the stories, the poems, and the objects I make myself when life’s labels aren’t big enough to hold it all
Hello again,
It has been a while.
It has been a year of many internal revelations for me and I’d like to talk about it a lil’. In the midst of all of the wonderful and horrible realizations of the end of this year – realizing just how much my comfort in western life is built upon complacency with the death and displacement of people and families all over the world, realizing my nation state is still investing my money in new ways mimicking the dark historic tendencies of its oppressive ancestors, leaving peoples lives ruined and histories lost – I have began to ask myself “what am I doing?”, “How am I living”, “What is my life reflecting?”. I live a rather small life. I try to be kind and I feel that the people that surround me try to do the same, but, as I reflect on this year, I am finding that kindness requires more than polite smiles and wishing others a happy holiday.
I want a truer, more beautiful future, and that requires my life to change in many ways. I am not fully sure what all of those ways are yet. So much must be fought for, and so much must be fought against, and I am not a fighter by nature. I am looking to do things that, not only challenge the complacency and greed that blankets the bed that I lie in, but I am looking for the seeds of the flowers that build the roots and bridges to a whole community, a foundation that upholds the beauty I believe the world is capable of. It may not be possible to build a perfect world, but I know that, as we dismantle a crooked past foundation, we also must be building a new one that can support the dreams we desire, or we will continue to create on crooked ground. We can dismantle systems, but what are we building?
I do not have answers yet, but I am starting to write the questions, and searching with curiosity. “As we divest from greed, how do we invest in collective care?”, “as we end histories of disenfranchisement, how do we build futures of enoughness (<- not a real word)?”, “as we close stories of trauma and destruction, how do we begin stories of healing?”. The dreams we have for our futures remain dreams if we do not build them.
A small life is not an insignificant one.
I am not a fighter by nature, but I try to remember the things that are worth fighting for, and build more space for a future filled with the permission to dream and to heal upon a stable foundation,
In my lil’ corner,
In my lil’ life.
ByAnotherName 