Three chapters in and I CANNOT GIVE THIS TO EVERY PERSON I KNOW FOR CHRISTMAS THE FUCK.
It’s so, so, SO good.
“We live in the most violent industrialized nation on Earth because too many dudes can’t admit they still need a night-light.”
OH, WE ARE HIGHLIGHTING THAT.
I am restraining myself from quoting every damn paragraph for fear of running up against copyright infringement but @ElieNYC IMPLORE THE HOUSE TO PUSH UP YOUR PUB DATE.
“But before his life as a racist spokesperson for Donald Trump, Giuliani was an unhinged crisis performer who used his time as mayor of NYC to spout ridiculous theories and threaten Black and brown people.”
“Police are the only people whose own cowardice and hysteria can be used to justify an objective misreading of the facts.”
I literally just read that six times, staring off into space after each reading. I want every high school American History class to have this book.
@Alyssa_Milano (you glorious jailbird) you NEED this book.
“We don’t have to change one system to address police brutality, or 50; instead there are over 3,000 county sheriffs and police commissioners in this country, and each one of them retains a level of autonomy to determine how much cops are allowed to beat Black people.”
@ElieNYC HOW IS EVERY SENTENCE IN THIS BOOK SO DAMN GOOD.
“Your Constitutional rights aren’t supposed to change depending on whether you know they exist” @ElieNYC writes and upon reading these words I atomize from the truth in them,
“At the dark heart of making the 6th Amendment meaningful in any way for Black people lies an argument that white people, even white liberals, are reluctant to make; white jurors cannot sit in impartial judgement of Black people.”
This continues, brilliantly.
@ElieNYC ends this passage with “If I could have one white superpower, it would be the fucking nerve of these people.”
Our nation began from a poisoned tacit understanding that for this experiment to work, some humans had to be worth nothing.
Mystal never agreed to that.
“This is what originalists do when confronted with an area of law that was originally vague or open for interpretation; they make some shit up.”
@ElieNYC, This is so beautiful that were I a Labrador retriever, this would be a very dead squirrel and I would roll in it.
“We still have a white supremacist’s Constitution - we just have to count Black people as full people for the purposes of congressional representation, is all. Not much has changed.”
@ElieNYC, that I cannot buy this for everyone this holiday season fills me with rage LOOKING AT YOU @thenewpress.
I just restrained myself from quoting or photographing the next paragraph, as I am afraid of running afoul of the publishing house. But oh, DAMN.
Every single person needs this book.
I was about to pick a sentence of this but then realized it’s just a big, glorious, single thought. @ElieNYC gives me warm Capra-feelings in this paragraph, if Frank Capra was fucking justifiably outraged. Preorder this book.
For a couple of years, Kid swam/water polo’ed/dove. She was never completely dry and the back seat of my car was a shade lighter than the front seat thanks to chlorine.
While all three pool sports shared a venue, the participants were easily categorized. The swim-team kids were the ones shaped like inverted triangles, the water-polo players were covered in bruises and the divers had destroyed hair.
“Didn’t they all?”
Nope.
Swim team wore caps, water-polo wore caps- at least in part so an opponent didn’t tear off their ears- but divers, did not. The pattern of diving/waiting to dive created greater porosity in the hair, leading to greater damage.
I loved the precision, the quiet, the discipline, the chasing after a Platonic ideal of a line, a movement, the feeling of flight, of speed. I loved the wardrobe and oh, did I love pointe shoes.
Ballet tolerated me.
At its heart dance is a sport * and, like all sports, there are certain people more physically-suited to the sport than other. I wasn't designed for ballet.
* At its heart, ballet began as a way for French aristocrats to look at lady-legs and pick out their new mistress.
Even though I was small, I was the wrong kind of small; the perfect ballet dancer should have a smaller head, very long limbs and very bendy feet.
If spiders could pirouette, Balanchine would have married three of them.
If pressed, I think the most baffling thing to explain to anyone younger than 25 is how rarely anyone over 45 took a picture.
Well, that and rotary phones.
I imagine myself pulling down a photo album and then stopping to explain a photo album.
Having broken down the idea of "We printed them and then put them in a book and never looked at them unlike now, where they are in your phone and you never look at them," I'd show them an average page.
Birthday or two.
Holidays.
Vacation.
"That's a year," I would say.
They'd possibly push the pictures a few times, thinking that maybe it would open a file of the rest of the 16,000 images of pets, meals and bomb-light pouting which is now how we measure a year.
"Nope," I'd say cheerfully, "The picture were printed, picked up, put in here."
"I'm sorry," someone who knows me in three dimensions says apologetically, "I'm not on Twitter."
It's fair for them to assume this will wound me deeply. As I have noted before, "I was on Twitter" will always be my alibi, no matter the day or time.
Anyone who spends as much time as I do on here must like it.
Right?
"Good for you!" I say supportively to the non-Twitter person, then add, "And never start. It's a septic tank."
I believe this.
Turns out, I'm that bacteria which has evolved to thrive in septic tanks.
Until this morning, my answer was always, "There is no good reason an emotionally healthy and fully-actualized person should be on Twitter. The Nazis alone are reason enough. Also, no edit button."
This morning, I received a text from a friend's son, newly in this tank.
As anyone who has followed me for a while knows, my volunteering energy goes a bunch of places but I put the bulk of it towards @SanteDOr, a tiny, nearly all-volunteer rescue, based in a single storefront in Atwater Village.
Don't let the size fool you.
In the last twenty years, they have saved and placed thousands of cats, some dogs, a few very confused rabbits and one very alarmed hamster. During the pandemic, they redoubled their TNR efforts because a lot of groups were overwhelmed.
They are good people.
Stuff gets done.
More to the point, animals get second chances. Frequently during a Trap/Neuter/Release program in a feral cat colony a volunteer will realize a "Feral" cat is frantically purring and curling around their hands, desperate for safety and care again.
"I LIKE this dress!" Consort says appreciatively. I nod in agreement; it's very flattering, clever enough to keep me from yelling about who would pay over $700 for this dress. I mean, I wouldn't but I respect that someone with near-infinite resources would.
I swish around so the dress can have a moment and Consort says happily, "I'm glad you're enjoying this experiment."
I stop mid-swish.
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," I say, then add, "I mean, it's fine. It's a good writing prompt."
Even the best couples have unbridgeable chasms.
I think of Consort's temperament as the byproduct of his Mediterranean ancestors, a man capable of great pleasure merely by being surrounded by the things in this world which matter to him. A great red wine being drunk with lifelong friends on a lakeside porch?