parts of ourselves that now only wound, that now only inhibit, that we do not need. the transformation of white supremacy and manifest destiny and doctrine of discovery and nationalism and all these confused ideas, naïve misunderstandings of purpose held onto into an adulthood arr...

You've just finished a small Mother-in-Law in your backyard/a sunny basement apartment/a tiny house in your ample side yard . You built it because you had the time and the skills and you wanted help paying for health care/to pay real rent to the Duwamish/a white person to pay you reparations .  You live off the 5 so I can visit my baby nibling without transferring busses/the light rail so I can visit my family in Tacoma/somewhere in sight of a lake so I have people visit me there .  We see each other often/infrequently/sometimes and when we do its usually because I'm weeding your garden/offering you raw desserts/bringing my bike in when you're heading out .  I am typically early to bed except in the Summer. I keep the yard tidy and my music playing is getting better all the time. I'm more than happy to check on your pets if you're on vacation or home late.  You let me paint the walls and plant my own plots. You are generous with your resources and take responsibili...

Rush Limbaugh is a relative of mine. A very, very distant relative. I have never spoken to him and I am certain as I can be that he didn't know I exist. I only know we are related because my great uncle is a historian of "pioneer" history which includes our family. Anyway, I remember learning that he was my grandpa's third cousin (or something like that) as a kid and -- knowing only that he was some measure of "successful" -- being sincerely appalled that he wasn't doing anything to help me and my cousins pay for college. ba dum ba. For reasons I don't entirely understand, I feel compelled to claim him. I have no interest in denying or downplaying the very real harm he willfully ignited or his commitment to moral decrepitude. But I very genuinely hope he finds peace. May you rest May your heart break open May your fear become ridiculous to you May the hatred you gripped tightly now slip through your fingers May your deceptions become heavy to those w...

Sheryl opened her eyes to another bonus morning. She could hear the rain running off the sides of the roof. It must be really pouring! No matter — it’s not like she need to travel to her meeting.   Over the past several months, she had become accustomed to the short commute from her “cozy” bedroom, past the kitchen to pick up some coffee and coconut yogurt, to her desk that she had moved into the window nook as soon as her job went virtual. She’d been in the same apartment since 2007 but she still surprised herself when, clutching her coffee, she looked out to the busy street below. Her friends in Seattle used to joke that she must be a New Yorker with all the black in her wardrobe. Was it ironic that it was in New York that she learned to play more freely with color? In this new life, she never married.. you know, after the twice in her first life. It was all the same to her. Her child, Al, had suggested that maybe she was asexual? or grey romantic? Maybe. Anyway, Severus, she ...

I give thanks to everything  that  took this breath before me.  I seek remembrance that we are one.  Please send me the willingness to let go of my fears  that  I may wrap myself in Love.  May each step be guided by Collective Liberation.  Save me from selfishness and suspicion.  May I honor the Universe within and without. --------- day 22  #pandowrimo  @adriennemareebrown  Post pandemic, how are we envisioning and creating collective/communal living? -  @lettuce.bee.free  

I’ve met you before.  You scared me. I learned not to trust you. And now you come to me hand open as though I would take it You come to me  Fully Aware   — you seem to suggest — of the Hell you dragged me through And you say  we need each other. That my salvation  comes at the cost of Forgiveness. I am only angry  because  I know you’re right. I know you’re right  because  I’ve been telling you to Fuck Off  for years  and I’m exactly as scared as I was. So ok. I’ll try it your way and see  what happens  when we join hands.  -------------- Day 23  #pandowrimo   @adriennemareebrown  So much broke when the sickness came. So much unraveled. What was mended in that time? Socks? Relations? What was woven anew?  @yourfriendkat  

“Pareto Optimality” is the “virtue” upheld by economists that positions growth as the only salve for material suffering. “Methodological individualism” is the lens that positions individual productivity as the only method to arrive at growth. And now we can tell ourselves these lies: I - It is my responsibility to sacrifice my well being such that others might have enough  (it is necessary that my life be unsustainable) II - If I have enough — or an excess — it is because I have earned it.  (a sustainable existence is only justified by earning it through a system known to be racist, sexist, ablest, classist, etc. but believed to be meritocratic) III - Our economy must grow to guarantee there is enough, but if the impoverished don’t capture the spoils of the growth, the fault is their own. Our teachings help our students believe that they are only worth of the necessities of life if they can afford them … and that they must sacrifice the few remaining uncommodified necessities ...

now we call them the foolish prophets, the misdirected, or to combine two old economist jokes: the dismal philosophers. but at the time they were the keepers of the dominant paradigm. it is unknown, still, how many practitioners believed their own teachings or if they lived as jaded puppeteers, shooing away most with integrals and expensive textbooks while inviting the rest into a lucrative life time of blue button ups and platitudes. scarcity had long been eradicated, but was obscured by the assumptions within the sacred texts. the keepers of the dominant paradigm asserted that we lived in the best possible world and, in this utopia, there was not enough. the puppets (then called politicians) made sure to remind the populace of this fact in times of high misfortune while also passing resources to the beneficiaries (banks, mostly). by the end of The Invisible Age, the hypocrisy was lazily concealed but this way of life was so entrenched that the cycle continued on far beyond its unmask...

clairsentience.  (the new experience of the word near.)  in the silence we got stronger. without physical contact or hearing breath graze nose hairs; watching pixelated impressions of eyebrows bumble across smudged screens,  we strained to understand the meaning— the feeling behind words  arrested by spotty connections. so our capacity to understand grew.  in the open space,  6 inches around our bodies,  where pedestrians would have been abruptly changing direction. the open space in our armpits kindly trying not to face your nose on the subway. in these open spaces that had once been full, sensations erupted. i felt your fear and held it in my shoulder. you felt my gratitude and twisted it in your fingers. i will never forget  the first hug i felt through zoom.  as time wore on, the silence filled up with lovers quarrels, worries, frustrations, needs. neighbors, roommates, coworkers, family ...

Pain is a signal from our bodies to tell our brains that we should probably check something out. It is also a reminder that, after we have addressed the issue, we are still in repair and should not overdo it. This pain is helpful. Thank you, pain. Sometimes pain lingers and treatment is not available or available treatment is ineffective. This pain sits and reminds you to do a task that can’t be completed. Sometimes, pain continues even though there is no evident reason for it. This pain reminds you to do a task that doesn’t need doing. This type of pain is harder to thank. But its existence cannot be changed. Do you remember that time your hand got slammed in a door and someone asked if you were okay but you couldn’t respond because there were only red diamonds and magma light? There wasn’t much to do about it but eventually that pain faded. Do you know what you would be like if it didn’t? Can you accept something you cannot thank? How many impossible things can you believe before bre...

without tests and treatments, we remembered how to listen to our wise bodies. wise sour stomachs whisper for peppermint and ginger. wise nervous systems call for skullcap, turmeric, and pepper. wise feet take our wise backs for walks. wise hands planted rosemary last spring that they may now crush sticky green needles in offering to the tension in our wise temples. ha! and then we remembered to release the tension in our Temples. movement offerings to align our chakras and cleanse our meridians. meditation offerings to rest our minds and stretch our spirits. from each according to their ability to each according to their need we healed. abandoned by “the health care system,” we sought diagnoses in the wisdom of our bodies and treatment in the generosity of the flora and fauna about us. this wisdom has been cultivated through so much careful, measured research carried out over centuries… millennia! — the long way — the slow way — the way things grow when we are patient. sustainably. har...