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Secular Sabbath

Highlights from a weekend at Two Bunch Palms with Secular Sabbath:

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Saving this here, from my stories. And, the precur

Saving this here, from my stories. And, the precursor: now we know how the #womensupportingwomen challenge started. But as the trend exploded in the U.S. (and elsewhere) in one mere day, its foundational aims were decontextualized and thus distorted. So, yes, I do think there’s some important truth in the criticisms: as it continues to play out here in the current context of this country, this “challenge” is unproductive and unseemly at best, and at worst, **harmfully impactful.** So, some stuff that’s been rolling around in my brain today, to consider for next time... Anything you want to add?

What if returning can be a re-turning, as in re-tu

What if returning can be a re-turning, as in re-turning directions, re-turning the tides, re-turning over a new leaf? I stopped posting here when the #BlackLivesMatter protests started, because we all have more than enough access to empowered white voices. If I want space to be made for the voices of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, then…well, I have to clear space. And, a lot of what I write, what I’ve always written, is intended to provide comfort and grounding. I want to soothe you, to settle you, to remind you who you are. This is both generous and selfish: I soothe myself, too, when I manage to assemble words like tiny blocks in precise patterns to build capital-m Meaning from what hurts. But I’m not interested in writing for the sake of white comfort right now. It doesn’t feel right to remind my fellow white people that we’re all allowed to nap and recuperate and try again tomorrow. We’ve always, and I mean always, and I mean ALWAYS been granted the most reminders (even against the backdrop of capitalism) that we’re allowed to try again tomorrow. You don’t need me to tell you this. Maybe what you do need is for me to share where I’m at in my own process: I am learning to be stern, angry, messy. I’m learning that I’m tough enough to wrestle with harsh truth and not just in, like, a cute way. In ways that bruise me. That produce *actual tangible consequences* in my living relationships. Maybe I CAN still remind you who you are: better than this. Braver than your discomfort. Get over yourself to get into yourself. Keep going. This is me keeping going, this is me sharing in the way I hope is right while also relinquishing the attachment to perfectionism because that. is. white. supremacy. too.

I was slicing strawberries for your 27th birthday

I was slicing strawberries for your 27th birthday cake while you, brows furrowed and elbows perched on the table, wrote a poem for Breonna Taylor, who should have turned 27 just a day before you. I love the way your heart works. I love how you see the world and tug me along with you, loosing salty tears when appropriate and laughing with glee at the glimmers of good. You are a bright light in a dark time, and I’m so lucky to be here with you, hands bloody with only strawberry juice, savoring what’s sweet — not to avoid hearing what hurts, but to listen deeper, to look at it all. Happy birthday, mahal ko. Thank you for being every inch of who you are.

You’re still becoming who you are. You’re stil

You’re still becoming who you are.
You’re still becoming,
You’re still
Here, a collective breath.

In this stillness, there’s been so much movement

In this stillness, there’s been so much movement. There was the concussion from the mini cooler that toppled too fast and too hard, and the healing that has happened in its own chaotic jolts in the days and weeks since. There was, when quarantine first started, the jostling of hangers in Lauren’s closet to squeeze in my rushed selection of shirts and pants, the piling of my books on the edges of her shelves and of my potted plants around the perimeters of tables as we made space for me in her apartment, and eventually there was the swabbing of every U-Haul surface with alcohol wipes, the sweat dripping, as I moved everything out of my old place. Then the sorting out of what’s next, and now the fast-surrounding blockades of boxes as we prepare to move again together. We pour beans into pots, clackclackclackclack, to soak; whir basil and walnuts to pesto in the blender. I hike. Run. Jump to press the “off” button on the smoke alarm that repeatedly shrieks at the scent of vegetables roasting. I cram my iPhone notes with what always feel, as I type them, like striking epiphanies about the direction(s) I want to steer my future. Crisis does this: it accelerates the Tetris game we’re always playing, working to land our values and desires and needs in alignment. I am trying to keep up with myself. Or with my life. Or are they the same? Maybe I’m not trying to keep up at all, maybe this is just the pace of things, the way the flakes keep swirling through a shaken snow globe when you set it steady on the dresser. Maybe quarantine was never meant to mean stillness. Maybe the shifting never stops. #dianacamera #filmisnotdead #captionsbywriters

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