The other evening I stopped to eat at a diner/soul
food restaurant after walking behind a traveling protest through a
neighborhood. I hadn’t meant to eat, but passing by Mel’s, it occurred to me if
any place had chicken and gizzards in town at that time, maybe Mel’s did. They
didn’t, but I got a burger and greens and mac-n-cheese anyways, and sat out
front eating, listening to the dude over by me talking about what he was about
to get into while his ol’ lady sat there as well. “We drinkin’ vodka tonight, she
can’t handle me when I’m on that Hennessey.” She shook her head. “Yeah, I get
stupid off that Hennessey.”
The protest ultimately was about racism, and had
built off a string of domino events that began with the suggested removal of a
confederate monument. Don’t really feel like getting into all that because the
past week has been very tiring, and in fact the resurgence of energies from the
week of this time of the calendar last year has also been tiring. We lived in a
police state locally, in certain sectors, and it left one exhausted from
hyper-awareness and fear. I lived in Richmond in the ‘90s during the height of
its worst murder rates, and had hyper-awareness and fear then, but nothing like
this. The fear of militarized police fucking you up is worse because you know
there’s no recourse, no institution to escape to. It is the institution.
I talked my ragged dirtgod shit style, flashing
them country dimples to the lady at the counter, and of course she laughed at
my silly ass. Finally had my food, chowed the fuck down, and after wandering
like 20 miles on foot that day, damn them greens and mac-n-cheese was
replenishing as fuck. I had planned on walking home, still another mile away,
but after all that, I was wiped out, so texted a friend who had said she’d give
me a ride if I needed.
Sat on the bus stop bench (always sitting on bus
stop benches it seems), and there was a poster for an upcoming show stapled
into the tree still living here in this non-natural zone, tucked into the
concrete and small businesses and not yet upgraded buildings to match the
economic monstrosities built a couple blocks further west. I felt bad for the
tree for a second, as I always do when I see things stapled into a tree. But
also trees don’t go out like that. One of my favorite things to find in the
woods wandering is when you cross an abandoned barbed wire fence that had been
stapled into a tree and the tree grew around the wire, eventually just
overtaking it so it looks like the wire belongs to the tree. An even more
favorite aspect to that favorite is when the fence is no longer a fence so it’s
just a piece of wire sticking out the tree and you realize somebody tried to
put up fences somewhere along the way, but nature took back over, and fuck your
fences, they’re gone now.
I want to be resilient like that, knowing the
fences are there, feeling them stapled into my existence, but still being like,
“fuck it” and continuing to grow and survive and in fact thrive and just
overpower the fence nonetheless. Resilient like a stubborn ass tree, working
fingers into the underground for water, and stretching towards the sunshine.
That’s my fuckin’ jam.
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