I have energy enough these days only for little snippets. I lie awake at night thinking of things to write about, and I intend to: the school bus that I rode for a few months when I was 8, and racism, and things. Big things.
But sometimes life is big generalizations, and sometimes it's little passing clear moments, like seeing life through portholes on a ship as you walk past looking out. Mine is little moments right now. I can hardly remember what comes between them. I suppose it's bus rides and checking to make sure I locked the apartment and filling out papers and saying, "Have a good evening" to people in the elevator.
I took the train to a different part of town on Sunday. It goes through a tunnel over there, and I don't like it. I tried to tell myself it's just a like a subway, it's just like a subway, it's just like a subway, but it didn't work, I think because my head kept wondering how long the dark would last. I never liked the tunnels in New York either, going under rivers to Brooklyn or New Jersey, but I never minded the subway. A subway is where it is supposed to be.
In the mail on Saturday, I got a letter from the IRS that was not a refund check, and my heart stopped, as hearts are wont to do when receiving letters that look suspiciously like we-want-money-from-you-that-you-don't-have. Inside was a cryptic letter about having "made a change" on my tax forms, but further investigation revealed that I failed to calculate the fact that I only received half the stimulus payment last year (due to my failure to make, oh, ANY money in 2007), so my refund is $300 bigger than expected.
I have a Pilates video, and I'm finally managing to do the poses in something like the correct manner, albeit not gracefully or anything, and when I finished tonight I felt so invigorated that I almost started the intermediate "energy boost" level and then I realized that my abs already felt like someone hit them with a hammer over and over, so maybe additional ab work was not exactly needed just yet. I am a beginner.
Ice water tastes really, really good.
...
I read this article today (Seeing Race and Seeming Racist?), which confirmed to me something I have long theorized, which is that white people need not be afraid to bring up the topic of race, particularly when we see something that is clearly racist. Because guess what, white people? By the time we, in our little sheltered white-privilege world, get around to saying, "Hm, that seems fishy to me," every person of color has already seen it. We are the last stupid ones in the room. And it doesn't go away because you don't mention it. In fact, keeping quiet makes you complicit, and you look like the jerk who's ignoring racism.
I'm not saying white people get to be the ones who know what's up, oh no. We do not. I'm just saying that if you are white and something looks racist to you? It was probably racist long before you noticed it, and the only thing you stand to lose by bringing it up is your delusions about the world being a happy skippy place. You will almost certainly learn something if you bring it up and then shut up and LISTEN.
(So... um... apparently I can't resist the big stuff, even when I claim that I am too exhausted for it.)
But sometimes life is big generalizations, and sometimes it's little passing clear moments, like seeing life through portholes on a ship as you walk past looking out. Mine is little moments right now. I can hardly remember what comes between them. I suppose it's bus rides and checking to make sure I locked the apartment and filling out papers and saying, "Have a good evening" to people in the elevator.
I took the train to a different part of town on Sunday. It goes through a tunnel over there, and I don't like it. I tried to tell myself it's just a like a subway, it's just like a subway, it's just like a subway, but it didn't work, I think because my head kept wondering how long the dark would last. I never liked the tunnels in New York either, going under rivers to Brooklyn or New Jersey, but I never minded the subway. A subway is where it is supposed to be.
In the mail on Saturday, I got a letter from the IRS that was not a refund check, and my heart stopped, as hearts are wont to do when receiving letters that look suspiciously like we-want-money-from-you-that-you-don't-have. Inside was a cryptic letter about having "made a change" on my tax forms, but further investigation revealed that I failed to calculate the fact that I only received half the stimulus payment last year (due to my failure to make, oh, ANY money in 2007), so my refund is $300 bigger than expected.
I have a Pilates video, and I'm finally managing to do the poses in something like the correct manner, albeit not gracefully or anything, and when I finished tonight I felt so invigorated that I almost started the intermediate "energy boost" level and then I realized that my abs already felt like someone hit them with a hammer over and over, so maybe additional ab work was not exactly needed just yet. I am a beginner.
Ice water tastes really, really good.
...
I read this article today (Seeing Race and Seeming Racist?), which confirmed to me something I have long theorized, which is that white people need not be afraid to bring up the topic of race, particularly when we see something that is clearly racist. Because guess what, white people? By the time we, in our little sheltered white-privilege world, get around to saying, "Hm, that seems fishy to me," every person of color has already seen it. We are the last stupid ones in the room. And it doesn't go away because you don't mention it. In fact, keeping quiet makes you complicit, and you look like the jerk who's ignoring racism.
I'm not saying white people get to be the ones who know what's up, oh no. We do not. I'm just saying that if you are white and something looks racist to you? It was probably racist long before you noticed it, and the only thing you stand to lose by bringing it up is your delusions about the world being a happy skippy place. You will almost certainly learn something if you bring it up and then shut up and LISTEN.
(So... um... apparently I can't resist the big stuff, even when I claim that I am too exhausted for it.)
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