"Nearby is the country they call life.

The left photo is of Essex Hemphill, on the title of a collection of his poems that was published this year called Love Is A Dangerous Word. I am slowly making my way through it, and feel stilled by the expression on his face. It feels like he is really looking; gentle and insistent, very much awake. I feel stilled by so many of his phrases throughout the poems, the quality of this gaze lives in them too.

The right photo is the character Richie from The Bear, a scene in episode 8 of season 4, after he receives Fak’s insecurity about working in such a fancy place. The way that Richie held space for him was gorgeous, really quite wrenching. He witnessed the fear and interrupted the internal narrative that was driving it without judgment, and offered encouragement. He went as far as to tell Fak he’s beautiful. The sincerity almost made me flinch, felt miraculous.

Love is a dangerous word. Love asks us to risk, love thwarts control, the status quo, love softens “the ragged edges of our corrupt inheritance.”1 Love asks us to pay attention, to actually look at each other—to display tenderness from within a desert of it (Toxic Workplace, White Patriarchy, fill in your blank), to hold each other’s vulnerability (like Richie did) with precision and care. His generosity made me realize that I had not been thinking of Fak as a real person, no one in the show had taken him seriously until Richie did.

Our bonds are serious, life happens — life is where we show up to our obligation to witness each other in this way. Robert F. Reid-Pharr shares in the foreword to Love Is A Dangerous Word “The last sentence that Essex ever said to me was ‘Take care of your blessings.’ He said it often, regularly sending me on my way with the sound of those bright syllables ringing in my ears. That day though, I heard something new.”

Bright syllables, bright eyes, here in the country that grows from regard.

if you are in New York City — come to What Else? Comedy Toward the Solidarity Economy on August 1st! if you are not, tell someone about it! cross pollination :,)