hope bleeds slowly from my mouth / into the dirt that covers us all
I have been thinking about Britney Spears, and the absolute horror of her conservatorship.
I grew up in an era in which pop music was defined in no small part by Britney; her videos were events in themselves. What a strange thing to know someone who is roughly your age has been living through a nightmare for more than a decade.
What does it mean, really, to believe women? Is belief any good without agency?
We can study up on disability justice and we can interrogate the assumptions we build into the products we ship and we can dismantle the laziest and the most harmful clichés in our coverage and we can ask ourselves over and over again whether we are, in fact, the baddies.
What does it mean to be good stewards of a planet on fire?
Watching the temperatures in the Pacific Northwest and wondering how we move, collectively, from half-hearted (and misinformed) household recycling attempts to neighbourhood, city, and statewide movements for climate adaptation and resilience.
What does it mean to be an ally if our support is contingent on being liked by the people who are dying because of our (in)action?
Attribution
the sun is a blister overhead.
if i were alive i could not bear it.
the townsfolk sing we shall overcome
while hope bleeds slowly from my mouth
into the dirt that covers us all.
i am done with this dust. i am done.
—from jasper texas 1998 by Lucille Clifton