A portion of a conversation on the recent riots...my impressions, recorded for remembering purposes.
It was pretty close for me on Monday, but other than that it
was okay...the feeling of sadness and oppression and anger was pretty
bad all week, like you were eating it and it was angrily living in
your pores. I think sometimes I'm an empath...I can't really do crowds
either, pretty sensitive to 'a room' as well.
I did
not
like the chorus of helicopters one bit. I am used to them here, every
weekend, but four at a time directly over you, circling for hours, day
after day, really feels like you are under siege. You could block it
out, or so you thought, but when it stopped for an hour or so during the
day it was like the best, most blissful moment ever created, and you were so
thankful. I asked my neighbor how she felt and she said 'brain fog'. It's true. I caught myself slumped on the couch staring into nothingness
a few times. I could not think or DO anything at all, other than
Baltimore. I got nothing done, and for me that's really abnormal. It
was a week of fight or flight for me, personally, with the PTSD. That's
all wonky as it is for me, so it didn't help. I wasn't fearful of
rioting or the people here or anything though. Just the martial law and
the depth of the pain.
Last Monday though, was the worst. I
was in class for five hours..about 12ish to 5:30-ish in Columbia, and
teaching, so I wasn't on the internet at all. No idea. I am SO LUCKY I listen to the radio and not CD's, as a rule. So I did not know anything
until I got in my car at 5:45ish in Columbia. And even then, it took me
all the way down 29 and almost to 70 to piece it together from the DJ's
and the people calling in (92Q hip hop and r&b station) because they
were not being explicit at first, so I was having to 'read between the
lines' a lot. And then everything dawned on me, but I was
really thinking to get there, and then they started describing the overhead shots of Penn/North LIVE, and I was about a half hour away at that point and the
intersection was not shut down yet... and I go straight through Penn/North to get home. Penn/North is close enough, that it tells my body I'm home.
I called Allison who lives off
of 83 here, and asked her if it was open and the exit was open at North. I went around on 695 north to 83 south and aggressively wove in and
out of traffic because that route took forever and I didn't want them
to shut down 83 on me in the meantime. I wanted to be locked in rather
than locked out, if it were to happen. So yeah, I was beating the clock. It was all so surreal.
________________________________
...We had our TFAP event, Walpurgisnacht, 'Feminist May Day' on Friday
and that was pretty decent. We had some food, and some artmaking, and some
rituals to cleanse, and some sage and stuff. We also had two light
dancers. Anyway, it was pretty nice to just talk to other people for a
moment.
Then on Saturday was Kelly's Labyrinth Walk for Peace. I think it could have been mega hokey if it were not for the
snare drum 'heartbeat' that was happening while we ALL walked.
That was super cool.
"The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe."
-Joseph Campbell
Black Lives Matter. This is the Beat of the Universe, echoing for us.
