Too Much Doubt

When they killed Troy Davis, I didn’t recover. I read the news for one thing. I saw the pictures of people weeping on the ground outside of the prison. I wept in my lover’s bed because too much is happening.

The radio said that Martine Correia fought for ten years, working through breast cancer, to get her brother free. I heard the woman whose husband died expected peace to come from the execution. Expected to find closure and give condolences to the Davis family because now they would know her loss. They would finally know her pain. I wondered how that distance is created and maintained. Why the sister can’t go to the wife and say “I see you and our pain has always been the same. We are in this together, you know? The enemies we have chosen are not even the enemies. The enemies are bigger than you or I or him or us. The enemy is the distance between.”

All year, some friends worked on building a garden across the street. They named it Crashed Cart community garden because these shopping carts kept ending up there. It’s really big and beautiful, and wedged between two houses with enough space for the sun to shine down. There is a pile of squash sitting on the cupboard, waiting for Tuesday’s feast. All the neighbors were invited to share in the harvest of the first year. Beans, corn, carrots, onions, green on top of green on top of green. Some things are below the ground, and some things stand tall in the open. There are beds laid out with bricks, and trees being tended, and sunflowers, and vines crawling up sticks and walls. Can you picture it?

The day that Troy Davis was killed, a surveyor came by the garden lot. He told Crystal that the lot had been bought and they were going to start building a house there in October, which is ten days from now.

I always thought that if we planted seeds, people could respond. Like if some kind of beautiful or real or true thing was laid out, people could respond. But it’s the distance thing. Someone came by while the veggies were ripening and thought, “I will build a house here. The land is cheap. This place is for me to have.” Like I always thought if a million people said there is too much doubt, they could respond. They could pause and question about taking a man’s life. About the bigger meaning. But it’s the distance thing. Someone believed that technicalities and legalities or making some kind of political statement was important.

That’s why I can’t recover. There's not enough of this distance work happening that I know about. I imagined painting boards that say “This lot was bought without care or notice for living things.” But it’s not really enough.

I realized what a high maintenance lifestyle I'm involved in. Always needing to tend and regroup, at any moment having to adjust, quit, start over. No matter how much energy was put in or how we thought our seeds were growing or how we thought maybe, just maybe our voices were loud enough. I reached a point a while ago, though some people (cough cough Stephanie) would say it was happening all along. At some point, I knew too many stories and I had too much information to not understand what was really happening. The total destruction and where it is all coming from. The distance.

I guess it’s funny how in times of overwhelm, my emotional response always comes back to, “well, these people are insane right? To kill these living things? To not be able to see them. They have to be insane right? They are like insane Right?

The Spectrum

Dear Queens,

Now don't get me wrong, pain is relative. The amount of pain we're holding, sure it's on a spectrum. But you can't minimize it to me, and you know I won't let you. You can never minimize yourself to me, because you are all I know and we are everything.

What I am trying to say here, is that each time we find ourselves in crisis, I notice how we get out of it. We are always getting better at getting out of it. Each time we are falling, there's this little window, this little ledge that we can grab and then we are back. But we are not just back. We are better. We have all of our experiences added up and we are growing.

Today I got my first suicide note in the mail. From a stranger. He asked me to do some things for him, and told me not to worry about him, because by the time I got his letter, he would be gone. What could I do? I called Bret. He checked the website. Told me he didn't make it out. Told me the guy had been relocated to Graterford, probably some special needs mental health unit. I tried to take some comfort in that, but the problem is I know that it means nothing. I know that Secure Special Needs Unit means nothing and sometimes it means worse than nothing.

I wrote a letter to his brother cause he asked me to, then I wrote the guy back. And then I went downstairs to the photocopy machine and made a copy of my response. I wrote on the top of my letter "Sample Response to Suicide Note" so the next time someone says the words, "I just got a suicide note, like, I'm not sure how to respond", I will walk over to the file cabinet, and I will pull out my letter, and I will say, "here is what I did. Here is all I could think to do at the time but try to bring yourself to it, okay? Are you going to sign your name? If you don't think you can follow up with this person, try giving the letter to someone else or put it back in the mailbox. What do you think you should do? Do you have any ideas?"

