“You have a responsibility to live in this world. Your responsibility is not just to yourself. You are connected to everyone.” – Moussa Kaba to Mariame Kaba, ‘We Do This ‘Til We Free Us’
March is easily the worst month (T.S. Eliot is overrated). Chicago is one step forward, two steps back-ing its way to warm weather. The mood is generally weary. Go on and check your calendars from years past. Not a lot of good March memories, I’m betting. Maybe you got stabbed over and over again by a bunch of senators you thought you could trust, I don’t know. Important thing is: today—A FRIDAY—March is over.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week
This is a pretty on-the-record anti-police blog. Carnitas not cops, is one way to describe how I like my pork. I should fess up, though, to not fully having done the reading on prison abolition. Broad strokes—like creating a society where everyone’s material needs are met or more trained social workers and fewer armed foot soldiers responding to people in crisis/doing wellness checks—that’s already obvious to my politics. What would a United States without prisons actually look like, though? There was one and only place for me to start:
This book is a collection of essays and interviews from as early as 2013 up through 2020. The cumulative effect of 200 pages of stuff previously meant for websites and magazines is a kind of earned repetition. It has been an era of common, horrific tragedy made public: the movement for Black lives and #metoo forced the US public to recognize evils we knew had been happening but had never had to come face-to-face with until smart phones. This repetition of tragedy—a wearying “time is a flat circle” feeling—coupled with Kaba’s use of activist language, made me wonder how this book would be received by someone who isn’t already primed to receive prison abolition talking points.
But I kept thinking maybe people who believe in prisons should have to prove their own points. One notion I kept coming back to: what do we actually hope prisons accomplish? Is it justice that someone who cause harm then be subjected to harm? Does it really make things better, knowing that Martin Shkreli saw jail time, but the laws that enabled his price-gouging didn’t change? Even things that feel like victories—killer cop Jason Van Dyke got convicted, yes, but does him serving less than half of a seven-year sentence help anything? Jason Van Dyke’s conviction didn’t stop Derek Chauvin. There has been an overwhelming sense in the last decade plus that the US’s miserable, collapsing empire is spinning its wheels towards fascism or civil war at worst and everyone simply having a real bad time at best. We Do This ‘Til We Free Us asks if we really want to keep going with this societal cycle of violence, and if the answer is no, how we might break our violence addiction. No, there are no quick-fix solutions. But as Kaba reminds us, hope is a discipline. Never give in to nihilism, never stop trying to build a better world.
Jesus, two straight weeks of an extra paragraph of book talk. Shut up and get to the links, Chris.
LINKS!
New Line Break Podcast this week! Bob and I read very different poems: one of Jack Spicer’s letters to Lorca for Bob, Julie Doxsee’s “Mansion” for me. Is there such thing as a perfect poem? We don’t find out, but listen anyway.
Creaturefector is back! It rules that Defector, an ostensible sports and culture site, has these occasional asides for things like reading books, cooking food, and weird creatures. This one returns to the mystery of the holes on the seafloor, which I’ve linked to before, and features this enviable job description: “the scientists aboard the cruise often gathered for watch parties to record anything that appeared in the footage while also snacking and hanging out. The holes appeared on the very first camera deployment. ‘We’re like, what is that? That’s a weird thing!’” [Julia] Sigwart said. Goddamn, I should’ve been a marine biologist.
The winner of the Flash Frog story contest judged by Aimee Bender is, predictably, a banger. “No Dead Bodies In The Dining Room” by Kathryn Lemon is an excellent snapshot of what working in a restaurant is really like, or at least what it feels like. I suppose I should put a CW here, because the one-paragraph story does involve a bunch of shootings in said restaurant. Yes, there was a mass shooting in Nashville last week. There is always a mass shooting in America, though, Tennessee congressmen are already out here saying they’re not gonna do anything about it, and table 32 needs more wine.
Christ, how depressing. Let’s take a frog break. This frog is blue, like the journal, and red, like my son’s favorite color. Frogs are rad. (credit: Wikimedia Commons, Pstevendactylus~commonswiki) Really enjoyed this interview with Diane Suess by Kirby Chen Mages in Lunch Ticket. I’ve become a sucker for writers talking about writing while also working/parenting. Also loved this question/answer:
KCM: Do you ever feel like you’re in a fugue state when you’re writing?
DS: Yes. The poem is addressing me. The poem is educating me. I feel the poems are always wider than I am. And my imagination is stronger than my intellect. Or not separate from my intellect.
Let’s go out with one more Creaturefector, this time investigating the Beluga whale whose interior life was once the subject of a query from Melania Trump. Melania, apparently, now lives a life “surrounded by people who…never talk about reality, or bad things about her husband.” I am picturing a table, outside near a pool, covered in pitchers of mimosas with a label that says “bottomless,” massive wedge salads and rubbery shrimp cocktail, and each chair capriciously placed over a trapdoor that leads to a pool of
sharkssea bass with laser beams on their heads. We are not Melania Trump, though. You and me, we’re going into this weekend heads held high. March is over. Hope is a discipline. We’ll never know what’s at the bottom of the ocean.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris