The Personal Amongst the Collective: Root Canals, Sweet Onions and Other Layers of Suffering
Before I begin this essay I’d like to make a quick comment on the dissolution that is occurring before us as we watch the celebrity class consistently falter due to their capitalist interests and predictable liberalism.
Today on March 21st, 2024, my timeline is caught up in a swarm of discourse re: Beyoncé’s latest album cover.
Yes, the one with the American Flag.
Before I begin this essay, I’d like to have my understanding clear and communicated. As someone who has been a supporter of Beyoncé for over half of my life, I have watched my politics grow beyond the comfort of any capitalists that I once reverred. As someone who has attended the concerts (each time left stricken in awe), as someone who has commended Beyoncé on her work ethic, dedication and innovation, as someone who has the tour dvds, including the intimate performance ‘I am… yours’ at Wynn, Las Vegas, the merchandise, the posters, the cardboards of my teenage youth plastered with one liners showing my support. I say all this to say that I am someone who grew up with a clear bias for Beyoncé because I loved her.
I admired her and probably, most importantly, I grew up with her.
As we are all seeing more clearly now the tentacles of US Imperialism, I am watching many of us say ‘no more’. No more to celebrity culture, no more to complicity, no more to exploiting the working class, no more criminalizing homelessness, no more of this empiric machine that only devastates.
I’d like to say this:
It seems to me that people are not outraged by Beyoncé dipping into rodeo culture as much as people are feeling a blooming disgust churning in their stomach because an artist, some who have been in support for decades, has chosen the side of the oppressor time and time again during these last six months. This is less about rodeo culture as much as it is about the blatant silence on a genocide that we have all been collectively witnessing for the past five months.
We are watching celebrities stay allegiant to remaining neutral during a human crisis.
I think those offering critique are *fairly* put off by Beyoncé’s Renaissance film release in Israel a few months back where we saw Israeli citizens chanting “You wont break my soul” in theatre lobbies as indiscriminate bombing grazed over Gaza. I think there is a blooming disgust re: the lack of voice from her when it comes to a genocide we’ve all had to standby and witness for almost half a year; one of which our tax dollars funds.
Do I think this album cover would’ve caused as much controversy prior to all the excruciating images we’ve had to sit with since October 7th?
No.
Do I believe there is a material genocide being presented to the American people (and all people) that is causing a radicalization to those with empathy etched into the cavities of their heart that only opens their eyes to what the US has always represented and flying that flag right now is not only tone deaf but essentially, diabolical?
Yes.
There are babies with fractured skulls and brains leaking out on the timeline, what do you mean you are dropping images waving that flag around? Has wealth removed you & place you that much in a bubble that you cannot fathom the genocides of our time? The genocides that have touched our people, the genocides that continue to touch our people?
Let us call a spade, a spade and let us not beat around any bush:
Beyonce is promoting nationalism type imagery this go around as our tax dollars sponsor a genocide. In the month of November, we had to wake up everyday to a timeline filled with bloody limbs, swaying children bodies hung as IDF memorabilia, wailing mothers and shell-shocked fathers.
and with that, before I begin this essay I would like to say:
Death to celebrity culture.
Death to the idolization of the first class.
and most importantly,
Death to US imperialism.
When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder.
But when society places hundred of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live — forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence — knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offense is more one of omission then of commission.
But murder it remains.
Friedrich Engels, Means of Destruction
I.
It is Saturday, November 4th, 2023. The world seems to have erupted over night. There are rivers, seas — of people flooding the streets, and consequently, flooding my timeline in the struggle for Palestine’s sovereignty.
I am not marching tonight though apart of me itches to be on the streets, bellowing chants from from the bottom of my diaphragm alongside my friends, my family, my comrades.
But, today, the logistics couldn’t untangle themselves and so,
I watch from the sidelines. I speak to my timeline. I share all that I can.
I listen to the children playing in my neighbors backyard, it is someone’s birthday, today. I baby talk my 16 year old senior puppy, spoiling the rod and giving him all the treats he desires. I eat my mothers cooking; I ask her how she’s feeling. I respond to my loved ones text messages. I lay some vocals for Chuk and I’s new song. I stare at the tree’s in the wind.
I make myself cum.
