In the morning, I map out the seasons — a workshop on disability justice one week, an upcoming conflict mediation, a week overseas to celebrate my niece, the days of recovery that inevitably follow travel, a dream of a little community of practice.
I sketch out the days, and I wonder how to plot time while genocides unfold. Today I do not know how to hold it all at once.
I try to leave room and spaciousness — for play, for politic — for a sunny afternoon in the park filling a dusty roll of film, for a late morning spent kneading bread to feed student protestors, for an evening whisking polenta to feed myself, for a few days snuggling the babies of the people I love.
I do not know how to hold it all at once, and so sometimes I put it down.
Sometimes it puts me down, and I spend an afternoon drifting, heavy with fatigue. My therapist asks, “what do we do when we do not know how to hold it all at once?” I prattle off the answers we have discussed before — community, margin, collective practice, coming back.
Later, he says, “you know, I would have accepted ‘weep’ as an answer.”
And so I do, sometimes.
On the days I do not have the answers, I hold my breath and hit send anyway. I hope you are here with me, in the unknowing.
