another year (between two homes)

Time warps and wanders in this piece, but most of it was written in early October. Time travel back with me two weeks…

On first draft, I accidentally dated this entry with June.

How I deny the time going by.

How I cannot fathom the way a year has passed.

I feel drowsy as we take off and try to snooze my obligations with a nap to three hours of new releases. Reading through my inbox, I’m roused into a deep awakeness by Neema Githere Siphone’s latest newsletter ’I Imagine June Jordan welcomed Khaliifah Marcellus Williams with a Warm Embrace.’  In this syllabus on our moments grief:

They said they were victims. They said you were
Arabs.
They called      your apartments and gardens      guerrilla
strongholds.
They called      the screaming devastation
that they created       the rubble.
Then they told you to leave, didn’t they?

…

I didn’t know and nobody told me and what
could I do or say, anyway?

…

I’m sorry.
I really am sorry.”

—Excerpts from Apologies to All the People in Lebanon by June Jordan (1982)

~~~

Pulled by a notification nestled into the UI, I toggle tabs from the end of Neema’s dispatch to release notes for my browser’s latest updates. The costumed notification tugs my cursor toward it and I’m jolted by the shining white of the CEO’s smile.

It’s not that I expect him to mention Lebanon, or Palestine. It’s not that I expect the release notes to acknowledge the election, to ask us to pause and reckon with the horror happening in parallel with this week’s feature release. I just didn’t expect him to smile that big, to so easefully display tunnel-vision focus on how his company has made my browsing even slightly more efficient—more easeful, more sleek.

My transitions between tabs is soothed by a new micro-animation, but its grace is jolting in the context of empires parading their power to perpetuate death.1

~~~

I see it in this bag of pretzels too. The packaging of our mid-flight snack has airport codes printed on them; the current print features DCA with a silhouette of the capital building.2 So they are thinking about Washington. Is this supposed to be a subtle cue to vote? To vote for who?

Airlines play a significant role in American politics, contributing millions in lobbying and campaign support in their efforts to curb industry regulation; they lobby against carbon emissions caps and fuel taxes and push for ‘market-based’ solutions like carbon offsets (*eye roll*). Mind you, this is all while receiving billions in bailouts and paying multi-million dollar salaries to their CEOS (i.e. $13.1 million to Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta Air Lines, in 2022).

So then how can I believe it is a coincidence? Did the marketing team who came up with this packaging campaign not plan out a content calendar? Did they not decide which airports would be included and when would be featured at what time?3 Did they not think about how many people would fly in the month before the election? Or was this contracted out to some big 4 — this package the present day lineage of a consultant’s slide deck from Q3 of 2023?

In my freelance practice, I am pulled into another marketing meeting as my client prepares to release its core offering. I look at the world and all I see is marketing. I receive another election spam text. Another person asking if I’m willing to sell a property I don’t own.

~~~

Underneath me, in front, right on top—an earthquake, a lynching, a hurricane:
the way this earth shakes as I stand in this world of a storm.
The hurricane passes, and I enjoyed the rain.
The hurricane passes, and I pull weeds from the grave of 400 strangers;
they could be my kin or my oppressors.
Still, steadily,
so curiously,
I tug green from the dark brown and hope no poison finds exposed skin.

I wish for forest and fly across the country to a city of concrete and star shine.

Always, when I want earth,
I rise into the sky.
It makes sense I would chase the stars.
Sometimes it feels the cosmos are more connected to earth than my feet.
The stars feel the nearest witness to all this madness,
the most honest ancestors.
I would go to ask the rivers, but they moved them.
Emptied their waters, paved them, and redirected them to trace borders.

From above, the highways look like rivers;
it’s a cruel joke.

~~~

I’ve been thinking I want to learn meteorology. I want to learn to how to study the weather, how to read a radar. I want to learn the seasons: the currents, the patterns of the wind and sea that bring our shine and rain, birth for us our seasons.

My curiosity was first peaked when I started surfing; I wanted to learn how to read the charts of the wind and the tides, to better understand the swells. But now, the desire feels more deep. As a wandering earthly being—a global citizen—looking to charts of wind and water currents feels like it could be a way to locate myself in the storm. Now I’m holding this seed of an idea in my palm, wondering how I could choreograph a morning meditation that grounds me in a global context. Like reading a horoscope, I would decode the charts ask them to tell me what is happening in the skies, what the waters are bringing in.

Exploring a visualization of the wind currents the night Hurricane Helene passed over Georgia September 26th 2024. Source: earth.nullschool.net

I checked the participation as the hurricane moved in and was shocked to find it was raining only in five places around the world that night. How, in all this thunder and downpour, could it only be raining in five other places across the globe?