Following Cienna’s rudimentary instruction, I stitch together a gift for my council— carefully assigning meaning to accompany a burial. Back on the island, we bury our hair under banana trees to speak to our ancestors. So, I construct an offering consisting of a batch of fallen leaves brought on by a major shedding moment from Sweet Pea, my 10-year-old Jade plant, a blood- red lapel i knitted during a tumultuous grieving moment on my most recent trip to Tongva, a honeymoon necklace that unhitched and collapsed on my neck as I buttered my skin, the skeleton of a curled up lizard that found me on the window sill, a lock of my hair collected and stored from the mustard pink tiled shower drain & a fallen branch, in the immemorial shape of a Y, scooped from the bole of our massive mango tree (an implied sling shot). Shovel in hand, I begin to dig. I embody a prayer as the curve of the shovel hits the dirt, I ask the existing roots for their forgiveness as I clear them away. I dig with a firmness to where I’d like the grief to go, out of this body and into the place where spirit resides. I lay the offerings in the small carving of the land and eventually tuck them in with the dug up soil. I pat the grave with the back of my shovel. The moment reminds me of another burial I performed earlier in the year.
II.
The Praefica wails softly in the wind but I am mostly quiet, not hurried but I save the oration for a separate time. It is windy and surprisingly chilly and I want to go back inside. I briefly think about my old lover. I kiss the soft curves of my hand in hopes they feel it, even if they won’t take any of my compounding phone calls. I let our time together, exactly seven months, approximately one year ago, surf away with the wind. It doesn’t hurt in the moment but I am wise enough to know that it will hurt tonight. I open up the buzzing screen to write.
I write myself clean, until there is no meat left on the bone.
III.
I am grasping, slowly, watching my tongue unfurl at the widening realizations, coughing and spitting up pounds of tendril-ed tooth decay in my dreams, holding myself alongside the subtle temptation to abandon myself, at the perpetuity, the enormity, the tragedy that is colonialism.
That word.
That has quickly become flattened and mired inside the corners of my mouth. I beg my blood to remember, to whisper the languages of the ones before me, to mold the molars of my teeth over syncopated speech. To destruct onto itself—an atavistic siege of spirit.
But still, when I close my eyes, a colonial tongue slithers back to me, hissing in a disarrayed choir of voices:
“I need more language.”
and as all desire will, it possesses me with urgency.
My desire shows after a nourishing meal and almost likely, after each sputtering orgasm. I am walking desire, beelining to decades-old texts, ferociously collecting (whilst mourning) as I expand in a language as clumsy (and reductive) as English. I am a bundle of discursive streams. I contradict myself many times before getting to the point.
I think about whiteness.
How even when ruptured, it morphs and simultaneously becomes another tentacular expression of itself; a regenerative limbed-kraken unleashed onto our social scape.
I think to myself, anything this insidious must have unimaginable roots. I think to myself, it’s jagged claws must be anchored deep down into the mantle core of our planet. I conclude that our revolutions must be somewhat immemorial too.
IV.
It is July and everyone dies in the the summertime. Raven’s funeral. Pet grief. My whole blood family reaches out to me in my time of need. Nobody likes cats but they know Raven was so, so sweet. My neighbor tells me, voice throttle with remorse “Oh, that kitty was so, so sweet.” It is November. A young Palestinian girl weeps as she buries her pet parakeet. Neighbors remorse. She bats a comforting hand away and continues to cry. It is July, I am Burying raven, Leilani lowers her into the ground. I save the oration. I just want to go inside. Leilani tucks me in, I cry all night. I was at the beach (beforehand) with sparkling water, a dark skinned houseless man is laid flat, face in the sand, no one bats an eye; deemed sub human, i give him my water. I regret mistakenly picking up sparkling instead of flat earlier at the corner-store, fizzy water does not hydrate. I walk over to the sparkling sea and I ask the Atlantic for guidance. Should I sign this 90,000 licensing deal? There are piling 3 day notices at my apartment door and all my friends are either getting evicted or hate-crimed. I get off the bus and turn the corner towards my street. There is something black rising in the heat of the pavement. I return home to Raven’s body covered in a blanket of houseflies. She has been gone awhile. I text the Roc Nation A&R rep that I can not take the deal. I email my property manager that I am breaking my lease.
I go to Home Depot with Anais to buy a shovel. Anais tucks me in. I dream that night that Raven is still alive, nuzzling at my feet, her favorite past time. Days go by, Raven’s body is rotting in my mothers sewing machine box. I gift the landscaper a mango, he helps digging the hole as I am too broken up to finish what I’ve started. He tells me he recently he had to bury his dog. I watch him dig as the high sun watches us both. He is grateful for the mango. I am grateful for a moment of reciprocity.
But, it is November not July. I read a report of a young man having to bury his mother alone due to Israeli powers cutting off communications; he couldn’t get in touch with the rest of his family. I try to imagine digging a hole for my mothers corpse. The amount of times I had to climb back into bed to rest before going back to dig Raven’s grave comes back to mind. A hole deep enough for a 7 month old kitten sends me back to bed to weep approximately 7 times. I imagine how many times I’d need to climb back into bed while digging Desireen’s grave, only to find no bed, just rubble of where my home once stood. I imagine trying to lift the dead-weight of the one who gave me breath.
