Just Say No to World War III

The world stops for no one, but you wish it would.

How many people will be lost in the chaos?

How many stories will go unheard while attention is elsewhere?

How many have already slipped through the cracks all over the world?

It would have to happen on both sides of any conflict

but if every soldier just walked away

said "no"

"we do not terrorize or kill each other anymore"

who would be there to punish them

for allowing peace?

***

A couple nights ago someone was sitting under my window playing music.

It wasn't heavy or blasting bass - it was kind of pretty.

I don't look outside anymore, but I did this time.

A small 4x4 SUV with an american flag sticker on the back windshield.

A person scrolling through a phone in the driver's seat.

They made an OK sign and held it up to the window.

I closed the curtain and retreated back into my room.

I have these kind of panic attacks sometimes

where my mind just tries to understand a situation.

Like a computer suddenly dumping all its files on a subject.

I guess it's a way to cope.

I've read the OK sign thing started as a joke

on 4chan or some other dark and murky part of the internet.

Over time - in just the past few years - people started using it for real.

Usually to indicate some reference to white supremacy.

It is not a welcomed thing for me to see.

Though I had a conversation with someone once

who argued that people should "take it back"

like we take back words that are used against us

and not let it be defined by those trying to weaponize it.

Which I thought was a good point

but now I can never tell the difference

or what people mean when they use it

and it just makes me cringe.

Back in 2020

someone posted a picture of the police

making the gesture out of the window of their squad car

passing protesters on the sidewalk.

There are hundreds of examples of Proud Boys 

(whatever they're calling themselves these days)

doing the same thing.

It doesn't mean someone is automatically a Nazi

but you can be sure

it means the worst to some people

and the ones doing it deliberately know that.

Sometimes I wonder if people are trying to indicate

that what they're talking about involves white supremacists or those ideologies.

Like a flag that says they think these people might be Nazis.

Or is that just wishful thinking? Hoping they're just looking out?

And what if it doesn't just stand for "White Pride"?

What if the three fingers are for the 3%?

What if they're for World War 3?

Could that be

and what would it mean if it was?

Or is it just a bunch of people

making a joke

because they think it's funny to be scary

and that's the only sense of power

they've ever known?

People who would rather you feared them

because you didn't love them

and that negative relationship

is the only way to feel connected to you?

In other words

I'm horrified

and I don't know what to do.

***

11:11

I wish everything would turn out better for everyone than anyone could have possibly expected it to.

“If you are silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” - Zora Neale Hurston

It's 3:46am 

Sunday morning

February 20, 2022

I'm awake again.

A motorcycle goes roaring through the night as I start to write this.

It's the weekend, but the sounds of chaos outside have not made any sense.

They seem to happen sporadically - not just when clubs are letting out or anything.

I have to play binaural beats in my ears or the random bursts hurt me.

I still don't know why the sounds can rip through my body,

or why they do when they do, and don't when they don't.

Fell asleep an hour or so earlier.

Laying in bed with chest pains.

Bass outside so loud it's like being repeatedly hit in the head with every boom;

vibrating the inside of my body.

The bass:

slicing the music into parts

hurting you with only the lowest sounds on the scale

taking away the middle and higher notes

taking away the vocals

broken down and breaking you with what you loved the most.

Has everything gotten so much worse

or is it just because I've been trapped in this box?

This sanctuary?

I can never seem to concentrate on any one thing for very long.

There have been reports of six shootings in nine hours between Thursday night and Friday morning.

Then, six people shot at a protest Saturday night - one dead.

Was I naive to not be afraid like this in all the time I've lived here?

Lived anywhere?

I know statistics: 

Chicago has a shooting once every two minutes,

or once every other hour,

depending on the source.

New York City would celebrate weekends when they had no shootings.

Everywhere is reporting an uptick in gun violence since 2020.

Everywhere.

I have always had anxiety, but it wasn't over the thought of being shot.

I was never scared of going to a protest before 2020.

Before the pandemic

I was scared of dying outside sick and alone,

but now the world feels like a place that actively doesn't care about people,

while all the time before

it's like the carelessness was just a mistake

and if you pointed it out

it would change.

It was supposed to change.

Now the cruelty seems so deliberate.

I keep thinking: 

all the most powerful people 

must have access 

to the best ideas and the most resources 

to get things done - 

more than I could even imagine on my own from my position in life - 

they must just not want to do that.

I don't want to give up.

I know failure is just when you stop trying.

Take a break if you need to

but never stop trying.

I don't know what to do.

The city keeps kicking around the idea

of shoving unhoused people into camps.

At least there seems to be plenty of responses denouncing that.

#3000challenge

My own eviction is ever looming.

The threat has been hanging over my head for years now.

Not only losing my home,

my resources - 

art supplies, a kitchen, a bathroom, electricity, shelter for me and my cat -

(I haven't had everything I need for a long time now;

at least I've had that)

but my life

to COVID or violence or some other cruelty.

It could happen in September.

It could happen next week.

There could be extensions and more help,

or there could be nothing but more chaos.

And so many people could get lost in the mix

of some kind of war 

and COVID 

and who knows what else.

Would anyone even notice if they didn't know you?

How could we have known each other

just enough to know if we had suddenly disappeared?

To know each other enough to care?

When I say I'm afraid

it isn't the image of someone shaking in a corner.

It's a far away stare

mouth slightly open

in total disappointment and disbelief.

It's watching videos online

petting my cat

doing research

making up sci-fi stories

eating as much as I can

and sleeping

with the thought in the back of my mind

that this could always be the end.

Trying to ignore or drown out the sounds outside

that seem to tell me they hate me

in one way or another

or convince me the world out there

is full of monsters now

- and not the complicated kind

but the merciless senselessly vicious kind

who will destroy you and everything good 

and never care kind -

and there's no escape.

I hate this.