Have you seen a shuttered store lately?

I sat next to the bath tub and watched juniper flopping around with absolute bliss in the water. Her hazel eyes and smile were lighting up the room. There is something about that stupid fun of being with a toddler. It can make a lot of things better, even if you feel completely broken by trying to keep it all together. It’s that sort of time when the clock completely dissolves, and yes, it’s as cheesy as saying that it’s like Dali’s The Persistence of Memory. 

Then I remembered the hundreds of kids in Palestine that have been killed in bombings. Then I remember the hundred of kids that died in the war in Iraq. Then I remember the kids killed by “payloads” delivered by remote piloted reaper drones from some dusty shed in the desert southwest. I felt the immensity of the weight of grief come over me, hot and despondent. I dissociated for a moment, sitting there spiraling out. Here I was having a moment with my child, the sort of moment that has been ripped away from so many people by bombs sent from the Israeli far right governments or my own government. This is the deep guilt of the dumb luck of being born in the imperial core. This is the difficulty that comes from not being able to be the answer to this decades-old question that has haunted my entire life of when the bloodshed will end. 

I can feel the vibrations of those grieving families all the way here in this bathroom. There wailing shakes the very firmament upon which our little house on the hillside rests. Its palpable, this feeling, even from thousands of miles away. The heartbreak is almost too much, but I turn toward it. I let the keen scream forth from my own inner recesses. I crack open there, knowing what losing this little hazel-eyed goblin in front of me would do to me. Having give up hope long ago, I have no spell that I can offer that everything will work out. No, mine is the solemn lament of the powerless that just steels the wills of those who are able to survive with whatever I can offer. Survival is the only hope in the face of a power trying to wipe you off the face of the earth. Mine is the fiery heart that seethes with righteous indignation that such horrors can be perpetuated and hisses at the warmongers. Speak the truth and let the losses hit you to your core. Let it break you. You owe it to those sweet innocent children killed in a bomb strike. This is societal death work.

I snap back into phase and move on with the bedtime routine. Lotion, Jammies, sleep sack, hair brushing: my dad never did this for me. He was carried away by the “Horror story, Real American horror story” (its a lyrics from chatpile’s why) of late stage capitalism. He was either working or watching sportscenter while my mom did this for me. His mom died last week. In our text exchange, I encouraged him to take some time off to grieve. He responded, “You make a good suggestion to take some time to rest and grieve.” He is husk, sacrificing himself on the altar of capital. I am nothing but a stranger to them. They are proud of the the person I was 15 years ago when they last knew me.

I will not doing any explicit death work for my dad’s mom. I will recognize her death, but will do not explicit workings for it. There will be no candle lit. There will be no offering to sacred death on her behalf. I will not remember the date. I will not make arrangements to attend the funeral. I don’t offer such things for people who left my father a husk. I don’t offer such gifts to those who cautioned family members against interracial marriage. The generational trauma she wrought ends with her. We make no apologies or explanations for the errors she made; we just devote ourselves to not repeating those mistakes. This is my own personal death work. 

Have you seen a shuttered store lately?  I have been riding past this shuttered dollar tree lately. Apparently, dollar tree is closing hundreds of stores because of “too high rent.” Their margins are so thin that they cannot pay normal rent increases. I love that in this instance dollar tree decided to salvage the letters on the side of their building too. Like, their margins are so thin that they have to re-use some green letters for another store somewhere else. They, or the property owners, boarded up the windows, because glob forbid, someone gets in and takes some flockin’ two-years-gone cow tails, deeply discounted knock-off, disney memorabilia, or just takes shelter from the cold. 

These sorts of discarded places are always so full of life, because no one is around to gatekeep who belongs. It’s fitting that life continues to teem in the burial ground of a business that epitomizes the type of “buy low in bulk, sell a wee bit higher in bulk capitalism. I have seen folks parking their trailers to duck the cops, who are looking to enforce ordinances related to folx experiencing being under housed or homelessness. I have seen people lighting cigarettes and waiting for the bus. Everyone that is a part of that world stares at me while I look at the building. I don’t belong in this world, the world of huddle silences and hungry glares. I never overstay my welcome, the dollar tree graveyard isn’t my place and neither is it’s graveyard. I’m just an observer passing by, watching the various dramas unfold.

As a person who notices death all around me all the time, I struggle with knowing which deaths are those I should focus on. Should we focus on the genocide, the NATO/Russia proxy war, or any of the other slow burning disasters that are right in our backyard? For example, should we continue to raise awareness about the 645,000 people who died from an opioid overdose in the last 20 years? How should we handle the deaths of the 244,000 folks that died with COVID as a contributing cause in 2022? Should we continue to grieve for those who we lost due to climate change induced super storms and flooding? How about mass shootings—there were approximately 600 or so of those last year? I don’t have an answer obviously. I just struggle with it a lot. 

Honestly, I feel like I am in a grief pinball machine. The extent of the death drenched times we live in and the accessibility of news and images about the tragedies makes it impossible to escape. With each fresh tragedy, we are like the pinball being slapped by the bumpers, catapulted through a unique maelstrom of grief. With each fresh tragedy, we must not only process our feelings but render those feelings visible in tangible actions and words that others judge based on the performance.  It feels like we are swimming upstream against a different completely intractable leviathan of a social problem each week. I don’t know how folks can keep up their outrage and energy to act against all the governments, businesses, and religious institutions that are doing such harm. Me, I’m worn out. I am sure many of you are as well.

So, what do I do in my worn out state? I feel. I just feel the unbearable weight of the grief. I don’t let it crush me. I just push it uphill like Sisyphus each day. I bare witness to the deaths. I ensure they do not go un-noticed. I do the difficult work of trying to keep them all in my practice and spell work. I stay focused on the forest of death as much as I can to keep the full scale of the death we are experiencing in sight. I do little things in my writing and posting on my pirate radio station on social media that add to the chorus of folks denouncing the evil of genocide, colonialism, racism. I support my friends who are questioning these things too. I offer mutual aid to those effected by these deaths. I always feel like I could do more. I never feel like I have done enough. I suppose that is the point of resting in the tension between being an individual and pushing back against the giants of social structures. Individually, it will never be enough until we create our own alternative structures from our coordinated work.

Ok, update on business stuff. I have my LLC filed and now need to go get my business checking account next week. Once I do that, we are a green light for subscriptions. It’s kinda wild to be at this point. I know it has taken too long, but I guess that is just the way it goes, right? Welp, we are about a month and a half later than I would like, but who is excited about subscription options rolling out next week? Is there anything I can add to my offerings here that would entice you to sign up for a membership?

All my best, dear reader,

James

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