Sunday Song Day: Black Lives Matter Syracuse, Justin, Longwave, “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”, “The Perfect Space”
6.7.2020
Yesterday we brought Q downtown (and out of the house into the public for the first time since the beginning on March) to join the Black Lives Matter Syracuse rally. We’re the sort of family that discusses current events daily, but participating and witnessing are far more important than the latter.
What did we witness? Thousands of peaceful souls standing and chanting in support, mothers in tears relaying the daily fear they have for the safety of their children (“George Floyd couldn’t breathe! I can’t breathe and I can’t sleep with worry over my child’s life!”), local high school students sharing the racism and abuse they’ve endured, stories of countless souls who have died due to negligence and cruelty, and steps Black Lives Matter Syracuse is demanding from the city:
remove Syracuse City Police Officers from the city school district (Syracuse suburbs —including our rural district— all have resource officers, why should we consent to give the children within the Syracuse City School District full blown Police Officers? If that seems like a minor issue, those police officers are able to charge children and remove them from class without their parents present, and if you think the caucasian kids are the majority getting charged your head is up your anus. Of all the children on my old Developmental Disability Caseload Umbrella, there was only one who ever had a bad interaction with a school officer, and if you’re honest with yourself I’m sure you can guess where his skin falls on a spectrum of color.)
spend more money on our communities/schools and less on the police force
strengthen the Citizen Review Board and give it disciplinary powers
fire Vallon Smith “a target of the organization since 2016. Smith has been involved in high-profile incidents including one at Nottingham High School in which a 14-year-old had his arm broken during an arrest. Smith was removed from the school but was not charged.”
Syracuse Black Lives Matter 2020
To avoid being too close to other souls, we were tucked inside of a bush under the trees to the bottom left.
Ground View
Every speech we heard we parlayed and unpacked to Q. When I explained why there was a mama crying about her fear of her developmentally disabled son being murdered because he doesn’t know how to read danger signs, Q’s eyes welled with tears and he said, “Oh no! That Mama must worry every day!”
“Mama, why is everyone chanting ‘ I can’t breathe?’”
“Because that’s what George Floyd was gasping when that officer knelt on his neck until he died, and George Floyd is one of many souls who have died in such a heartless and cruel way. It’s a chant of waking up, mourning, and remembering the dead.”
The most poignant sign I’ve seen in all of this, was a little boy who had a sign that said, “When do I switch from cute to dangerous?”
Think about that, fellow fair-skinned folks.
This son of mine is privileged that he can walk free every day without the worry of being viewed as dangerous enough to murder; and we make sure to inform him of that privilege.
Looking for ways you can offer support aside from protesting?
Continue for: Sunday Song Day (Longwave, “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”, “The Perfect Space”), why you should also get ye a friend like Justin, and two full days of a family thriving/living as kindly as possible through the healthiest diet for humans, the best diet for environmental sustainability, and the cheapest diet of them all (Plant-Based Whole-Foods).
Q’s Morning Chalkboard
Friday’s Plant-Based Kiddo Breakfast (fixed by Q himself): half a nectarine, berry bread, peanut butter, and cashew cream.
[If these portions look small, you should know that this is a full-sized dinner platter a dear friendly recently gifted him: he just loves it so much he wants his meals on it.]
Friday Q was on another drawing spree. I thought he’d want to be out in his little pool (it was in the upper 80s), but he was standing over his drawing desk for most of the day.
Here seen: Q loves showing Ian all of his work and discussing the stories behind each one. Almost all of these are some manner of HP Lovecraft creature he learned about through the “C is for Cthulu” book he’s holding.
[Ian is a big Lovecraft fan and this passion is crystallized in that tiny spook-loving soul.]
“It’s Eldritch and Yog-Sothoth and they are floating around in space with a space kraken and a spaceship!”
Plant-Based Whole-Food Lunch: kale, green beans, avocado, sweet potato, bell peppers, black rice, and peanut sauce (without the maple, and berbere instead).
