

Let Not Patriotism Be Our Narrow Home Con/Jur/d, 7/5/2023 Under certain nighttime conditions, he left the hometown house to us and we find it abandoned and unused since Mom’s death 27 years ago Of course, the boundaries (especially in the basement, and the parent’s walk-in-closet with access to the attic) are insubstantial, turning inside OUT As an aside, Mother having taken refuge in the USA after the last world war, brought us up as patriots with a capital P, she was a teacher after all Looking through the ruins, the dungeons, the great towers, exploring the borderlands so clearly defined when we were growing up there Usually, although not exclusively when this suburban house or the tech capital basement hermitage appear in dreams, we’re questioning home In that bedroom when afraid at night we would imagine curling up in a hollow beneath the trail's edge while fear searched above making a CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH Why don’t we return there? Why do old-world fantasies of domination and death, a patriotic fever to die on someone else’s terms supplant Earth’s burrow A belonging to dirt, mud, dust, roots, trees, forest, brook, river, lake, ocean, our nature, animal, and vegetable, and mineral, not virgin flesh’s parthenogenesis We don’t arrive alone and disconnected, out of someplace else to here, we come out of, not into, we belong amid blackholes and gas giants and moons and galaxies SWIRL Without our naming them, yet we feel we need to build fortresses, to label them SAFE to swear fealty to nightmares of power, to build tall walls demarcating us and them To narrow what constitutes kin, to say “This is how and why I belong” narrowing the great uncertainties by believing myths of freedom, confusing this passing moment with HOME
Will be heading to California tomorrow to visit with my daughter and brother and others from the extended family — we’ll see how often we’ll post but we’d like to reestablish the habit of measuring the gate(less)
Much love,
Con/Jur/d, 7/5/2023
PS a couple of things I’ve found valuable in the last few days: