small kindnesses, repeatedly. this morning i stood in a deli waiting for a breakfast sandwich and the person behind the counter prepared a beer in a brown paper bag for a person experiencing homelessness outside the window.
June Jordan has an essay collection called ‘Some of Us Did Not Die’ — published after September 11, 2001 in which she wrote — “And I got to thinking about the moral meaning of memory, per se. And what it means to forget, what it means to fail to find and preserve the connection with the dead whose lives you, or I, want or need to honor with our own.”1
i was in a room this morning in which we held a minute of silence for those fallen during september 11, and it made me think about war. and it made me think about those fallen during the Iraq war, during the global violence the american military inflicts upon so many people in so many landscapes. and it made me think about blame, and it made me wonder why people with the emotional literacy/technology of toddlers have access to nuclear weapons. and it made me think about all the elaborate justifications we have for cruelty.
the pain we’re in. who can we hold responsible.
were i to be sleeping on the street in new york city i would probably want a beer at 10:30 am on a sunday. were i to lose a dear one unexpectedly on a tuesday in september just after the 21st century broke i would probably want to distract myself from the relentless, unflinching rage with bombs and gunfire.
and. vengeance is a lazy form of grief.2 which grief? i keep coming back to this practice of enthusiasm because i want it. i want to practice it— devoted to the god or divine or unexplainable that breaks through. because it’s “late,” and it’s necessary, and i love.
i look for doors. could i tell somebody about ruthless loss without blaming anyone for it, could i imagine that it could be held. the fear without weaponry, to trust without calculation.
we’re laid off, we’re rejected, our most important people are dead, and we are breathing still, wanting more, wanting life. good god.
children. hurt feelings. lay down the premature death, it won’t soothe — but you will.