I cannot because I am not brave and my arms are too weak to dig a kitten’s grave.
V.
Palestinians, as all indigenous & displaced peoples, are born to bear the rugged cross, the colonial curse of being deemed the “living dead” a term coined in Ayiti, colonially known as Haiti, to describe the conditions of the displaced West Alkebulan people. Their tears are only 30% salt content compared to the settlers, 70. Their children, with remains left of only their chest up and skull’s fractured —missing the insides, negative space in place of where brains should be, are one eighth of a human compared to the settler child, organs suspiciously intact during a “war”, running into the arms of their returning IDF parent. Their wails are biologically determined to be 7 decibels lesser than the European settler, they are rendered sub
below, not full,
a fraction
as all Indigenous people have been since settler colonialism began six centuries ago.
I recall that all of us who have been historically ‘othered’ share similar wounds, the same deafening wails have touched each of our lineages. I watch with a knowing eye the necropolitical nature of what I see before me, a term coined by Achilles Mbembe to describe our social condition of imminent collective punishment. I conclude that this is what was once done to my own ancestors and maybe to your ancestors, too.
Each day of October I have been reminded, over and over again that I am not brave. I think to myself, If I woke up to the news that I lost 30 + family members in one night, I am absolutely following them. I am not courageous, I would kill myself for much less. I think about the unfathomable grief Palestinians are undergoing right now and I am reminded,
I am not brave.
I do not look away, as I would hope one would not look away if I had to place the dismembered limbs of my child into a scandal bag.
I go quiet some days, humbled to be a witness, grateful to sit in uninterrupted silence, in dust-free skies, to collect and document the same atrocities that cornered my ancestors. I hold close to the understanding that to be a witness is to become a loved one to another.
I do not look away.
I cry in my mothers arms, succumbing to my own personal grief and eventually shifting into the collective grief at hand. I am poignantly aware of the liberty it is to have my mothers arms to curl into.
I think about all the videos of grown men, women and small children, calling out for their mothers right before striking deals with their respective God’s.
I feel transported to another etch on a circular timeline. I am sifting through the 1400s watching children's limbs being cut off as they sojourn towards the door of no return. There are scattered limbs on our grasslands; a cruel displacement being displayed and in this timeline, the blood never dries. Earlier, out of naïveté, I pleaded with spirit to remember. my desire is granted, tenfold.
When I write, I remember.
I peel the skin around my nails (bone) like a ripe onion as I watch my indigenous ancestors fleeing, becoming martyrs, with my own eyes, in the dark room of my own mind. I am granted sight and now seeing all the material ways in which my bloodline has had to confront ethnic cleansing. I am seeing all the ways so many of us still have to confront genocide. My eyes hold a thousand yard stare, one I’ve been known to carry since youth and I watch, mindlessly, like a film made of iridescent wisps of other lives, a timeline before me that very well maybe still whispering overtones right alongside me.
VI.
This year I have asked myself many times, in many words:
Do I want an audience or do I want community? and over and over again, the truth thrums itself against a pursed esophagus. I understand, more deeply than before, that I do not feign for an audience, for the conundrum of visibility or the shallow spheres of influence as much as I gasp for breath, for arms to run into— I want, lives overlapping,
I want the antiquarian fogged lighthouse just up ahead to unveil itself,
I want to grow old with my loved ones,
I want the same for Palestine.
I do believe, of course, that they deserve more than our voyeurism. They deserve more than an audience. They deserve our communion, our commitment. They deserve a witness so we can remind them when this is all over:
What you went through happened. They will say otherwise but here, here is the gathered evidence, documented, time stamped and notarized for the shifting goalposts of western legitimacy.
We were there, watching for you, ferociously collecting alongside you (whilst mourning) in the moments you couldn’t see past your own tears.
To Palestine, to Congo, to Haiti, for Sudan, for Tigray, for all displaced indigenous peoples facing this colonial war machine:
Rotting is important, decay is extraordinary; today, we rot — tomorrow, we bloom.
Murmurations of The Undisclosed
I do not look away
I go quiet
I cry
I think
I feel
(I do not look away)
I write myself clean—
Where do you bury a pet parakeet? Where do you bury the deceased? Where do you bury the fallen leaves from a 10 year old jade plant? Where do you bury defeat? Where do you bury a little boy's leg? Ask’s Ghassan in a self-explanatory tweet. In response I inquire, quoted and begging,
Where do we bury the grief?
The insides of children's skulls; zionism beseeched.
A special thanks is in order to my sweet sibling, Cienna, for reminding me of our ancestors salve for deep grief; grief as an invitation, death as a gateway for inalienable life.