#observationsentences

[queengreendown]

I watched David Banner conjecture about how this virus could potentially give way to biological warfare via forced vaccinations. Yeah, I know he has his ankh moments, but it is a slippery slope, and I think it’s fair to at least be wary. We’ve seen how people have become apprehensive toward those who may or may not be sick. A mere cough gets a side eye these days. And, on the more severe end, you could be the victim of deadly violence (consider: the president calling it the “China Virus” and the subsequent increase of acts of violence against Asian-Americans). You gotta know by now that panic is a playground for the U.S. government (and surely other nations, too). Looking at your neighbor like a biological threat is a good start to being controlled by your paranoia. History has also shown that black, brown, and poor people don’t fare well when it comes to mandatory medical interventions. We’re either used as test bunnies or we are denied (or priced out of) life-saving care. The point is: now is not the time to blindly believe. People who don’t do their own research are the target audience for harmful propaganda. Be mindful of how blame is weaponized and be cautious about anything marketed as a cure.

[queengreendown]

Learning firsthand that meditation is not a blank process. It’s a powerful, lively, hungry process. I feed it and accomplish it by honestly exploring the questions that I have--questions that add curvatures to the flow of my life. Meditation happens when my curiosity is granted permission. It happens when my history is taken seriously. It is the act of taking as long as I need to do anything at all. As long as I need to wander about my memories, to be entertained, to throw a tantrum--a forever long list of ways to carry my own life. Meditation is about shifting the weight of my life to carry it better. But to even get that far, I have to believe that my curiosity, my sense of wonder, is a worthy cause. And, shit, I only started believing that a couple days ago.

[queengreendown]

Saw something that said the future is not female, the future is balanced. But I think that’s just semantics. It’s the same thing really. In order to have a “balanced” future, we have to move the sliding scale toward that which has been excluded or debased. History has shown (and the present has confirmed) that hyper-masculinity is the “chosen” vehicle by which we navigate our experience on earth. Either we have to embody a very specific maleness ourselves or we have to embrace it in others...just to get by. But that maleness generally rejects softness, vulnerability, and nurture. Those traits are instead associated with femininity and then, in the same breath, bastardized. Of course, we want a future that is balanced. But to do that, we have to venture beyond the notion that boys can’t cry, care, hug, moan, or mourn without losing their sense of self. No, kindness and empathy and anti-violence are not inherent to femininity, but, historically (and, again, presently), women have been socialized and/or forced to exhibit those traits in order to survive. So, to get to your utopian, balanced future, like it or not, who are you gonna learn from except from those who have been doing the work their entire lives? The end goal is to dispel the illusion that we need gender norms just to be emotionally intelligent, good people. But until slow motherfuckers catch up, the future is female.

[queengreendown]

Growing up in the age of social media is really an unprecedented experience with regards to public information and collective consciousness. The access to and distribution of “data” is wider and faster than ever--increasingly so. Billions of stories, ideas, and lives are uploaded to a massive cloud of webs. The concept of being interwoven is almost tangible. I am curious about how this will be studied, dissected, and written over time. What cataclysmic and miraculous consequences have come of these threads of connectivity.

What new loneliness. What new desperation. What new love.

I had a moment earlier. Driving to get a mango smoothie. It’s 83 degrees. The sky is a vividly uninterrupted blue, as if clouds have not been invented yet. I’m listening to Blu’s verse on Doowhop, weaving through a residential road that is decorated by towering trees. It feels like the epitome of late summer. I’m wishing there was someone just like me who could appreciate this cinematic view. My instinct is to capture it, package it up to fit inside 60 seconds, and post it on Instagram. The instinctual urge to share a brief, magical clip of my Friday afternoon is not necessarily a bad thing. But something does get lost.

Idk. It’s messy.

[queengreendown]

A symptom; a luxury

You ever just think about how incredible sleep is? How it's absolutely required that we lay our big ass head down and surrender to blackness? I find that to be such a fascinating requirement of being alive. Complete surrender. You detach yourself from time and space until you are barely a body. You are only a breath. You are only a heart-red light glowing in the dark.

[queengreendown]

Imagery is powerful in the way that it becomes synonymous with certain ideas, and I find myself proceeding with caution when navigating the language of my own thoughts and, more likely, other people’s thoughts. For instance: One of the most prevalent themes throughout conversations about liberation/revolution is this concept of “taking up space.” There’s this insistence on expansion and largeness in the vocabulary of reclaiming ourselves. And I understand the allure of those kinds of visual cues. But sometimes my experience of evolution is smaller, is more of an unraveling than a contagion, is more private--almost resisting representation. Or there’s the assumption that freedom (the word, the concept, its poetry) is this larger-than-life endeavor. I internalize those consistent images and, with them, the assumed impossible-ness of freedom--which then colors how I conceptualize it entirely. When, instead, I could choose to eliminate this larger-than-life imagery and get into a language that sizes me appropriately among the living and supports the feasibility of liberation. In other words, I always yearn to use to my words wisely.

[queengreendown]

Saw an ad on Instagram tryna sell me a bracelet that could "help" my high anxiety. And I thought for a moment how insidious advertising can be. Any label can be capitalized on. Any identity. Depressed? Here's a necklace. It's a piece of jewelry; it's not a doctor. But I am a consumer before and after every other possible descriptor. Every single entity wants my dollar, my attention, my submission. There's a price and a fashion for every ailment, every idea. The entire human experience is for sell, is for surveillance. And I plug into it every day, rather than be alone. How odd.

[queengreendown]

There's no telling what we can't know. How ignorance is an undercurrent of being alive. The disbelief is a part of the package--a part of the danger as we skirt between death and delight. Will there be enough time for this wild curiosity to feed on? With so much wondering to do! Fear is sometimes supplanted by the mystery of it all.