Everyday Magic opened its doors on March 20th, 2016, less than seven months before Donald Trump was elected President.
If you told me about the times we would face in the coming years, I may have gone straight to the woods and built a bunker. I vividly remember November 9th, 2016 (also my birthday), specifically the terror I felt about a future I had no way of fathoming. It feels lonely to miss a more innocent, optimistic version of myself and a world that she will never get back.
Watching the country become emboldened by the darkest aspects of human nature, decentralize the importance of truth, bolster misinformation, overturn Roe V. Wade, pass hundreds of oppressive laws against Trans folks, overfund psychopathic institutions that hunt Black people for sport, turn a global pandemic into a capitalistic free for all that will fuck us for ages to come, plunder the planet into uninhabitability, platform fascists and nazis to storm the capitol with lots of assistance and minimal punishment, and of course, fund a genocide that is murdering tens of thousands and displacing millions more has rendered my former self and the world she lived in unrecognizable.
Yet it is absurd amounts of privilege that let me live in that innocent, optimistic world at all. And no matter how horrific, I think it’s better this way. All of us in the same world. If my reality is comfortable because it is built on the backs of others, what ability do I have to fight, strive, long and yearn for a better one? If my reality is only comfortable because of this cruel and fragile infrastructure then how dubious is this “reality” in the first place?
There is no peace without justice, and there is no freedom until all are free.
Which is to say, there is no freedom. Any freedom experienced is conditional, incidental, subject to change. A system that consumes without regard will swallow anyone whole the moment it benefits them. And, by design, most of the choices we are allowed to make are utterly meaningless to change any of it.
The crisis is holographic in nature and cannot be overstated.
I wake up to the decimated bodies of humans slaughtered by weapons my taxes fund while the Zionist community I was raised in nods their head in approval. I see the “spiritual” community on social media offer you tips to make him OBSESSED with you and manifest your DREAM BODY and say NOTHING about what is happening in the world wonder how my rage hasn’t yet burned up the whole universe.
Instead, I write. I seethe. I share. I let my mind explode and don’t bother picking up the pieces. I read. I learn. I unlearn. I let my heart break and don’t try to soothe the pain. I fertilize the soil and plant seeds not knowing if I will ever see them grow, because what good to this world is another person who slashes and burns? I search for a faith that isn’t propped up by privilege, that can stand steady in the face of truth, and hold on dearly to whatever I find.
An art that does not heal is not an art. Our art and our healership are our most effectives tools of resistance, and both depend on us rejecting numbness, the shroud of privilege, the comfort of your head in the sand. Your shattered mind and broken heart have a place at this table, they will deeply inform your imperfect offering, and I humbly beg you to continue feeling them for as long as you can possibly bare. Camus says “the only way to become free in an unfree world world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion,” and I believe this to be the only option left.
Everyday Magic opened its doors on March 20th, 2016, less than seven months before Donald Trump was elected President. The next day we closed the shop so we could all stay home and cry. The day after that we opened the shop so we could all get together and cry.
I wonder how much harder, how much more impossible this all would have been without Everyday Magic and without you.
I wonder if, I suspect that, she was made for times like these.
Your fellow violin player on the Titanic,
Bakara
art by Meg Collier
Sara Rempelos
“Any freedom experienced is conditional, incidental, subject to change.” This lesson was the hardest one to learn and the most profound, sticking to my heart like a piece of used chewing gum on the bottom of my shoe. I’m not sure if I’m grateful for the 40+ years of ignorant bliss I’ve lived or if it makes wiping the privilege out of my eyes that much more difficult.
Your writing is beautiful, Bakara, even when the message is stark. Thank you.
Shawna Connors
I sit here, on this cold earth morning experiencing a recall of that election where we all either closed our doors to cry or opened them to invite those that in that needed a place to grieve. The shock, the bewilderment, the fear and the tear streaked faces. I supposed we had to Face it all. Pick the scab. Awakenings aren’t the sunshine and rainbows we picture them to be. Most times they look something like grief for awhile.
Tianna Wong
Thank you so much, B. The reading might be deferred until tomorrow, but this is the Sunday reset I needed…especially the reminder that destruction is so pointless, so prevalent – that it does literally nothing. It’s so weird and hard to navigate inside of what is going on but it’s very reassuring to see someone I respect talk about it like this.