in a dry place (we flow)

Where can I find the cerasee herb in Los Angeles? I’m so tired of my child being sick.

I am not of this land, and it was not meant for me. That’s okay. The desert and I are not compatible, in the long term, I don’t think. Or some sort of drastic rebalancing is needed.

That said, I have been meditating on the necessity of getting comfortable with discomfort. (Wherever you go, there you are.)

These boundaries aren’t naturally easy for me to parse, though I have in the past made decisions that were rather swift, based solely on my gut telling me to veer right or hang left. My twenties were dumber, meaner, easier. With my intuition as guide and past missteps as warnings, which lever do I pull when I’m receiving conflicting transmissions? A recurring revelation, as I lurch and fumble toward my fourth decade: defaulting to sacrificial masochism ain’t it. 

So much of this notion of what’s uncomfortable is in the framing. I was listening to Angela Davis’ autobiography recently, and the other night, while my daughter got ready for bed, I watched a few interviews Angela had done throughout the years. Grainy video clips from the early 70s, smile wide and afro tall, fist thrust high; a glitchy Zoom call from two months ago with a few fresh-faced university undergrads, an aesthetic bookcase adorning her cozy background. Freedom has no destination, she reminds us both then and now, always, a constant refrain. Freedom is found and lost and gained again in the struggle itself. The point of struggle is that it is ultimately unresolvable. 

I used to balk at the idea of struggle as a permanent state. Now I discover a strange relief in the concept. We’re simply not meant to feel good all the time. We’re organic beings. Discomfort doesn’t automatically amount to imminent harm; it means we’re alive as much as we are dying, relentlessly awake to reality.

Here’s one of my struggles: I’m deeply concerned about the state of education. On a massive scale, but also personally, for my daughter. I recently read a frank and alarming piece in Unherd, “The Plot to Replace Teachers with Tech,” about the rapid and insidious proliferation of privately-owned digital learning platforms like iReady, which account for an alarming amount of hours children spend staring into a computer screen, both in the classroom and at home. The nature of its lesson progressions (or lack thereof, if a child gets a question wrong) have felt like psychological torture to witness, much less experience (the meltdowns have been epic, and often warranted). I wrote to a guidance counselor with my concerns and learned that we cannot opt out because it’s a part of the “curriculum.” 

Worse, I asked my daughter what she’s learning in her English class, and more specifically, what they’re reading. The Constitution, she told me, and I laughed out loud (more on this later). A Shakespeare play, but chopped into pieces, pre-masticated for easier comprehension. I don’t love that. I asked, is your teacher reading to you, at least? No, she responded. An AI voice does, and we follow along on the big screen. 

I also have to hear an awful disembodied voice, while I sit with my third grade elementary-aged reading mentee. I’m on these Zooms every other Tuesday; I’ve been a mentor going on three years now. To my growing dismay, the students are obligated to use a learning platform to help them develop their technical reading skills, and it’s my least favorite aspect of this experience by far. Maybe my attention span is too short, but it’s painfully boring to sit and offer the occasional “nice work!” “ooh, great job!” or repeat a word or syllable so that my mentee can drag it into the appropriate phonetic bucket. I much prefer engaging children with real life questions, reading to them and listening to them read to me, playing games, or literally any other interactive activity. I thought that was the point of this program. A few weeks ago the director emphasized, for the first time, using a timer to be sure our mentees were completing their mandated minimum for the reading platform. I imagined the reports and bar graphs of chronological data that the school or perhaps entire district is beholden to. Tracking, tracking, tracking, digitally synthesizing, surveilling. Massive contracts with private data companies that mine students’ learning profiles for profit, under the guise of improving educational outcomes. The system churns ever on, the most vulnerable and malleable – our children – as chum.

Of course, I write this from the occupied Tongva, Fernandeño, and Chumash lands we call Los Angeles. A city of angels, overrun by demons in fake police gear, kidnapping and trafficking and murdering our neighbors. A city that was or wasn’t a military target in a recent episode of billionaire boys flaunting their deadly toys. All of us disposable! All of us fodder. Towards the end of her autobiography, Angela Davis shares the broad points – including many direct quotes – from the stunning opening statement she delivered to a mostly-rapt courtroom during the June 1972 trial in San Jose, California, when she stood accused of conspiracy, murder, and kidnapping. 

I say mostly, because despite her painstaking and poignantly elucidated evisceration of the corrupt prosecutor’s efforts to lock her away, there were members of the jury determined not to hear her. Community members, strategically chosen, who evaded the best efforts of the voir dire to uphold white supremacist judicial violence in the court of law. And she took the stand for over two hours anyway. From my myopic historical perspective and relative privilege, it’s easy to ask: well, else could she do? She could have done anything else. But this is Ms. Davis. So, what else was there to do, but ardently defend her right to justice, and in so doing, argue for the rights of all political prisoners, bound to a society that forged itself out of pillage, plunder and exploitation on stolen land? She stood in that discomfort. She was acquitted. She’s still standing today. 

Whenever interviewers, from nearly any decade, ask her how she maintains hope, her response is hilariously circular: because there always has to be hope. I typically find hope a rather anemic term, and I think in many contexts, it can be. Hope. Perhaps a touch passive, a waiting for deliverance, as opposed to a pursuit, a grasping. I don’t know. The ephemeral must have its place too. Something we can’t yet quite touch, perennially out of reach. Does that render its existence null and void? Of course not, we just labor with a bit more grit and intention to hold it in our minds. Radical imagining, the ultimate test of love and stamina in a historical milieu that has made it nearly unbearable to sit still, abide the silence of our own thoughts. How many times a day do I grab my phone when I could stare at a tree or listen to birdsong, frogsong, cricketsong instead? Let myself vibrate within the hum of this abused and avenging earth. The tension between doing and being: yes, I feel it. Struggling in fundamental solitude. Agonizing over which way to move. 

A palm-fitted computer of endless distraction and discourse, face down on a table. A rooted plant, folding its thick striped leaves within the gathering dark, unfurling again with the rising sun. 

A cursor, blinking against a white screen…how to fill the page? With breath, first. A vast expanse of stillness, limbs and synapses and displaced dust humming, awaiting instruction. Then, I type. Thoughts move into word, into action. We flow.