This is the story we are writing.

Together.

This is a way to imagine together.

It is a way to think about the world. It is what might be

when what might be, is

Sometimes the story is not about winning. 

Sometimes the story is of the lapse, the bad parenting choice,

the drunken confession. The time when

choices are made, things set in motion

and a story becomes real

for the first time.

These are the stories of where humanity lives. It’s in the relationship to frailty and error.

It’s in the time after the bad choice is made and what falls apart.

When is it the line is crossed, when gratitude for not being

the sum of egregious errors 

or misfortune makes possible 

to other 

those who are hurting 

the most?

There are lies told to keep us all going despite what happens around us.

Lies of who belongs and who does not.

Lies to make easy the disposal of

others. 

This is not new. None of it is new. The one percent has funded decades long ruthless strategy

to consolidate power. They constructed news and made stars of fear mongers, not because of

fear spread as infection

but because these were the archetypes they needed people to adopt.

The fear mongers modeled behavior

to defend ignorance, to simplify messages and

reduce social policy to false binaries

But binary choices make easy the ability to create an other class, an other grouping, to divide. It is how to make

manifest

the others who do not belong.

This is how to form community founded only in conflict,

only in the proud proclamation of what is

not theirs.

This is what happens in times of fear and darkness.

To make others is not a means to understand

the facets come together to make a human being, to make a human experience.

It is to define self by what it is not.

It is to create safety in similarity

because the sorting is made so simple this way.

And there are those who believe themselves champions and protectors of the others,

the marginalized, the ones most often the victimized by cruelly wielded power.

The protector is a sticky role, complicated and nuanced.

Made simplistic

it becomes condescending.

Made simplistic

it becomes colonial.

It becomes a way of being requiring others to be weak in order to self-define. Because it is predicated on preserving

weakness, this is not a route to amplified power.

It tends to dismantle energy with mistrust and acid thrown too often, too soon and poorly aimed.

The points of otherness are the ruptures between people.

These are gaping wounds, infected and weeping,

we have wrought upon the world,

one of the reasons the planet is dying.

These are things we have done together, collectively

All of us divided.

All of us struggling.

All of us responsible.

The hyper focus on damnation

as a means to educate,

to take power via explosion

always using

the nuclear options

in hateful, trolling comments

is an exercise in weaponry.

This is hate thrown

in self-righteous purity.

This is evil.

This is evil

normalized.

This is the energy summoned in myth, legend and fairytale by dark forces, by hell.

This is the energy we have wrought upon each other.

This is what we bring into the world.

This is what we are fighting.

This is the story of how humanity finds itself.

Because the other options

stoke the fire of otherness,

thrive on fear and live in

hate.