LOVER

NO WAR

You still hold all the things you ever wanted to be, but for now you are a body in a bed, divided by impossible stairs from the life that still goes on below, a body on a bench, waiting to catch its breath, almost able to reach out and touch the life that continues an arm's length away, a body moving through the slow soup of time, waiting. Waiting -
.
.
.
#disability #chronicillness #longcovid #CFS #Fibromyalgia

We anarchists have this profound faith that human beings are capable of thinking and acting for themselves, and putting that self-determining impulse to good collective use, toward self-organized forms of freedom for all. Not that humans will necessarily, inevitably, or naturally do this. But without this belief that it’s a possibility—or one could say, a potentiality within humans—anarchism makes almost no sense. 

Still, there are times, violent and vicious, that shake our faith to its core, like much of this pandemic era, when it’s been too easy to slip into a rage at individuals and then whole categories of them (well placed as that rage may be), and from there feel despair about what humans as a species have done to this world. 

We anarchists can be an impatient bunch, though—wanting others to see what is so self-evident to us, through our lens, and think and act sooner, now. There is, after all, a lot at stake. 

Perhaps more than impatience, there’s this imperative we feel so keenly: Why should more people have to suffer and die? Why does it too often take someone themselves feeling a cop’s baton at a demo, or someone themselves having a boss or school board that cares little for their health and well-being as long as the grocery or school stays open? 

That, alas, is a tension within our faith; learning to do-it-ourselves might entail first learning lessons for oneself the hard way. 

So we anarchists need to be all that much more giving when people do reach a point of thinking and acting for themselves—whether they sport a circle-A or not. We know the trauma it too frequently takes to “get here.” And suddenly it seems, there are many, many anarchistic humans who are now there—walking out of their schools, staging strikes at their workplaces, organizing solidarity sickouts, and even if still embryonic, refusing to return, whether to the old or now new normal, instead turning toward forms of collective and autonomous care, and toward freedom. 

Our faith, my anarchist friends, needs to burn brighter again, so those who are rising up in greater, bolder, and braver numbers can find warmth and aid in our solidarity. 

1. Every frightening thing

   every cruel thing

   everything that I thought made me less than

   everything that I was too scared to talk about,

   the ceiling, when the unimaginable was taking place

   the ground, where my face was planted

   everything I thought would alienate me from my fellow human

   all that I tried,

   all that I feared was weathering me on the inside

   the dissonant blue notes of the soul

   and the things that I dread

   make me a softer human, a stronger human, more dynamic in love,

   an urgent artist.

    

2. Every frightening thing

   every cruel thing,

   everything that you fear makes you less than,

   all you shudder to bring about in thought.

   The missteps, the black cycles, the humiliations,

   everything that you think could alienate you from your fellow human/

   from the world in general, everything that could/should have broken you up into pieces

   has already increased your capacity in another avenue,

   (whether or not you have found it).

    

    

3. Sometimes I consider the purpose of shame. I think of shame as an intelligent mechanism for keeping us good and quiet

   trapped precisely where we are,

   where we have been. Will we beat ourselves up over yesterdays circumstances? Will we allow others to do the same? Will we continue doing it to each other? Will we call ourselves the things we were calling ourselves last year

   even when they are no longer true?

    

4. Usually, words make things easier. I’m a convert. It helps to have a thing to call yourself, a one-person cult in which to belong

   a drum to beat

   a scripture (of sorts.)

   AND

   What is true of language is that it must evolve. Be sure that the world you built with your words is large enough. Test it, see if you fit. If the definition needs expanding, now is the time. You, too, are changing shape.

    

5. I cannot stop giving thanks for all that I thought might kill me.

   I’m deadly serious. Every day, I find new bones;

   strangely enough, they are all mine. They were old forms, necessary forms, essential bodies. Every month I find a new swell of truth;

   how can this be? Are we endless?

   Is this one of the twisting mysteries of life?

   I’m in love with the terror and beauty of it.

Carnival has begun

is it new

Baked a banana nut bread

Made a butternut squash curry with green beans, onions, cashews, coconut milk 

Made a pot of basmati, a giant salad of arugula and radishes, vinaigrette of apple cider vinegar, olive oil, flaky salt

Ate an orange, put the peel in vinegar to make orange essence cleaning solution 

Peeled and cubed a pineapple - exotic tropical fruit! Drank a ball jar of nettles infusion from nettles I harvested last summer with big beekeeper's gloves - the sting! Cleaned 

the kitchen, fridge, bathrooms. Shook out rugs, scrubbed the sink, changed the bed linens. Bed smells like wedding cake and lavender. Played the piano. Wrote five pages, meditated 

Amazed at the quiet 

No m80's exploding outside my door, no anti-anxiety medicine

O the turning of the earth around the sun, o time

Nothing changes on New Year's Day

We are alive, aren't we now

here to go

She wasn't a virgin and they weren't white!

this is gonna light UP! Happy Christmas, Happy Solstice, we live to die, gotta give it away to fly, let it burn

Honor the Winter solstice, the longest night here on the land ... may I digest the nourishment from the seasons we've gone through this year, dropping the leaves of what no longer supports me, so that new buds and leaves have room to unfurl. May the fruits that have emerged against all odds from the focus of the energy that courses through me grow seeds that are vibrant and strong, filled with hopeful seedsongs that will nourish those on the not so distant horizons. 

May I move into my wintering phase to tend my spirit fire in a way that feels within my means, that invites in the deep rest that restores the memory held in my marrow.

May you find that sanctuary, as we slow down into a love poem of collective care.  May all that grieves inside you find outlet into beauty, falling upon snow as brilliant seeds to come.   Blessings to you all in this Solstice season, may you be held and supported  in all the ways that you hold and extend care to others