today i read

{tweeted by anonymous}

 

{a beautiful awful not funny at all 'today in tab' - by bijan stephen}

{...}

{chronicle of a riot foretold - by jelani cobb}

{teaching our sons to be afraid is not the answer to cops who shoot children - by latoya perterson}

{the parable of the unjust judge or: fear of a nigger nation - by ezekiel kweku} 

i was a sensitive kid, am a sensitive adult.
rioting never made sense to me. destroying the place where you live - i never understood that rage and recklessness.
learning about the riots of 1968, although i understood the reasons, i could never get my head around the acts. the thought of it filled me with terror.

i am no longer afraid of the rioters.
nothing scares me more than guns except for white men.
i am no longer confused by the burning down of cities.

we're on eachothers' team

twice this year i have cried and cried and cried over the death of a celebrity. being empathic to a crippling degree means i get real sad about stuff all the time, and i'm generally pretty okay at being rational while being sad, but these two got through real deep. philip seymour hoffman, robin williams.

i've talked about depression times a million on here, and elsewhere, and i'm tired so tired and would probably just say the same things again, open heart breakable heart, void vs ache, the nothing, and and and, so go back and read if you feel like it. there are also other people saying things too, of course. i am grateful to them.

today, just : there are a lot of spectacular amazing gifted giving smart funny gentle badass beautiful humans on team depression. it makes being in the club a little better to think about them. the ones who talk and do and fight however they can, even if it is just tiny in my livingroom, they make it better to be a person who has been depressed and will pretty much certainly be depressed again at some point. but. oof. it is a hard team to be on. of course. because it is a team that loses a lot, a lot of good ones, best ones. this year has been a bad one for our team. and i am so sad.

saved my life and all of that

i have been gone forever. there was much to do. and then there was hawaii. and then there was the end of my job. (there is a new one coming soon, you'll hear about that before long.) and then a friend of mine died. and all of our hearts broke, me and so many people in this city and beyond. we have been dealing. we have been spending time. indulging. grieving. sharing. loving. being together. walking. missing. remembering. hugging and holding. eating and drinking. being lost. being grateful. being angry. young men should not die.

i re-read joan didion. the year of magical thinking. the memorial was this last weekend. it was hard and wonderful. full of love and tears and laughter. we are not good at grieving, we in this country, continent, time. i can't tell you how much it helped to be weeping in a space with other weeping people for a few hours. i can't tell you how much i love these people, my people, in this city. i can't tell you how thankful i am that i am in this strange bubble of time where i am not working and can be with these people.

here is the song, the video, that has been on repeat this last week. until morning light.



next week i will be back to Real Life. until then. reading. dancing. singing. remembering. loving.

on this

 {philip seymour hoffman}

i used to think it was silly to get upset over celebrity deaths. i mean, really upset. beyond the general sadness that you feel when anyone dies, the sort of heavy shrug knowing someone has lost someone and of course that is sad. but to get really upset. to feel that i was suffering. that i had any part of that loss. it seemed silly. until alexander mcqueen died. and all my reason dropped out from under me, and i was shaken in a way i didn't really have any right to. i was furious and lost. i felt as though my team, my family, had suffered a truly terrible loss. like 'we' would never be the same. whoever 'we' was. not a real thing, 'we', just a feeling.

"His metier was human loneliness — 

the terrible uncinematic kind that has very little to do with high-noon heroism and everything to do with everyday empathy — 

and the necessary curse of human self-knowledge." 

{tom junod on hoffman. for esquire}

yesterday's news of philip seymour hoffman's passing had that same hard and harsh impact. i felt and feel hollowed out. and i feel sickly sad and embarrassed, ashamed? what right do i have to mourn him? his family, his kids, his friends. 'we' are losing an artist, and the idea of a man. they have lost a person. a true and complete person. i am mourning him, though. i can't help it. i am selfish and i will miss him and his work so so much. 'we' will never be the same.

news

* location of the newest mass shooting revealed
* desperate nation tries getting on board with mass shootings

can we make a deal? can we only have the onion report on shootings from now on?
because today, there's really just one thing that i think has anything honesty ringing through it. maybe you remember it?

* fuck everything, nation reports

can we just stop? pretending to care. pretending to be horrified. i mean.
i know we care on an individual level. of course we care. of course we are horrified.
but i'm talking collectively. the states. our neighbour. us.

can we not get up and make a speech about how 'unimaginable' it is?

that word is beyond ridiculously ill-fitting. of course it is imaginable. come on. can we not say shit like that to the victims' families and friends? to the people who witnessed it. can we not patronize them with words that ring so false? no one cares. nothing will be done. we will talk for a little while, and we will clutch at our hearts and we will shout and cry, and we will not so much forget as we will just not... and then it will happen again. and we will say all the same things, and we will pound our hands on the table, and we will declare that now is the time. we will reignite conversations rand repeat them pretty much exactly like we did last time, like, how long ago? fuck off. stop it.  it is embarrassing and it is gross. so let's just not. let's just shut it. let there be some god damn silence because maybe, maybe, there can be a moment of genuine solace in that void. instead of this bullshit cacophony.

when i learned about columbine, i threw up. it was the most heartbroken i'd been in my little life. it was the most devastating thing for my poor little sensitive heart. i was in grade 9. it was a madness i could not begin to get my head around. i didn't understand my own anger. i didn't understand anything about it at all. the hurt i felt was everywhere. whole body. i was shaken to my core. utterly lost.

i am easily affected by tragedy. i take on emotion so deeply. i am emotional. this is something we know about me. i've wept for a lot less than a school-full of murdered children. on the wrong day someone tripping getting off the streetcar can bring me to tears.

when i looked at the scrolling updates from washington and i shrugged. the only word that surfaced in response was 'yup'.

yup. shrug.

i'm sorry that your deaths won't matter. i'm sorry nothing will change. i'm sorry guns are more important than you. than we.

shrug.

i'm going to go back to listening to britney now.

silver, curtains, buttons, bread.

{zac posen fall 2013, photos by marcus tondo by way of style.com}