Can grief drive us to freedom?

Hiii, I’m back and it’s Black August. This Black August I’m pausing on the drugs, alcohol. Focusing on freeing myself from the clutches of perfection starting with this newsletter. I will be posting weekly, I promise. I’m promising you because I’m less likely to break the promise if it’s to you than to myself. Nonetheless, this week I’m sharing my feelings about Jakhi McCray through a personal experience and a poem I found in my notes. High me writes a lot and sober me is here to share their work. Onto the feelings…

Has it ever happened to you? You were so caught up in someone else’s misery and suffering so deeply it becomes your misery and suffering. It happens to me all the time. This time I was high on mushrooms. Okay, not high, I had a microdose. Someone asked me if I took a hero dose, but I said absolutely not, no heroes here. Because being a hero would mean being like Jakhi, who burned all those cop cars because he understands the assignment. If the assignment is liberation.

Of course I’m not suggesting you burn down cop cars. I’m simply stating it’s part of the homework if the school is liberation. It’s extra credit for sure, that’s why the state locks you up.

Wait, where was I?

Yes, feeling so deeply and hurting because of the things that have happened to someone else.

I was on the train. I saw a person. I’d seen them the night before, they were asking for 50 cents then, which I didn’t have. I didn’t have 50 cents at the moment. What I had was one 20 dollar bill that if we are being really honest, I didn’t need at the moment. I wasn’t hungry, I was going home and I had a credit card (free money, don’t tell AMEX I’m never paying them back).

But yeah, I had 20 dollars, which is a lot of money for me, but I looked at the bill, looked at the person, I felt my crushing soul so deeply hurt, fully wanting to weep at the unfairness of our society. I thought to myself, I can give myself this. I can give myself the levity. It’s not enough, but I can breathe.

I tried to crumple it up so they wouldn’t see it was a 20 because I knew if they saw it, they would panic and maybe reject it. No such luck. They unwrapped it, shot me a bemused glare, and tried to give it back. They said, I don’t want your brother or your mother coming after me. I think it’s because most days I look like a teenage boy. One time an old Black man in Crown Heights told me, thank you, young man, after I did something, I don’t remember what, but it’s the most gender affirming moment in my life.

I’ve been thinking about Jakhi a lot. The pain that drove him to burn those cars. The pain that drives us to do what we can to fight against this multi-headed monster fully being funded by our bodies.

Please learn more on how you can support Jakhi here.

Do you feel it

The heaviness of existence

The hitching of your breath to try to breathe when the air is getting caught up in your insides that are absolutely wretched and twisted from trying to fit into pipes that you could never fit in you because you are not water that can flow through any shape

You are tight, obtuse, hard, stubborn, and other words that have been used to describe an unyielding person who isn’t unyielding by choice but by nature

Of course you wish you could coax away all the solid things inside of you to turn into mush so you can placate any shape or form without being jammed through and forced through

Sure you wish you could just be normal

But what is normal if you don’t know anything about the foundation of personhood

How can you find your core and change it if you don’t know where it lies to fit the description of normal

What is normal?

The infringement on my existence by extractive forces

My infringement upon others’ existence to get that cute top that I hope makes me forget I’m a large rock trying to fit in a cylindrical pipe

Last month on TikTok I talked about how the state manufactures criminality. I learned this from reading Abolition Geography by Ruth Gilmore which you should totally read!

Feel the News is fully supported by you the readers! To support my labor, please become a paying subscriber or please buy me a coffee.

❤️

Your favorite anarchist comedian/poet/performer/person who takes naps/person who eats edibles (except during Black August).

Marcela