Think Plant-Based Whole-Food means you need to give up tasty treats? You’ve obviously missed my posts about Nice Cream. :-)
Here seen: cacao nice cream with a swirl of cashew cream.
Plant-Based Whole-Food Family Feasting: polenta, sauteed mushrooms, balsamic tomatoes, green beans, kale, oil-free pesto (coming up soon), and pine nuts.
Friday Night Plant-Based/Zero-Waste Popcorn (Q’s favorite seasonings are: paprika, turmeric, berbere, garlic, nutritional yeast, and salt.)
Friday Nightly Reading
I have a running Google Sheet of folks who have reached out and said that they are slowing changing their diets for the betterment of the earth, themselves, and their kiddos. That list gives my heart a lift every time someone comes back at me with misguided ignorance, because that sheet is weekly growing with folks who are becoming healthier, stronger, happier, and they are helping us all turn the tide of human’s environmental damage.
Any step of forward movement is important. Our entire culture is set up around foods that are terrible for us, our kin, and the earth. Pushing back against food addiction and the emotions people have tangled into those harmful foods is HARD. Moving forward is HARD. But it is also necessary for health and environmental sustainability.
Gather close to you the sort of souls who will lift you up and inspire you. Life is too short to remain with the folks who undermine you, attack you, or hold you back.
When I started college, I was an incredibly immature, aimless, hurting soul, and I was looking for ways to fill every second of my day so the darkness of depression would not swallow me up.
I had a full class load, I worked full-time hours around classes, and I worked as a DJ (and then music director) at the college radio station for every year I was on that campus.
Immature freshman females can be easy to take advantage of, but I was dang lucky to’ve been swept into our college radio station, because I met some of the kindest/dearest souls on this earth. Justin was one of those souls.
Justin was a senior, and he and several other seniors took me under their wing and protected me like older brothers. Justin constantly shared music with me and opened my mind to bands I had never heard, or illuminated albums I may have missed of known musicians.
First (the fun): Justin introduced me to Longwave, and if you’ve never given them a listen, they deserve a few minutes of your life. They are rumbling reverb, driving rock swells, and softly clashing rhythms. “Tidal Wave” was listened to on repeat through my college years and I still love its beautiful, driving swell. “Everywhere You Turn” is one of my all-time favorite songs to belt out loudly (yes, my voice really is that low of a tenor), dance-to/shake-out-energy to with Q (my perpetually dancing bear), or lyrically-meditate to because its message drives you FORWARD through a field of roadblocks and standstill souls:
Everywhere you turn
There's always something there
And all the time you're getting nowhere
Everywhere I don't know why but I get so crazy
And all the thoughts get twisted in knots
Well I'm sure
Sometimes I feel out a little more
And then its hard
It's harder than it ever was before
I already knew Radiohead through “Ok Computer”, but Justin urged me to give “The Bends” a listen and thanks to him I learned about the existence of “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”, and that treasured gem is one of the most-listened-to songs of my life. It was catharsis when my mental health howled, it was beauty in times of darkness, it is a fire of forward movement, it is one of the most beautiful heart-wails that has ever been written, and Ian loves it just as much as I do so it’s been interwoven through our 15 years together.
Remember how I have stated that I am a vivid dreamer? “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” plays prominently within that realm. Before I truly knew the lyrics to this song, when my love for it was purely centered around the powerful notes and the “Immerse yourself in love” wisps at the end, I had a dream (back in 2002) where a soul I respected/admired deeply, put his hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eye (<—something I am almost always too uncomfortable to endure), shook me gently, and said the lyrics that would sear into my brain as mantra of purpose:
Be a world child
form a circle
before we all go under
I had to go look up that line the next morning, because I didn’t remember/know it was from “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”, it had just gotten into my brain and was brought out with a klaxon howl of importance.
