I’m just trying to survive, and I can’t survive without community. It’s become so apparent when it’s not there, in the absence of.
Thinking about my seeking the warmth of community and finding myself both figuratively and literally locked out in the cold. Thinking about conversations with strangers… it was so amazing to have real conversation with strangers in the bookstore the other day, but I haven’t gotten it out of my head – the woman who just kept saying white people have no rhythm, can’t dance – “I mean it’s true, you put a white person in front of a drum and…” idk it kinda bummed me out. And I guess white people have been slandering blacks for ever, and far far worse, so in the sense of balancing all that out, she should be talking like this about white people. Just kinda hurt my feelings. And I could sure as hell prove her wrong. Ima prove all the fuckers wrong that say I can’t do it.
I’ve wanted in life to seek connection through culture, and have found a sense of lack in my own as a white american. I know the color of my skin has people act a certain way toward me, that I have privilege, privilege that I don’t totally understand because I have a hard time remembering what life is like in a different body. I feel exhausted by the intensity of identity politics in San Francisco, and the things I agree with politically are also what separate me from being involved in the communities I love most, being involved in the celebration, involved in the music.
I am grateful for my family, and it is our story, our ancestral story that I have. I can not feel sorry for myself, though it disappoints me that in this life, I have not had cultural heritage as more of a foundation of self. I have never related to being a whit e american, the history of colonialism, as a kid you read about where you come from – and white people just have always being the oppressor – the bad guys. And though my lineage is predominantly Czech, Portuguese, and Eastern European mut – we have the Czech family recipes which I am so grateful for, still here I am in america, caucasian on the paperwork, stuck with a cultural community that is not particularly one I have ever wanted to belong to.
I remember as a child connecting more with the plight of the underdog… my childhood years were not easy, and I mostly found myself looking out the window wishing for a happier life or someone to play with. My mom struggled as a single mom who worked full time, and I need to remember in my frustrations of overcoming personal struggles to be kind in my thoughts towards her, she is quite incredible – she gave me art, love, and spirit, and was trying her best raising a child in conditions of financial duress.
I believe it is because of my outsider-ness that I have taken it upon myself to seek meaning in the details around me, to be among the universe, to interact with the elements and the essences of the world that don’t speak verbally, like a sort of secret communication. I guess this is what I would consider god, this is how I have found to communicate with the universe, how I have found to seek meaning in what could otherwise be an empty world.
The connection that I have to my heritage is distant but I am glad to at least have some story with the Czech people, a beautiful & oppressed people who’s art and architecture were demolished during the second world war. I will never forgive the Soviets for that one.
I fell in love with Prague when I first traveled there as an adult, but Bratislava saddened me – to see the destruction – the grey Brutalist architecture in contrast to the few ornate buildings left standing of the old town. Such beauty destroyed – despair and ugliness built up in it’s place.
It is no wonder that there is such a quietude in the air of Eastern Europe. You can feel it’s silent potency, I remember the feeling when I first stepped out on to the streets of Prague – crisp, exquisitely beautiful, the scent of literature and art, sadness – a sepia cast of a deep never-forgotten sadness in the air, a memory of beauty and life lost that has never been fully recovered from.
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I have had a hard time associating as an american at times in my life, and especially in regard to the politics of this country. I love the small handful of melting-pot cities, the music, the natural expanse, I’m just not so sure about the rest. Politics were always a part of my family’s dinner conversations, my grandfather was an ex FBI agent gone Green Party, and I became quite politically active when I was in high school, especially after 9/11. I remember that day – watching it happen live on the news in my first period civics class (of course).
I became pretty horrified watching the political aftermath, watching the events occur on the timeline one by one – the Bush administration propagandizing fear and using the “act of terrorism” to weasel in some pretty fucked up legislation – the Patriot act of 2001, which has paved the way for a no-apologies surveillance state – no-apologies surveillance world.
Now it is all coming up in the news full circle 20 years later, everything we are seeing now (or everything we aren’t seeing now) about journalists being targeted by the CIA – through internet profiles and such (the recent case I heard about – the CIA agent’s name was Rambo hahahahahaha – couldn’t get any better), and then there’s Julian A***nge facing espionage charges for doing his patriotic duty as a journalist – to be extradited into the hands of the CIA who have been allegedly plotting his assassination all this time. Gotta make sure to set an example that free speech is no longer allowed here, or anywhere.
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Sidewalk sidenotes:
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[[Overheard conversation clip, people walking by – something about a little girl who had asked about / or wanted to believe in heaven.]]
X: “You can’t tell her not to believe in heaven.”
Y: “I just told her that we don’t know what it is or if it exist.”
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the bag on the ground, said – Eden with an arrow pointing that way.
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“You and maybe me” were the words scratched into the sidewalk this morning near 24th where I walked with my laptop and go-cup of coffee before finding a sunny residential staircase to write.
I can’t help but think of 6 years ago, seeing just before my Mexico journey – “I fucking love you” written in giant chalk words on the pavement,
this had been my closing statement in a text to a friend, a response to him saying – “I hear you are about to have a life-changing experience, love you, can’t wait to hear how it goes”.
Two months later, after returning back to SF I recall seeing tagged on the bus stop “I kinda like you”. Scenes float in from the room in DF where his friends told him about the Kinsey scale, that he might reconsider the spectrum of his love and attraction – that maybe he also liked women.
He had gotten back together with his rich ex-boyfriend – the one he had gone to the hospital a few times over. They ended up getting married. So it goes. That was a lesson I had to learn – to stop falling in love with gay boys.
In part, when I see this today on the ground, I think about the game, how it does seem to have moved into double jeopardy round, energetically speaking. Not fully even knowing what this means, I do know the nature of the game, I always have.
And in this sense I could find disappointment in myself for having still not surrendered tobacco. But I have learned to see the ways in which tobacco has supported me through difficult times when I haven’t had a lot of support elsewhere, so in this way I have been able to let go of the guilt that I have held on to over it. I have been doing good things for myself, have been implementing the positive, have seen myself let go of other habits that I have wanted to shift, and am in fact feeling healthier than ever before in my life. So I’m doing something right. My family did something right. I have something beautiful to create and give as a gift to the world. And though I am going through the body of the beast regarding the poverty and feelings of separation I experienced as a child – the roots at the core that I have needed to see honestly in order to move through – I have been working hard to dismantle in my heart what has been preventing me from accessing love and security.
I think of the quote I walked by yesterday, one of my favorites – “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” – Rumi
