The Song Remains The Same

We're filled with something like shrapnel- but we're here and breathing and (some of us) watching cartoons beneath a bowl and we didn't do anything to deserve it so fuck us but also it's not something we should ever need to earn but somehow a guilt still stabs up and scrambles our brain like a cotton swab.

And we're the lucky ones. Wocka Wocka.

It has been a long fucking year. It has been a long fucking history, but, like- shit guys. Shit.

It has been especially frustrating to see all the familiar things you are not allowed to be frustrated at. I will tell you, without a something-the-police-would-likely-shoot-at of a doubt, that I could give less than an eerily nugget shaped shit who the superhero statured and superheroesque named comic scribe, Christian Cooper was beyond being the boy who miraculously lived. I could give an equally light lard drip about the whys and wherefores regarding Ahmaud Arbery's running route beyond the fact that it will never lead home again.

It is hard to find the hope, I mean, you can load up a White savior supercut of What Would You Do?, But that high lasts for twenty, thirty minutes, tops.

It is frustrating to find hope in the momentary swell of suddenly-give-a-fuck found across the internet knowing, just KNOWING how it will all go, as it always does, time and time again. There will be rage, there will be calls to action and swells of MLK speeches slathered across your feed, far from his January home like it was Christmas in July. There will be a calm, there will be a slumber, there will be a next time.

Nothing is weirder than seeing your waning mortality 'trending' as a topic and not like, a national emergency or whatever.

The question of how many more essential trips it will take to, you know, essentially fucking die, feels a bit self-absorbed. It persists, however. The police officer who only takes a break from hitting on the 'totes-into-it' cashier to keep a serviced and protective eye on me and the Dragonball Z t-shirt I'm folding, begs the question. The cruiser coasting not so subtly behind me from High St to far-from-fucking-high-street, before peeling off after I finish dropping off a Door Dash delivery, begs the question. All these questions and still the only one we get asked is “Why violence? Why would you ever destroy a Wendy’s!? Why is the hallowed temple of Auto Zone ablaze!?” Well, shit ain’t ideal, but you are listening now, aren’t you?

My wife and I watch Unicorn Riot's coverage of the protests in response to George Floyd's death. We stare blank eyed as plumes of smoke stack up and up and away. We are silent for the most part, even though something boils and whistles within while the camera pans over a dilapidated bank. There are lots of words scrawled in spray paint like, 'The only good cop is a dead cop" or, ‘Pigs’ but what sinks most are words written in white across the side of the bank, "Welcome back to the world," as if it were ever that easy to leave. As if some of us haven't been situated with a stay at home order from jump.

There is tear gas and there are bullets and there are hurts and there are old wounds.

Minneapolis, Goddamn, someone say a prayer.

Most of all there is the language of the riot, the rejection of the absurd lack of...anything in the wake of what was done to George Floyd.

I've seen the picture, I've watched the video, I've seen the other picture, I've watched the other video, and on and on and on. There is a high likelihood that you have too, and I am sorry, I am so so sorry. He calls out for help, for his mother for water for life for anything but what they bring to burn us. I'm sorry you had to watch officer McMurder smugly stab his knee into a human person as if it were the only thing preventing him from bursting free from his handcuffs. Thank god for our former slave catchers American heroes.

I'm sorry for the everything that comes after, for Floyd's friends having to endure inane questions on Nightline like, "You hear him calling out for his momma saying that he can't breathe, how does that hit you?" How the fuck do you think lady?

There's not even time to mourn before you are made a necromancer in conversations online and anywhere to humbly speak for the dead. It's 2012 again, and not even a full week after Trayvon Martin was gunned down. The dude who site next to me at work who wants me to be as impressed as he is that Boyz II Men is on his Pandora playlist is asking me, "But- and no offense here, but honestly, why are Black people so mad?" except this time we have Zoom.

Welcome back to the world, welcome back to being asked to explain the obvious recompense if your only gift has been fire.

Then there is the perceived cleverness of those White Supremacists that are, "Hunting joggers" during the protests. Then there are the shit posters that seek to realign focus under the pretense of civil discourse,

"But what was he doing in that neighborhood?"

"But was it a fake bill?"

"But what happened before the video started? Okay what about the one before that, and before that and what about his MySpace page fam?"

I'm pissed and I'm just fucking weary. We're weary- how many times do you say Breathe, Please, Stop, before they start feeling like nonsense words?

In Ohio protests were and are being held, too. While the CPD has its own cascading shit fire to dissect, it is succinct to say it has not gone swimmingly. On the first day of Columbus protests, Christopher Radden was violently detained by police and later hospitalized for being uppity enough to open carry his firearm in an open carry state. The fucking nerve, ammi’ right? Not that it’s surprising, or even new that a Black man legally owning a gun is a body bag in waiting while a White man with one is likely famished for Burger King though a mostly nice lad.

It's just- yeah.

My Mom was in healthcare like Breonna Taylor. A Black woman who decided it sounded mad cool to look at pain and say, "I'mma go try and stop that from happening everyday as my job," Like a fucking G. Breonna Taylor was an EMT during the rise of a global pandemic. Her thank you, her #Inthistogther moment was comprised of eight bullets in her own home by a group of thugs with badges.

Welcome back to the world, welcome back to the long jog, welcome back to sleep soundly but also fully alert in your own home, selah.

Anyway, I’m fucking exhausted. There's not really a call to action here, just a call to stay awake. Stay persistent since it sure as shit will never be a sprint. Stay in the knowledge that incremental genocide is happening everywhere and even if it is not enough, incremental change is more important than none.

Welcome back to the world, I hope you brought your running shoes.