Owlet of Bliss
May. 3rd, 2017 09:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ismoToday was our monthly Black Lives Matter demo, so I headed downtown, even though I was still not feeling normal after yesterday's blood donation. While we were holding our signs--at the very same time--a 17 year old young black man was shot dead by the police. In the Sparrowhawk's old neighborhood, as it happens. Admittedly, the young man was on parole from another violent incident where he tried to kill another teenager. He had absconded from parole, and when his car was stopped by the police, he opened fire. So this could not ever have ended well. But . . . it's still disturbing as all hell.
We always get some positive honks and waves. Today we got four or five angry incidents, too--white men rolling their windows down to glare at us and yell "White lives matter!" and "My life matters!" Yes, thanks for pointing that out. We respond amicably and we don't argue, because of course, they are right. The thing is, everyone KNOWS that, except in the paranoid ideation of people who think respect is a zero sum game. The harder thing to process is the guy who walked up to us in person, looked at the signs, and announced, "I'd like to get a marker and just cross out the 'BLACK' part." Seriously, dude . . . you just want to cross out the BLACK . . . Yes . . . that would fix everything, wouldn't it. I just . . . I don't even know. (Bonks head against the wall and weeps quietly.)
On the way back to the car, I bought a candy bar from a homeless person, gave some money to the jazz musicians who had provided us with music . . . and then found myself fatigued and out of breath to an alarming degree by the time I got back to my parking spot. It was a beautiful day, but I just went home and stayed there. Ate a little chicken soup. Dammit, I keep trying to get better but I guess I just don't know how to make it happen. I worked on the novel revisions and found myself with a timing problem--trying to fit the character's actions into the time and day of the week corner I'd already painted myself into. I hate it when that happens.
We always get some positive honks and waves. Today we got four or five angry incidents, too--white men rolling their windows down to glare at us and yell "White lives matter!" and "My life matters!" Yes, thanks for pointing that out. We respond amicably and we don't argue, because of course, they are right. The thing is, everyone KNOWS that, except in the paranoid ideation of people who think respect is a zero sum game. The harder thing to process is the guy who walked up to us in person, looked at the signs, and announced, "I'd like to get a marker and just cross out the 'BLACK' part." Seriously, dude . . . you just want to cross out the BLACK . . . Yes . . . that would fix everything, wouldn't it. I just . . . I don't even know. (Bonks head against the wall and weeps quietly.)
On the way back to the car, I bought a candy bar from a homeless person, gave some money to the jazz musicians who had provided us with music . . . and then found myself fatigued and out of breath to an alarming degree by the time I got back to my parking spot. It was a beautiful day, but I just went home and stayed there. Ate a little chicken soup. Dammit, I keep trying to get better but I guess I just don't know how to make it happen. I worked on the novel revisions and found myself with a timing problem--trying to fit the character's actions into the time and day of the week corner I'd already painted myself into. I hate it when that happens.
