January 26, 2025

remembering was never recommended.

Today I learned about Kira Johnson Dixon. This weekend I learned about the self-imposed decision to cut materials about the Tuskegee Airmen and about the WASPs from Air Force boot camp, and then to reinstate said.

All this week I have been reminded of whose lives get to matter by default, and whose stories are considered canon, and whose rights are but fodder to be burned for political points.

Meanwhile, meanwhile, meanwhile.

Attribution

You like to think memory goes far back though remembering was never recommended. Forget all that, the world says. The world's had a lot of practice. No one should adhere to the facts that contribute to narrative, the facts that create lives. To your mind, feelings are what create a person, something unwilling, something wild vandalizing whatever the skull holds. Those sensations form a someone. The headaches begin then. Don't wear sunglasses in the house, the world says, though they soothe, soothe sight, soothe you.

— from “Citizen,” IV [To live through the days sometimes you moan like deer] by Claudia Rankine