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Split at the Root: Part I

June 14, 2020 in Age Matters, Church Matters, Country Matters, Essays, Feminist Matters, Past Matters, Quoth the Raving

untitled by Chantal Joffe

If you have taken this rubble for my past
raking through for fragments you could sell
know that I long ago moved on
deeper into the heart of the matter

If you think you can grasp me, think again:
my story flows in more than one direction
a delta springing from the river bed
with its five fingers spread
–Adrienne Rich

This is a story I began writing when I was 34, the last age of Ute, whose story this really is. I am 49 now, and what were cracks in our country’s landscape then have become continental divides. But deep in the soil of this stolen land, the rot was always there, threatening to poison us all.

I knew Ute in 1998. The temperatures were already climbing. Justice as always was only truly available to those deemed human by the Founding Fathers (such a small percentage of us). Rodney King was not so far in the rear view mirror, but had already been obscured in White America’s memory by OJ in his white Bronco,  launching the whole of reality TV culture in that one uber-televised police chase leading finally to Donald Trump’s White House.

As I write this, there is no stable ground—only lethal virus, lethal white supremacy and capitalism. Righteous fury in the streets, dangerous dybbuks in the spreadsheets. I have been sick too—not with COVID but a urinary tract infection that has bloomed into my kidneys and triggered every trigger I didn’t know I still had.

My ability to filter toxins is completely maxed out.

The first day I experienced these symptoms, a first draft of Ute’s story fell onto my desk. It had been securely pinned to my bulletin board for more than a decade but on that overly warm May day, the printout suddenly dropped onto my desk.

I felt sicker.

The summer she and I knew each other, I was 27– the age when you either step into the path of adult life or die. Back then the curse of 27 wasn’t discussed as it is today. Nothing was. The Internet was still in its infancy. When I needed information I went to the library or called up a smarter friend. When I needed companionship, I showed up in people’s bedrooms. When I needed help, I prettily cried Uncle. Continue Reading →

The Church of Prince and the Revolution

June 7, 2020 in Age Matters, Astro Matters, Church Matters, Country Matters, Essays, Music Matters, Spirit Matters

Today is the 62nd birthday of Prince Roger Nelson. Anyone who reads this blog knows that he’s part of a holy trinity for me, the other two members being Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder. But not everyone realizes that our astrological charts continue to affect others long after we die. This is important because our Lord in Purple hailed from Minneapolis, the heart of America’s broken heartland, where George Floyd was so flagrantly and unrepentantly executed by law enforcement officials that his murder launched a worldwide revolution. Had he been alive Prince surely would have been the first to raise holy hell. He loved his hometown fiercely–never really left–and was so down for revolution that he named his band after it. If the depth of his social justice commitment was not fully recognized during his lifetime, that’s only because he kept many of his good works behind the scenes. Which only makes me love him more.

His genius was recognized, though, and it continues to offer a collective intimacy necessary to fight the good fight, because it continues to remind us how unique and desirable we all are–how worth fighting for. Trust that he would be on the forefront of today’s protest lines today were he alive. And trust that he is moving just as powerfully behind the scenes today— composing the perfect lyric, backbeat, howl to raise us from the ashes of institutionalized white supremacy.

So I believe that on his 62nd solar return—when a person’s energy is most felt— we may still call on Prince for support, practical magic, and inspiration. Indeed, may this poly-everything, third-eye-winking, putting-the-Gem-in-Gemini reign as the sign of our times. Purple love to all on this turbulent Sunday in America.

Changing the Things We Cannot Accept

June 6, 2020 in Age Matters, Astro Matters, City Matters, Country Matters, Essays, Feminist Matters, Spirit Matters

I have been silent here, partly to let others be heard during this week of historic unrest, partly because I have been struggling with a life-threatening kidney infection.

But my heart has been in the streets of my city and country, where protests have been righteously, rigorously practiced even as law enforcement thugs have responded with pepper spray, rubber bullets, tear gas, police cars—anything they could weaponize (even The New York Times). We know light shines only when we turn it on, and I feel deep gratitude and reverence for those who have been doing so–for all who’ve brought their precious soft underbellies into these lethally police and pandemic-addled streets.

As many of you know, yesterday would have been the 27th birthday of Breonna Taylor, the black female EMT who declared joyfully in tweets that 2020 would be her year. 27 is a make-it-or-break-it age —when you begin your Saturn Return and journey into authentic, rewarding adulthood. I have such confidence that this beautiful soul would have done exactly that had she not been murdered in her own home by cops conditioned to plunder every physical, legal, emotional, and moral boundary of a person of color. It is no coincidence that yesterday also was a massive lunar eclipse–in social justice-seeking Sagittarius, no less.

So let this enormous celestial release of energy—for that is what an eclipse truly is— support the release being rightfully demanded in America’s blood-lined streets.

Let the solar return of the soul of Breonna unite with these big big stars. Let righteous light, righteous labor, righteous love burn down the American infrastructures built on the backs of brown and black bodies whose work, let alone humanity, was never honored. And by the light of this bright full moon let something more enduring, encapsulating, and ennobling rise like a phoenix its place.

In every way I can, this middle-aged white woman will practice more reckoning and self-reckoning to resist the injustice built into this broken land. I am grateful to all else who do so. May Breonna’s birthday song ring around the world.

For concrete actions you can take to commemorate Breonna’s life and the fight for justice, here is a list.

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy