release me back into nature
Read Morebecause, my child, the past is where i became myself
Read Moreit’s raining, and i’m already late for work. the next moment i blink and time suddenly rewinds to game six, to the season, to years past, to the nineties when i remember swinging for the fences as a kid myself, chasing fowl balls for free bubble gum and icees, hearing the roar of thirty-something-year-old parents yelling from the wobbly bleaches.
Read Morebut i always thought we elected leaders to act responsibly, to honor the constitution, to keep calm and carry on, to avoid the temptations of bloodlust and overreaction from the passions and trust of a traumatized republic
Read Morei was fifteen years old that day, a scrawny kid with a changing voice, a heavy backpack, and big dreams, worrying about my next exam, thinking about friday night lights, fretting about the girl i was going to ask to homecoming that year—living safe and sound inside the american empire.
Read Morei was visiting home that day, had just walked in the door, when dad asked me "have you seen the news, son?" beaming off the tv were apocalyptic images of a u.s. military plane inching down a kabul runway with people clinging to its wheels. this was not hbo. it was cnn, fox, and msnbc, all airing the latest episode of a new season of american empire: u.s. troops fleeing a faraway land in the eleventh hour of a long and costly war. a preventable war.
Read Moreall these years later i still go by that house, with my windows down, carrying a question i've always wanted to ask them. "and what, old men, do you wish you could have been?" i was taught to respect my elders, and so i learned that some things are better left unsaid. the cul-de-sac is still there, but the faces inside the windows are different.
Read Moresweetie, you're going to miss the bus. tell me, daddy, why? because, sweetheart, we have failed the innocent on both sides. but why? because we have no courage. but why not? because we've lost our way. how, daddy? because we forgot what we stand for. what do we stand for, daddy? liberty and justice for all. like we say at school in the morning? yes, sweetie.
Read Morei saw dreams deferred in their eyes, a melancholy that glistened across their features with the coming of twilight, and after the snap of my shutter immortalized that moment, i saw on their faces the heavy realization that one day this is all going to end. “life buries all of us,” i said, surely quoting someone i have never read, “but not these pictures. not our books. not the stories we tell our children. they will outlive us for a thousand years."
Read Moreit's a strange thing, i admit, to celebrate a conviction, perhaps because it almost always follows some kind of tragedy. some kind of loss. some kind of injustice. in this case a man's life was cut short. george floyd's life. squeezed out of him under the knee of a police officer who once took an oath to protect him.
Read Morei always marvel at these embers of the past still lingering proudly into the present, still showing up daily for the passerby, still printing the stories of our time. one reason i still get newspapers is they cut off the addiction of my dopamine-secreting iphone, freeing me to digest the news without the ambush of texts, phone calls, and social media posts that never seem to end.
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