joy, conflict, smart people + how I read poetry/T.S. Eliot is overrated

**The following is horribly sad and you will gain nothing from reading it. The only part of this post that sparks joy is the pictures.**

Bots and babes, 

Derek Chauvin's conviction was a victory in some ways, and not in others. This guilty verdict needed to happen for George Floyd's family, for the country, for every organizer and protestor who dedicated hours and hours into making this happen. I'll admit I was conflicted for all the wrong reasons because I have a lot of unlearning to do but also because I believe in the abolition of prisons and still want Chauvin to rot in a cell. It's complicated--no surprise. Thankfully, the world is full of brave people who can articulate this conflict. (I also have very patient loved ones to thank for their willingness to hear, explain, dissent, and care.)

Thank you, Sean Collins. 

Chauvin being incarcerated does not mean other officers currently facing charges, like those who killed Rayshard Brooks or Daunte Wright, will be convicted, nor does it magically remove the threat of further police violence and misconduct.

It’s this reality that has led even some of those who have held up the trial as proof the system can be trusted — like the president — to say some reforms must be made. And for others to call for an extensive overhaul of policing. Or for others still to argue for taking police out of the picture altogether.
Thank you, Reginald Dwayne Betts.
If justice is a 40-year prison sentence for Chauvin, I’m left to wonder if justice in this country will always be synonymous with a prison cell. That’s a troubling thought. Because prison cells have never made this country safer. I won’t make this verdict an occasion for me to pretend that the criminal justice system is just and the rates of incarceration in this country don’t profoundly worry me. The verdict makes me want to imagine a different United States, one where the undercurrent of so many lives isn’t violence. Because I know when death comes, we all tend to want prison. And, sadly, maybe that’s all we can want, even if at night prisons make none of us sleep any easier.

Thank you, blessed photographers of the world who manage to capture very powerful seconds of life...




So when I say I was conflicted for all the wrong reasons I mean that my little pea brain didn't give George Floyd's family the space to rejoice in this verdict, to feel seen and heard and like their beloved's life Mattered. This internal conflict is not invalid, but it is disappointing to me in hindsight. 

on a related note...

When everything is confusing and I'm failing to see something I shouldn't be failing to see I return to poetry. I return to poetry often. And because I think about grief all the time and because "grief" is an entirely insufficient word to define life-altering experience/s and because grief is not a what but a world of its own, I find the best thing to do is read.  

poems that used to bring me comfort and now make me inexplicably angry: 

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot...observe this lunacy. 

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Dude, seriously? There will be time? GTFO. Your name sucks.   

Literally anything by Walt Whitman. Don't even get me started. 

reading instead: 

Broken Horses: A Memoir by Brandi Carlile 
High Country News to remind myself that the planet is dying (see also the aforementioned "discussion" of T.S.) 
The Wild Fox of Yemen by Threa Almontaser (this book just popped up in my mailbox. Very cool.) 

and on the topic of poetry...

In case any of you robots were wondering how I, a highly educated rejection specialist, read poetry then let me explain. 

I like to approach poetry with utter obtuseness. Unless it resonates with me immediately, I don't really think about it. For example, when I read this line from bad boi T.S. the first time 
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
I thought to myself how profound, yes, there will be time. But this thought no longer serves. Now, I am reminded of this morning when I woke up and my mother told me her friend was coming for tea in 10 minutes and I thought to myself how unrelatable T.S. Eliot is. I had to shower, get dressed, and fix breakfast in just 10 minutes. At this point, I also considered the Time's Up campaign and death and all the books still left to read and all the books that haven't been written yet and the time I waste on thinking and the time I waste on not thinking and the fact that the planet is dying and the fact that people of color, and people living with disabilities, and people living with mental illnesses, and people living with drug addiction are dying too fast and how all of this seems to suggest that there is, in fact, NO TIME. 

So now that we all hate T.S. Eliot, it's time to go to bed in preparation for the next shit show. 

xo,
BLT 

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