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Secular Sabbath

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

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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

g r o w t h a s u n f u r l i n g around what w

g r o w t h a s u n f u r l i n g around what was always there at the center

Not because I think it’s enough. But because I k

Not because I think it’s enough. But because I know it’s not nearly enough, not even close, and centuries away from soon enough. Because we must find new, creative ways to hit the streets, to put our actual feet where our minds and mouths are. Because apathy and inertia are two of the strongest muscles that the beast of racism bears. Because it makes plain my privilege, how the hardest part of jogging for me is just a bit of panting. Because it reminds me: this work demands we put our sweat and skin into it and sometimes grit our teeth until we get where we have to go, not just push buttons with our thumbs from the couch. Are we moving? Because if we — we white folks, those of us who are able-bodied and can do so safely — can’t at least muster up the wherewithal for a couple of miles on a Friday, then, well, no, we’re not moving, the movement isn’t moving anywhere. Because sometimes symbolism is a start. #irunwithmaud

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