There are politics to death / and here politics performs / its own autopsies
There's an active shooter in Austin today, still at large at the time of writing this. Three people are dead.
Three people in Kenosha. Eight people in Indiannopolis. And everywhere, video of Adam Toledo.
Grim jokes about getting your second vaccine shot so you can die in a mass shooting. Nature is healing through gritted teeth and tears. This is fine. This is fine. This is fine.
Not all stories are ours to tell and sometimes even our own feel inaccessible.
What's the story here? Is this even a story? How are you keeping this story straight?
Maybe filtering all this--gestures broadly at everything-- through the lens of narrative is part of the problem.
This pandemic has had a beginning (we'll be back in the office in a few weeks and in the meantime panic buy toilet paper) and a middle (sourdough starters aand maternal rage) and no sign of an ending (have you heard the one about the tragedy of global vaccine distribution?)
No hint of a sign of an end to the deaths.
To keep going, despite that, despite this, despite everything, is the journey. Heroes are scarce these days.
Attribution:
Four hours I lay there,
sun at my back,
my blood running a countrymile between the pavement
and the crown of my head.
Officer, no ambulance ever came.It took a long time to cover my body.
There are politics to death
and here politics performsits own autopsies.
— from Testimony (for Michael Brown, 1996-2014) by Hafizah Geter