To the sunrise

In a social justice training, 2018 probably, the person on the microphone let us know, this work wasn't supposed to be easy, or fun. She wasn't having fun. What she wanted was to have an island where the Black people could go and not deal with this shit.

"But here we are."
Trying.

And I wondered about that today. That mis-rememory, twisted over time. Memories are rebuilt proteins they say.

This moment we're in. Pointing at maps. Maps with different labels. Yelling.
At least I'm yelling. In my car. Tear soaked screaming on 97, my commute to work. Pointing at maps, drawing big x's here and there. The old man saluting them off the runway East. Republicans scribbling "Finish Them."

"Isn't that why we came here? To the last place? Having been run out of everywhere for raving. All those try-hards do, resent your smile. Ear to ear. In the face of unspeakable lost," Wiley writes.

We make our own islands I guess. Step away and see who comes with. Away from the erosion of continuous compromise. We gather our people. We want to know how far we can go when we are simultaneously seen and loved. Go inside. Who we can become. No raised eyebrows, the best of the worst. Violence. Nothing to reduce. Only to add. Who would we be then? Who are we when we are loved?

So the island of continuous becoming. Wherever that is for us. Wherever we can find it. Scrap together a hut and invite a few friends over to listen to records and drink cocktails made from the bottles you brought upstairs and and and.

لن نرحل writ on the limestone surfaces in Sheik Jarrah, "we won't leave."
"Find a place you trust and try trusting it for awhile," Corita Kent's Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules.

As if we can't understand the need for placed best settling as essential for developing.
"Nomadic groups," you say. "The corruption of competitiveness and illusions of ownership in post-agrarian civilization."
The daughter is passed from the father to the husband. Her title changes.

Caitlin and I talking about such a place.
"It's a hut."
"It's a shed."
"It's a shop."

On a parcel of land out of town. Or some rented warehouse. She's setting up lights and sound equipment. I've got bins of printing press material. Blow the dust off the office copier given to us by the nonprofit when they got the grant funding for a new one. Maybe they'll come for us someday. Watching Gaza. Realizing there's a force of evil so great we don't have the option not to work.

The work wasn't supposed to be easy. Or fun.

"But here we are."