As I write this, at 4:42 PM EST on October 24th, it’s sunny, clear blue skies, and 80º in East Atlanta. The widget on my phone informs me there’s a moderate breeze outside but all I feel is the tickle of the fans overhead as Jo and I write in the neighborhood cafe. Meanwhile it’s raining in Colombia, Peru, and Russia and theres a category 5 hurricane 800 miles off the coast of Baja, California.

How is it every time I arrive in LA it’s during a heat wave?

It is so disorienting to travel through seasons, to have a winter in summer. Where was my summer if I was never home? If the last time I felt at home was in winter, and in spring I felt like I was returning to home, then how tragic to find myself in fall, lost and unsure which way to go?

Am I traveling back in time? Am I wandering away from myself?

I wish I had more kindly adjusted the time. I wish I would have more gracefully eased my body from six in the evening to 2:50pm. Instead in three taps the digits on my screen revert. I stare at the numbers and will my circadian rhythm to contort.

How nice would it be start my day here with an awareness of the night there? To sit and sunbathe on the back deck and feel the rains in Peru? To wake up and feel so deeply into being on this earth, being a being of this place. To be at home, on this planet, feeling my entanglement with it all — in all its size. Would that make me feel small in the same enchanting way the forest does? If the trees can’t tower over me in the city, can I Iook to the sky and feel the atmosphere’s height?

Could I witness the sky not as a border stroke but a fill?

I’m supposed to be transitioning into seasons, away from thinking in years, but according to the history of half of my body, the new year starts this week. (Shana tova.) Perhaps it was those cells then that catalyzed my recent deep dive into home planning for 2025. Or maybe it’s just time to start planning. It could be the election too, making me want to choreograph futures.

~~~

I wish I could watch the ads of 100 strangers.

Dear one, would you let me watch yours? I think I’d be scared for you to watch mine. I think if you did, you might predict my queerness and have a hint at my type. You’d deduce that I’m trying to cook more and that the internet is a questionable source for inspiration. You’d figure that I care about how I look and try to keep up with pop culture (as if I know what’s going on). You’d imagine I day dream about the beach and surfing and part of me wants to run away and hide in the trees.

At the beginning of the flight I thought my neighbor and I were companions; we both were reading instead of scrolling or streaming. (To be clear we were both reading on our phones, but we both had a physical book and a water bottle tucked into the back seat pocket in front of us.) He’s even in his Notes app right now too. When I had reached down to pull out my laptop, I saw we both were wearing On Running sneakers.

I felt subconscious of reading within the orange interface of Subtask, and began to miss book club and reading in the gentler orange of the Books app. I miss highlighting even though it is not an archive I manage well. I look closer at my neighbors interface and recognize the serif of the New York times. He leans forward to read over his book, and I see “corporate responsibility “printed across the back of his purple t-shirt. He’s pulled his laptop out now too, but now he’s leaving comments in Google Docs on a report for work.

We seem less companions now as we do fun-house mirror reflections of each other: distorted duplicates, the same being in different forms.

Everything these days feels incredibly tone def. My neighborhood is littered with Harris/Walz signs, and I’m baffled that people are *genuinely* excited to vote for her. Nothing feels real these days; we must all be enacting the choreography in some script, some to go market campaign.

~~~

I feel like I’m waiting.

The more I study, the more I learn,
I understand our present is just a past continuing. I want out—
out of the loop.

So I am daydreaming of treehouses.
Of sunsets into the sea.
Of an airy sunlit studio, and walking to my favorite restaurant.
I am running longer and practicing yoga consistently again.
I’m spending nights talking to my friends
on the phone, reading strangers’ newsletters.
I’m thinking out loud (which is to say I’m writing).

I’m trying to ask for what I want and be honest about what I need.

I’m trying to be patient.

~~~

[1] Side Note (there will be a few): I constantly feel conflicted by Arc and my use of it. I love Arc as a tool — it really can be brilliant sometimes, and I fully agree with the premise behind their work, of why putting so much attention into a browser is meaningful. A browser is our way for transiting through the internet, our window into the depths of cyber space; it’s empowering and gratifying to be able to nest into my browser, to live deeply into it, peer through the large floor to ceiling windows, while making the my self cozy in the driver seat with customization. BUT I feel so gross consuming the company’s messaging and media. They are another startup, priding themselves on delivering to their users; on being innovative change-makers disrupting the tech industry. There are investors and release notes and young professionals with youtube videos about all the productivity hacks.

[2] All 6 pretzel bags I was able to see from my seat had the same Washington design so I believe that this is the current print (whether the designs rotate by plane, by day, by month or by season I am not sure, but deeply curious.)

[3] I’m sure since I was flying American Airlines the list is limited to American cities, most likely the large coastal cities or popular vacation getaways….I wonder if SJU or HNL are featured?