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| Photo copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. |
It looks like the horizon in a post-apocalyptic world. We're not quite there yet, but it's getting a lot closer.
After the events of recent weeks, combined with what's happened in the last two days alone, I need a place to put this rage and there is none. It's a rage that was born all over again five years ago, in the aftermath of Sandusky and Paterno and their fellow travelers, one whose embers caught fire anew with Elliot Rodger and every report of assault and death at the hands of entitled white man-children, embers stoked with every death of a Native or Black person at the hands of racists, usually with a badge of some sort. Now? It's burning so hot it's sucking up all the oxygen in the world.
I have had a migraine for weeks. It never goes away. Neither does the autoimmune pain, nor the breathing problems that have accompanied this last year with no help from the so-called medical establishment, but more than 30K in medical bills for which they hound me daily. There's no refuge from the memories that Trump and his hangers-on, especially with Kavanaugh, have dredged up for me. And there's no respite from the constant, all-consuming fear that over money and, very frankly, whether I will live to see the sun rise another day, every single day.
I'm going to be taking a break from just about everything, save the usual posts that I do here. I don't want to talk to anyone; the betrayal of the last two years, on top of the betrayals of a lifetime by this society, this culture, this country, the people who were supposed to protect and defend and even love me . . . it's too much. Instead, it's always erasure and violence and blame and shame, being told that it's my fault, that I must have done something to invite it and deserve it, that I'm worthy only of being disappeared so that no one has to engage with it or even face it. The news two days ago that a federal district court has struck down the ICWA (on spurious grounds, to be sure, but in a spurious nation "led" by an unelected fraud, traitor, and criminal and fully supported by the other two branches of government? This is the first domino in a new campaign of genocide) has left me reeling in ways that white folks cannot possibly understand. Apocalyptic landscapes, indeed.
Survival for me is precarious in the best of times, given my health. I need to focus everything I have on that, on Wings, on us making it. I can't engage with the bad faith out there with this level of fear and rage. So it'll be these posts, for Wings, here, and my Patreon, and probably nothing more for a while. Online spaces have become as suffocating and violent as physical ones, and it's the so-called friends and allies who inflict the most harm.
From this point forward, it'll be mostly just the links. Pain and fatigue have taken over, they are permanent companions right now, never letting go, and there's simply no room for much else:
- My new Patreon, The Interstices (Writing Between Worlds);
- Wings's site, for sales, with new items posted;
- Wings's direct PayPal link;
- A way to buy me coffee (which actually goes to all of our medical bills, which continue to mount);
- Amazon wishlist, which mostly consists of animal and household stuff;
- Partial registry #1, from Bed, Bath and Beyond. There are new kitchen-y things on it now, stuff that I didn't realize we'd need to replace (either because the RV ruined it or because we gave it away when we had to downsize).
I'm going to spend the rest of the day with Wings. He wants my help with some of his own work, and that's a far better place to be than the cesspit of white supremacy and misogyny violence and institutionalized genocide that is this country now, and that continues to seek the extermination of people like us.
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
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