It has taken me years to get beyond my own mental wailing to start sorting out how to form a circle and save us all before we go under. The crappy foods I was eating were ruining my gut-health/mental-health connection and made my brain unable to focus on forward movement, and as soon as I broke out of that vicious cycle and started howling forward in an attempt to save the earth and the health of the ones I love, it was once again Justin who stepped forward with just the right resource at the perfect time.
Justin had found himself on a plant-based path long before I did, and he reached out and asked if I had read “We Are The Weather” yet. I had not, and I swiftly ordered it because Justin’s recommendations have always been helpful (<—AGAIN: find friends that inspire you and move you forward!!!). “We Are The Weather” became a cornerstone in my evidenced-based klaxon and pulled together perfectly what I had been having difficulty condensing: we are ruining the earth and ourselves with our current diet, and we can repair this harm if we wake up and shift toward plant-based whole-foods. Go buy, check-out, borrow this book, because it explains in down-to-earth yet data-dense detail all that I am imploring you regarding our environment. (The nutritional stuff all comes from doctors, however, and that’s where my passions collide: where environmental and nutritional science meet, and amplifying that with the writing and photography skills I honed at the university that also gave me Ian and Justin.)
Again, and again, and again: keep close the souls in your life who help you become better and respect your growth.
“The Perfect Space” by the Avett Brothers has often been a thoughtful anthem on the above. I’ve lost many friends through the years as I have grown and those souls ended up resenting me for change (despite urging them to come along). We should always be growing forward and becoming the best versions we can be. If you resent others for working on themselves, then my heart breaks for you. Growth is what has kept Ian and I so powerful through the years, and souls like Justin have shown me that friendship should be about support and learning forward.
I wanna have friends that I can trust
That love me for the man I've become not the man I was
I wanna have friends that will let me be
All alone when being alone is all that I need
I wanna fit in to the perfect space
Feel natural and safe in a volatile place
And I wanna grow old without the pain
Give my body back to the earth and not complain
From “We Are The Weather” by Jonathan Safran Foer
Q Fixing his breakfast yesterday, followed by a, “Look, Mama! I made a heart! Can you send this to Layton to let him know I’m thinking of him, and love him, and am hoping I see him at today’s protest?…Whew! And also Aria, because she should I’m always thinking about how much I love her.”
That big-hearted, creatively-keen soul is who you are dooming with inaction if you are still eating souls/breastmilk/embryos every day.
Berry bread, peanut butter, and cashew cream.
We got to Syracuse so early for the rally, that we had time to spare in Clinton Square. I have never seen downtown so empty.
After the rally, I worked away at one of my favorite ways to re-channel pent-up energy: cathartically cook.
Here seen: the beginnings of steam-sauteed kale. (Turmeric, paprika, freshly grated garlic.)
How simple it can be to prepare a meal if you’ve done a little meal prepping. Q likes to participate by serving himself, and I lay out out options in a rainbow array so he’s getting the proper visual of all the colors he needs for best health.
Plant-Based Whole-Food Family Feasting: black rice, quinoa, peanut sauce (without the maple, and berbere instead), nectarine, avocado, peas, kale, and purple sweet potatoes.
The meal was heartier than usual, because we mostly missed lunch (had apples and nuts before the rally).
Again, if you think you need cow breastmilk to keep you happy, there are plenty of Nice Cream options out there and bananas are significantly cheaper and healthier for you than frozen cow breastmilk.
Here seen: strawberry nice cream with cashew cream.
Plant-Based, Whole-Food, Zero-Waste.
Sparklers and an evening fire.
Our country and humanity frequently break my heart or set it to flame…like all those Buffalo cops who resigned in protest because two officers were SUSPENDED (not fired, not charged, SUSPENDED) for pushing down a 75 year old man and walking past him as he lay on the ground with blood gushing out of his head.
If you’re awake, you should also be furious, and you should take this woken state and move forward to push back against racism & environmental collapse.
