Living in coronavirusworld 206: To feel the joy

11/11

81st Street

Our Underground group has moved beyond the despair we felt last week and we are allowing ourselves to experience the feeling of relief and joy  at Saturday’s outcome. 

Thank you Pennsylvania

Cutch

I wear the same hat as I did last week for Pittsburgh and a Phillies jersey for Philadelphia to say thank you Pennsylvania, thank you Pennsylvania. It’s Andrew McCutchen's jersey. My favorite contemporary player. The face of the Pittsburgh team during its’s brief midteens return to  good ball and playoffs. He loved the city so much he named his first son Steel. And the city loved him back. Until the Pirates, as is their wont, let him go. For "prospects."San Francisco, then an all too short time with the Yankees and now Philadelphia. No better way to honor Pennsylvania!

In the face of the current call to come together and heal, Joel quotes our friend Vince as saying he’s got no desire to make peace with Trump voters. Whether by intent or ignorance their votes still representing bigotry. Steve H says we need to retain moral clarity and not rush to reconciliation too quickly.  As I’ve said before, No reconciliation without reconstruction.  And Steve P rejects the idea of two equal tribes. If you’re committed to the importance and value of each human being, you are not in a tribe. Joel reminds us of what the ring leads us to do in the Lord of the Rings. We all respect Dave Chapelle’s work on last weekend’s Saturday Night Live. Talking to white folks. How we’ve got to learn to forgive one another. Or else sign up for nigger school. Some of us are old enough to remember Dick Gregory and see Chapelle in that tradition. 

We share stories of where we were and what we felt when we got the news. Dre said Paterson, New Jersey felt like just another day. But he felt like the week lasted 10 years. Steve H recalled the Trump Train of motorcycles six mile long parading through his small town and wondering are they still out there? We compared 2008 to 2020. Pro Obama to anti-Trump. Joel recalls Sam in the first book of Lord of the Rings. “One more step and it will be the farthest I have ever ben from home." Clyde felt the joy in the street. Hearing a rapper chanting “We fucked Trump up” and everywhere the  sound of Kool and the Gang “Celebration.”

The importance of joy in resistance .  Allowing it to feel real, to  be real. Not happiness. But radical joy. Like Desmond Tutu in South Africa’s apartheid days.We have already won. We read the book. We know how it ends. The real meaning of Revelation:  God draws back the curtain. 

wear your mask!

We need to move beyond do no harm. Like mask wearing . It's not about you. It's about harming others without knowing or intending it. 

Joel says the joy in the street, the multicultural, multiracial, multi class joy helped him to feel like a New Yorker again. 

We wonder where the expression "Out of left field” came from. Then remember then old Yankee Stadium with its short porch in right and the vast expanse of left field. Whee balls could get lost and confusion reign. Ponder for a moment the slogan of indigenous people and formerly enslaved: “Stolen land/stolen people.” Red.  And Black.  Money continues to transfer upward.  Work to be done.

Dre has a series of questions to ask us. Next week. 

But today we will allow ourselves to feel the relief. The release. To feel the joy.