shock & privilege
on, unfortunately, the (election)
Dear reader,
I love you. I’m sorry.
What else is there to say, at this beginning which looks like the end, at this end which bends itself in the direction of beginning?
Something has been broken for a long time. Perhaps it was never right; the crack was always there. People — white people — everywhere are shocked. They are heartbroken and confused. (To say nothing, to give no space, to those who celebrate.)
And yet to feel this way, to be newly torn, is a privilege.
(I am of course talking about the election, which you already know.)
I am not better than anyone else, in fact I am in a million private ways worse than many, but I am not shocked.
In a way I say, Yes, of course. I recently wrote in a poem that “I believe we are all atrophy.” Most of my friends insist that people are, at their basic level, good. I’m not sure if I agree with them, but I suspect I’ll need a lifetime to decide. The wheels will have to turn one way and then another several times over before I will understand their mechanisms. And likely, even then, I will at best come to the understanding of my own ignorance. I might be able to look my own reflection in the eye, after years. If I’m lucky, there could be acceptance there. Just before death.
Perhaps my friends are all good people and I am not. Perhaps I am a pessimist who masquerades as an optimist. Perhaps I am tired of having hope for anything. Of being disappointed. Or perhaps I have felt, have dredged up, the rot myself.
Of course the way that it happened was that Pennsylvania delivered the final nail. It was late at night. We were distracting ourselves with a TV show about monsters and the heroes who kill them. I know that Pennsylvania was just an issue of timing; that it was due to the laws, forcing the count to be slow. That it had nothing to do with an inherent spoil. It had nothing to do with myself, certainly, and my youth. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that while it had to do with these things, it did not deal in them uniquely. It is not only Pennsylvania which has a tumor. But it felt like that regardless. Despite leaving my home state, despite not having plans to return there to live again, I do still love it. I like to look back at the open door; at the sunlight that comes through the crack; hear the rustle of the leaves. I tell my home that I left not because I don’t love it, but because I love something else more.
My home told me that it does not love me enough to beckon me back. The door inches toward closed.
Back to the privilege: the ability to still be shocked. To have lived a life not so deeply mired in hate, either the production or reception of it, to still be able to access surprise. How could there be this rotting thing? How could the body have gone septic without my being aware?
This is what Colonial Girl is all about. It’s about rooting out the ugly inside us — and when I say us, I mean white people. Not just the majority of Trump’s voters, but the whole system of us. The stuff we’re built upon; legends of ourselves, stories of our people. Fables about good and evil. We thought we were the young girl skipping through the forest; we thought we were wearing our cloak; we thought we were holding our basket, our innocence, in our hands.
We are, in fact, the wolf. The baring of teeth. We are the thing in the dark that watches and waits.
I’m nearing two years now; two years since I dove into ancestry, since I tugged at the edge of the curtain, just a bit, to see if behind it was darkness or light. In 10 days, I’m going on a solo trip to Shelter Island. I’ll be doing a couple of things. I’m excited to meet with a researcher at the historical society to learn more about the indigenous and enslaved people of the island. I’m apprehensive to visit the grounds of Sylvester Manor and in particular the burial ground for not just the Sylvesters but for the others on the island. I’m anxious to see what the air feels and smells like — what if it’s different from what I’ve always felt?
What if it’s exactly the same?
Colonial Girl is becoming a book. I’ve found that the nonfiction form is incapable of holding it. There’s too much that cannot be stated nor reasoned with. At the moment, the book is made up of nonfiction, poetry, photographs, and fiction — everything I know how to play with, tossed together in the hopes that something will come of it.
I’m excited to keep updating the newsletter as I work on the book, and I’m excited to see what comes of my time on Shelter Island. I’m also, by nature, apprehensive — of everything.
It’s been time for white people to roll up our sleeves. To do ancestry work, to exorcise our demons. To understand where we come from and where we are.
With, again, my love,
Helen