It's hard to know. It's hard to know what to do when a stranger writes you a suicide note, and it feels insane to put my response in a file cabinet. Absolutely insane. As if we have a text book here. As if we have a process for this. But maybe the practice, the practice is what makes it all possible. For us to fall and then come back. We're getting so good at practicing falling and then coming back that it's impossible for me not to believe.

Love,
A

Career Dreams

I just posted a post-it note on my wall that looks as follows:

career dreams
coro fellow app
sept
this american life
internship

Where we stand with the Bang Saga:

I just got new bangs. Ocean said, "Amanda do you know your bangs are crooked? You could use a comb to straighten them out." And I said, "I don't think I have a comb." And Ocean said, "We have three combs and Ray is always wanting to get rid of one." And Jude said, "Why don't you two fight? I want to be entertained." And Ray said, "Look at that little bird." And Oshy said, "Nice subject change Ray." And O'Ryan said, "I want there to be a post-rock band that plays all of my favorite rock duet ballads." And I said, "Just you wait. Maybe it will happen." And O'Ryan said, "Maybe I could be the front man for that band." And I said, "Maybe I could be the back man. Whatever that means." And O'Ryan said, "Amanda. With bangs like that, you could do anything."

The laughing shoulders

On my way to math tutoring, I was resting at a stop light next to a small bus. A group of youngish, male ish people were crowding and laughing towards the back of the bus. One boy said something to me out the window that sounded like, "You dropped your *******?" I looked down and around at the word "dropped" before realizing that the boy had told me I had dropped my "pocket." When I looked back up, the talker was not meeting my face, but the other boys were. I started to smile and laugh, and then I began laughing real dramatically with my shoulders so they would know that we were sharing it and that we were on the same side.

I'm remembering my other out the bus window experiences. One time I was walking Klemmons the Dog and a kid yelled out, "What kind of dog is that!?" And I said, "Hmmmdaknow?" And he said, "Whose dog is that?!" And I said, "Bret's!"

I think the people on the inside know that they are mostly untouchable because the light is gonna turn green and they will never see me again. Same for people in cars. There was one bad day in Lawrenceville where I got two negative hits right after the other, one being a smallish angryish 8 year old giving me the finger with a very straight face.

I smiled and waved.

The worst bus story I know is when my mom was puke sick on the delivery route and she had to puke out the van door, and the bus kids were all pointing and laughing at her. It didn't seem fair. She had no strength to retaliate. She was sick like 1 time every 5 years, and it just had to be a day she was next to the bus.

Where I'm At

Recovering from a doubters fall into "this can never be possible." I always believed we were going to win. And then this happened, and this happened, and I am clawing myself back up conversation by conversation.

O'Fries is in the kitchen talking about wheatpasting, and I'm telling him the story of Ben going to the DMV where the kid found out who his Dad was from his birth certificate reprint. Yeah. He was in the office, and he called his mom and said, "Mom. This is (insert his full name). Who the hell is (insert newly discovered dad's name here)?" And it was funny because some guy in the line overheard him and said, "Oh yeah. I know that guy. He's my neighbor." And, "you look just like him."

Excuse me for a moment Bret is calling. He's choking out words cause Saundra's nephew just got shot and that makes two loves within the past few months. He asks, "How does she keep going?"

I have a suspicion and I write it to Emily in a letter. No one laughs at god in a war.

O'Fries is out, and I'm looking for an excuse to smoke a cigarette, which I fear is suicidal because they are fixing the gas line up the street. I start thinking about Sherman Alexie and The Absolutely True Diary of a part time Indian and how the 14 year old character who lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation has attended 42 funerals. Can you feel the difference?

I can only win when everyone is valuable and right now the numbers are not adding up. Queens please rise. I need to hear you laugh and say you are well.

The Singing Bridge

Yesterday I was walking to work with a bag containing 1 small cake and one 50' roll of 5/8" backer rod and I thought, "ah yes, this is my life."