Maximum Occupancy

Okay, I am willing to admit it I am hitting that overwhelming and constant depressed feeling. It could be the time of year, but really I think I am falling into despair because of the events that we are finding ourselves in. I have been thinking and over analyzing my part in everything and now I am too critical and at a critical point.

The things I am clinging onto as my joy, in a way to reverse psychology myself into a delusional state, are not working. Just know that there was a crush of overwhelming shame and sadness and fatalism when my eyes go dead for a second.

I may need to take a break on the serious non-fiction reads, from the shit that is happening overseas to what we are dealing with in our own backyards, I need to find a more sustainable consumption rate.

I finished The New Jim Crow and then tried to jump into a book mentioned, and because the subject matter is pertinent and about home I found myself succumbing to defeat, when these books are meant to advocate and illuminate our current surroundings. Not the authors fault at all, just trying to make sense of where I am.

Michelle Alexander’s critical look at how the current policies and response to the emancipation of enslaved people, and how it lead us to the current criminal state, makes it an important work when it comes to understanding American society today. As a civil rights lawyers who is passionate to tell a collective history that she is part of, I can see how this may not be for everyone and yet I would say it should be required reading for all Americans. Her passion and anger in the injustice of it all is clear throughout, her skill and intelligence as a lawyer means that there is indisputable data and citations to support her arguments and conclusions, and though nearly 15 years old and missing some of the new crimes that the police state has wrought on people of color - it is still relevant to what is going on this moment.

The author shows how the current criminal justice system is biased, set to disenfranchise large segments of American society, and the many political and supreme court decisions that created this beast. While the end offers some solutions, what this work does is expose the complexity and similarity with the new system that took over for Jim Crow, so the end result would call for radical restructuring and dismantling of those systems.

Maybe you could see how I am feeling in the face of this, especially since in Texas it is an upwards battle to have those in power recognize the rights of anyone that isn’t a rich white man.

To feel sad is to have an heart. To be human is to be fucked up. But I have to remember that at least I feel shame and that one day I may have the chance to do right and make up for all the micro and outright aggressions I have shown others in my life. It is not like I made a law that made it impossible for others to get a settlement that I had previously sought and won for myself, became governor, and then allowed women and children to die because of my bonkers border policies.

My sad girl playlist for the day while writing:

Let’s Have a War - A Perfect Circle
I Don’t Want to Know - Fleetwood Mac
Two-Timing Touch and Broken Bones - The Hives
Budget - Megan the Stallion and Latto
Eli, the Barrow Boy - The Decembrists
Mr. P.C. - John Coltrane
You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine _ Death from Above 1979
You Wouldn’t Like Me - The Beths
A Strange Day - The Cure
Three Days - Jane’s Addiction