anywhere everywhere

11.18.2016

Chalk again, this time on the sidewalk outside the building where concerned faculty met for a collective freakout and strategy session. That strategy has shifted and you can see it in the chalk. VOTE is still everywhere, but this new message, brighter, will outlast the call to direct action. You can see the move, literally on the ground, from what we had to do last Tuesday between 7AM and 8PM to what we must now tell ourselves every day between waking and sleeping, a single concerted effort fading out, constant vigilance in bolder relief.
​
Except that constant vigilance now looks like concerted effort; they've essentially become the same thing. We are mobilized like it's still election day. We are flooding the channels and adding to the roar and must. not. let. up. The costs of living like this every day are immense; hypervigilance is exhausting and we have jobs and families. The costs of not living like this, though, are greater still. The next great sadness will be our return to life as it was, for those of us whose lives will remain essentially the same, for those of us whose bodies are not on the line. I had to open up the bruise and make the bruise blood come out to show them. Strange to hope against healing, against reconciliation. Strange to hope this wound stays open.