The Awful State of Things Without

It feels disingenuous to write here today without mentioning the state of the world, and yet I know I will not be as coherent as I wish. I can say these things, though, at least.

1. The racism in the US is not new, and it is not (as we would like it to be) going away. This is, as I have seen others write, the system working as it was designed to, to keep white people, and especially white men, and most especially white men with power, on top, by pushing others down. This is not new. 

2. All that's new is that the videos bring it to where everyone can see it (unless they willfully close their eyes). We hear about other events, about Breonna Taylor being shot by police in her own home, in her own bed, and it's terrible, but when you see George Floyd, cuffed and on the ground, with a cop kneeling on his neck--kneeling on his neck!--until he dies... I just can't. And going through Twitter this morning, with all the videos of officers firing tear gas and rubber bullets, driving SUVs into crowds, shoving people violently to the ground...that old man walking with the cane was such a threat to you? The journalists who are covering the stories are getting shot at, arrested ... this isn't the country I want to live in.

But it is the country I live in.

3. I know that I need to do more than say this, I need to do something, but as someone who has decision paralysis on the smallest things, it is overwhelming. I can say "this is wrong"; I can donate to Black Lives Matter; I can support black-owned businesses. It doesn't feel like anywhere near enough. My good intentions aren't enough. My outrage isn't enough.

So I will sit with it. The horror, my privilege, the discomfort, the sadness. And hope to find a path through.

And now that I have gotten this incoherence down, and I have made chicken salad and brownies, and given away a reclining chair to a good home, and reconciled my bills and checkbook ... I'm going to knit.