Love letters to looters

Dear Me/We/You/Us

Under strict loving soft encouragement from the QBG I am writing us a love letter. And the things I love about ourselves and myself and weselves and multiple selves on multiple plains/planes.

The first part of y/our love letter of course is a love letter to our inability to do the assignment , any assignment as it is asked.

When I started this letter I had as I usually do grand plans of combining it with a stinging commentary on Haiti/an admonishment to American progressive laziness/ response to stupid stupid lady who knows nothing about black new media feminism/and a love letter to all of you I carry with me .

I think I started with the idea of combining them because of of something Delux wrote that I the idea that our very exisistance is multi tasked . While hers is of course based on the Dubois talented tenth Not just inter sectional as in existing , but that every breath or motion exists in our bodies and lives at multiple sometimes oppositional ends.

and that attempts to sustain this existence in any form are transgressive always or confrontational or violent where they are none.

One of the things I love about me is my appearance to be anywhere BUT my own country it seems.

I am Senegalese/Creole/Dominican/Brazilian/Carolina Geechee/ DEFINITELY west indian but NOT Guyanese

and Haitian

I may say it's the french but it's often before I open my mouth.

And it is often well lets be realistic most of the time that my radical self screams and chafes and just rages at the idea of being categorized without my permission , my ever awkward self demanding that peopel recognize teh one thing I often feel I have to call my own

but my nun /self the self that is always trying to be open and good and present

that self sees people looking for home for familiarity for knowledge in you in unfamiliar places.

From kids from your hood in the museum

foreigners well damn near everywhere

people find home in you even when you can't find it in yourself

i love that you fixate on words on ideas on concepts . That this letter is called a love letter to looting because you jsut can;t satnd that it's being used to describe people trying not to die.

Because you feel it in the pit of your stomach that it's what we have been called all our lives.

Looting someones "spot" by daring to be brighter
Looting someones comfort by daring to be hurt at a slight
Looting someone's success by daring to point out flaws
Looting the movement by daring to not work for free.
Looting your own future by daring to survive instead of " trying to do something better with your life"

Because in the end no one pays your bills feeds your family hears your cry makes your Damoclean choices

and because most off you just know it's looking looking for a way to organize a world that does not believe in you for your proper existence. That we understand that often being incomprehensible is a nice way of being dismissible

I think That is what I thought of when I read Lex's email and facebook post. That at the crux of it most of the problem isn;t actually ignorance, or meanness but shear incomprehensibility.

That we write create our media and push our lives in ways that are deemed " small"

because none of those women can imagine having to constantly reclaim your life your humanity every generation every new birth .

That sometimes yelling at Rupert Murdoch , or snarling at each other about whose incharge

can never mean as much as turning to saying .

"I see you , I hear you , and there is no wrong in your existence"

Even as you try to make yourself understand that.

I love that you even dare to try.

I love that you greet things and developments that match your Cassandra like propensity for prediction with equal measure of curse and hug. That you enjoy being right without relishing it,

I love that you erased that last sentence , You're learning!

I truly love your relish in being wrong . Because you wish to learn, you are open, you are fearfilled and that gives you courage.

I love you not because you are perfect or a specimen or a goddess but because you are you

love

Me and You and All of you