future tripping

in a time of great contagion, what will we spread?

Leave an imprint of kindness no matter the extremes we are working within.

I am not trying to win the awards of a system built to fail, but I am trying to love myself through the process of dismantling it, keeping generativity at the center of my days and ways of being in relationship with myself and life.

(Pisces horoscope transmission, August 2020, by Chani Nicholas)

They stack the courts and cops against us, so we go underground. We go underground, and underground we can remember: we know how to do this. We’ve been here before. It was only some-trick-some-glitch, that had us forget. We watch each other’s kids, fill each other’s bellies, we feed the dogs and the cats and even the dumbass hamsters, we share prescriptions, vehicles, clean socks, WiFi passwords, wisdom. We place our bodies in such a way that we are impenetrable, that every last one of us is safe, heads on pillows, sleep deep. Our home is a hive, rich and dripping. We cull our environment, we transform our surroundings into beeswax into candles that spark light through the whole winter. And all the winters to come.

Fear is thick like butter; we slice though with blades hot with joy. We laugh, even as hands cover mouths to stifle the sounds. We stay up late, we drink tea, and yes, we cry, but also, we laugh, we lay in the dirt with each other, we stay for it all, both sides, all are welcome. All.

Our hearts are rivers and the banks are firm. Who do we let into the river during this time of great contagiousness? If the river is life (the river is life), we must protect the river, we take care to consider who we let into the river, into
our arms
our bodies
our homes
our “pods”
our minds
our dreams
our future(s)

Underground, we are forgiven. We are held accountable, we are forgiven. No one is banned from the river but also we must protect the river at all costs. Wait, no, we don’t talk like that anymore. Underground, we are speaking a new language, forming new phrases, wrapping clumsy tongues around words that erase axioms that would constantly remind us the monetary value of things, each other. We are suspicious, underground, of all that would pit us against each other. We know (we remember) that language is what creates the river. We protect the river because the river is life, because we love the river. Those who would pollute the river are held back by the banks (by the arms by the bodies by the homes by the pods by the minds by the dreams by the future(s)). We watch for landslides, gophers, floods, fracking, fences, fractures. We share in the shoring up, we protect the banks, we allow the river (the river is life) to meander and reach. We observe the river, we let the river become more and more itself.

At first we hold fast to the banks of the river. Are we ready to let the river rush us to where we are heading? What if this? What if that? We waver between new and old, future and familiar. We are human; we are obsessed with knowing. Obsession is small, and smallness is a signal: to look to the margins, to let the center uncoil (the sound of this is, ahhhhhh, the action is exhale). Inside the humble stillness that comes next is surrender. Inside the surrender is memory: we know how to do this. We’ve been here before.

We are at the headwaters, now.

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⛓’s

Goodbye, Internet

What are we spreading? Sonya Renee Taylor on Prentis Hemhill’s new (INSANELY AMAZING) podcast

The Margins Are The Great Generative Space (interview with Our Lady of Hope In the Dark, La Reina Rebecca Solnit)

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Slow Motion Sober is a newsletter and community for creative types who are sober or curious about sobriety, and all the life-y intersections along the way. It's written by me, Dani Cirignano, a writer and sobriety advocate in San Francisco, CA. 

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