To the Grateful Poets: Love is the Higher Law

At work Bob asks if his radio is too loud.  "No" I say. "Thanks for asking." 

On the bus, people blast their music and everyone has to listen.  It is a battle of wills.  Sometimes people stew.  Sometimes they ignore.  Sometimes they confront.  My general participation choice is to not react.  I remember giving it 4 hours once.  I think 4 hours is small compared to whole lives.  I think some people go their whole lives without permission to react.  I acknowledge them.   

I no longer need so many things.  If I ever did it was because I understood only one dimension.  Now there are all these soul people and all these dimensions.  There is hardly space for complaining.  I know we are comfortable in increasingly less spaces, but that doesn't mean we don't find comfort in our lives.  We get out of bed in the morning.  We breath.  I am sitting here thinking about how life is long.  How life could be so very long.

I don't want to live with you for a year and have you keep your cereal bowl in your own separate cupboard.  I want us to drink out of the same glass.  I want your life to flow over into mine.  I want the things that I count on to be your things and I want you to always count on me.  I won't expect anything from you.  I give you the benefit of the doubt.  But I do expect things of myself to give to you.  Because I don't think we regard each other enough. I don't think we give each other enough space to learn how to be people in a world like this.

Do you remember when they talked about wearing masks at work?  Do you think about that everyday?  Do you think about oppression and how it is affecting us? I want to know we share a framework.

I'm not going to thank you more than one time for being here, maybe not even one time.  It would take a lot more of me reimagining this as collective liberation.  It would take a lot more of a commitment to us building something together.  We would need to expect things of each other.  We would need common language.

I no longer think of numbers or success.  Only that I had this thing happen in my head, and now it is in my mouth and in my chest and maybe dancing off to somewhere else and maybe you can see it too.  If you could choose a space in the world and color it in with all that moves you, I could respond to that real easy.  I could find you.  If you can't choose, then I want you to take it.  I want for you to take whatever you can grab.  Whatever you need to be well.

So I tried understanding the grateful poets.  But then I resisted trying.  Someone made this soapbox and someone owns this instrument and the music gets relatable sometimes.  That's it.  That's why I came.  I used to believe that if we built something they could respond.  They being us, I mean anyone.  I mean I still sort of do.

So, if you need your volume to be loud, do it.  My song is not that delicate.  It could be grand to just lie back and float in everyone else's and to come when I am called for.  It could be enough to keep showing up, so long as my body allows.