The seeds for a lot of wild shit were planted during the abyss that was the Marchaprilmay quarantine, and now we’re all wondering what fruit it’s reaped. One roommate baked the bread and got a therapist. One lost a job and got quieter. One (this one) made a bra out of sliced potatoes and got in black bloc. Welcome to 2020! Pick your player, then buckle up for a period of almost alien self-confrontation.
Now, seven-ish months later, New York City feels somewhat re-tethered to its old ways: Restaurants reopened, picnics unfurled. Certain elements (i.e. increased foot traffic, museum appointments) returned – only now the bar is in the bike lane and there’s talk of holding group yoga classes in individual bubbles. No one wanted this SimCity existence, but here we are. On the cusp of the US presidential election, life feels more fragile and transparently classist than ever.
I say this knowing it is a privilege to be exhausted rather than dead or ill. It is a privilege to take the time to stew in existential shower thoughts while America’s underserved BIPOC communities are being disproportionately harmed by both the coronavirus and the current Republican Party, especially, as Amanda said in the October Newsletter, in conjunction with the recent “belated racial reckoning.” Republicans and Democrats alike have a long history of racist policy building, but the president’s track record for racist comments — from his 1989 full-page ad to “bring back the death penalty” for the Central Park Five to his signal to the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” this past September — has given white supremacy groups a green light for aggression. It should be no surprise, then, that we’ve seen a spike in hate crimes as a result.
How do we move forward during what folks are calling “the final season of America?” I think that depends on how we feed (or squander) what we’ve discovered about ourselves during quarantine. Personally, I’ve started “parenting” myself with more patience and honesty. I’ve built relationships through mutual aid and activism that have consequently reshaped my cityscape (i.e. brain-mapping by police precinct), where I put my energy. In sum, I think I’ve gotten closer to what intersectional and interspecies-centered feminist Donna Haraway calls building “kin” and not just blood family. For example: In a Donna world, we would have words for both children who have lost parents, and parents who’ve lost children. We would be able to adopt our friends. We’d pick apart the Nuclear Family myth until we had a batch of fresh, sparkling confetti in its place.
These bonds will be more of a lifeline than ever this week, and definitely help to prevent my sanity from tailspinning amongst all the electoral uncertainty. Perhaps it goes without saying, but Alice and Amanda make up such a beloved part of my kin, even oceans away. So I ask them: What does it mean to move forward when you don’t know where you’re going? MFK
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Mary Frances asks:
What does it mean to move forward when we don't know where we're going?
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