When Things Return

Today I went to work and found a sweatshirt I had categorized as "lost for good" hanging on a hook in the coat room. I have been to the coat room two times a week, every week, for the past long time. I went into Fall thinking I had a shortage of hooded sweatshirts, that my two favorite patched-up-grays were gone, and I hated it. I hate losing things because I try not to have anything I don't love. Also I feel disoriented when I lose things because I don't understand where they could have gotten to.

I think the sweatshirt was there all along. Tom said maybe it was one of those things where when you need it most, you find it or can see it. I wanted to pretend that someone had taken it home and used it and then returned it, but I don't know who has the slyness to do something like that here.

While I was working, something else returned to me. There's a children's book that caught my eye, called Unite or Die. It's about the thirteen colonies coming together to bring about the American Revolutionary War. "Unite or Die", "Unite or Die", why did that sound familiar? Oh yes, I remember.

I went to hear Angela Davis speak in New York this summer, in a room of 2,000 prison abolitionists. There were two other speakers, including Vijay Prashad, talking about why we need change now. Prashad's work focuses on the effects of a global economy on people around the world. I am currently reading his book The Darker Nations: a People's History of the Third World. It's really hard to parse out. It's really dense and hard to hold. But the easiest thing to grab on to, that Prashad emphasized again and again during his 15 minutes was, "We need to love one another or die." We need to love one another or die. It's that simple. I'm glad I came back to that.