I don't want to bore you my trouble*

it’s a strange time to feel so loved. i got surgery on my knee the week before last and the fellas have really shown the hell up. the people who worked at the surgery center were charming. i feel delighted and reassured by the people in my life, the people who i’m learning from, the people who i’m organizing with. yikes talk about tone deaf! just kidding….mostly…..

existing right now also kind of feels like this:

more or less lit up and hanging by a thread, walking along as if shit is not completely upside down. i’ve been asking myself what on earth the people who we elected could possibly care about. i don’t get very far because it feels like they don’t care about anything other than destruction. i need new questions.

for days now i keep hearing this exchange from Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris

interviewer: But I mean, everyone’s been in love…

Baldwin *interjects* : Has everyone been in love?

interviewer: Everyone’s had a love which has been threatened, don’t you think that so?

Baldwin: Not on the basis of the evidence. If they have, they’ve forgotten it. You can’t prove it by me, that everyone’s been in love. If everyone had been in love, they’d treat their children differently. They’d treat each other differently.

elsewhere, Baldwin wrote:

“Children can survive without money or security or safety or things: but they are lost if they cannot find a loving example, for only this example can give them a touchstone for their lives. Thusfar and nofurther: this is what the father must say to the child. If the child is not told where the limits are, he will spend the rest of his life trying to discover them. For the child who is not told where the limits are knows, though he may not know he knows it, that no one cares enough about him to prepare him for his journey.”1

another question: have the people choosing such immense violence been loved? safe to say the answer is no, or not thoroughly enough. feeling uncared for, alone, quickly breeds panic. maybe destruction is one way people try to quell panic. the unloved children are trying to find their limits it seems, and we are all paying.

a question I heard, that gave me pause (good sign) is what can I offer?

if you’re in the NYC area, i’m hosting a show on February 28th - What Else? Comedy Toward the Solidarity Economy - we will laugh a lot and ticket sales go to the Cooperative Economics Alliance of New York City. Come! Or pass it on!