helloooooo you Sweet meaty Instrument of the Divine!
no need for the long winded intro here. I’ve shared enough words for today. suffice to say there are ideas contained here in that you may or may not resonate with and that’s just fine. We are All Free Beings who can chose to associate or not associate with whomever we choose. for better or worse.
I will however copy paste the cover letter that you’ll hear aaaaall about should you choose to listen to the 18 or so minutes of prelude dialogue that prefaced it- right here:
hello,
My name is Xyxy. currently living in what is currently called by many, Blaaaank, B.C.
it is with a sort of humility -as arrogant as I'm almost certain this will come off as- that I offer the following words. not as an attack on this publication, but as an entreaty to adopt more Loving, meritocratic methods into every facet of society.
“to Love is good, too: Love being difficult. For one human being to Love another: that is perhaps the Most Difficult of all our tasks, the Ultimate, the last Test and Proof, the Work for which all other work is but preparation."
-R.M. Rilke
the kind of Love that is without boundary or condition. Who does not discriminate for any reason.
I think the dialogue surrounding words like 'visible minority' have swung so far in that direction as to be considered an over correction. merit is what all healthy societies have been based upon in the past.
to quote Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
in addition I see a lot of talk but not much in the way of action, its becoming apparent to me -a human with melanin in my skin and beard hairs on my chin, who has been unjustly accosted by a number of public officials, who in this very city is painfully aware of an aged population casting many a glance (a glare, even) in my direction simply because I am 'foreign' to them. not so in Quadra village, more so in Fairfeild.
I have been threatened by police -as a minor- with jail rape and many other forms of extreme violence to force false confessions for crimes I hadn't committed.
I have been detained and threatened while people with 'fairer' skin were let go for the same causes.
I have been stopped at international borders for 'random searches'.
I see failures loosely clad in lip service perpetuated by whole nations doing little more than merely acknowledging the atrocities -from biological warfare to plain old genocide- it and its ancestors have committed and are still committing.
so why should I not now take the foot stool? the extra push in the opposite direction to the one that has been psychologically and physically pushing me down these few decades past?
because the Love in my Heart wont abide by someone getting turned down because they don't look a certain way, because they haven't 'suffered enough'. we are all siblings on this planet, me, you, that tree outside, and the creatures living in it. in this Universe I see only family, yes we have been cruel (to put it extremely lightly) to each other these past few millennia. but in choosing to do the opposite of the extreme we only move to another extreme. the middle way is there, should we choose to find it. this middle way doesn't seek to make right the wrongs it actively commits, to outshout the dissonant chords of injustice perpetuated by federal bodies too remote to be seen, content to leave what is out of sight out of mind.
but to simply stop committing them.
rest assured I recognize my own hypocrisy in this regard. I pay taxes that pay for those federal police, I have a 'phone' in my pocket that could not be there without the suffering of many slaves, some of them children.
I refuse to let myself be packaged and sold as a 'visible minority' even if it works in my favour! because I'm not one. I have 8 billion plus siblings in my race (not a recognized taxonomic branch) of humans. I don't care what you identify as, I Love you. I don't care if you live in a tent on Pandora, or a mansion in Oak Bay, what you look like, or what you think, I Love you. I don't care if I disagree with you and dislike you on a fundamental level! because. I. Love. you. that Love is Powerful. that Love means sacrifice. It seeks not merely adjusting for inequality, It means eradicating it. It seeks not merely to make safe a space for the downtrodden to feel 'normal', but Fostering Environs in which our differences are celebrated. nothing natural is 'normal', that is to type nothing is neat, pretty, square, and stacks well. our neat cities crumble when they are not constantly maintained, while the messy forest thrives for ages. nothing is given special treatment, nothing is subjugated, all fit, or fight, and fall until they fit again, and that is Beautiful.
when a magazine -that I do so wish to publish these poems with- states "...particularly welcome submissions from those writers who for reasons of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability, geography, class, culture, or religion have been historically under-represented in Canadian literary contexts." all the above sentiments arise. its my opinion that we can't move to a more pluralistic, Loving, Wise, Understanding, or Honest society if we keep digging up old corpses and parading them around for a month or weekend out of every year to placate a monster that would disappear should we choose instead to stop feeding the institutions that perpetuate the very issues we claim to stand against. this means sacrificing the benefits that those unjust institutions provide, even incurring their wrath, at least for a time, while we come up with more Sustainable, Kind, Loving, Authentic institutions to replace them.
I get that giving people who haven't been able to find venues to be heard because of the way they look, think, or where they come from is coming form a good place, is trying to outweigh or re-balance the scale a bit. again, I'm on the melanin having side of that scale. but how many centuries do we attempt this constant back and fourth? how much more time do we really have to shave slivers of equality while the most damaging echelon of society remains untouched?
art is without race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability, geography, class, culture, or religion. though it often is Inspired by all of those Wonderful things. however one qualifier can be used, with bias of course, to apply to all those categories equally: does it have merit or not. for this reason I think it should be the only metric used to consider submissions. can it move? Inspire? challenge? upset? cuddle? console? heal? teach? or any other such meritorious quality? are these not the only questions that a society truly focused on equality would be asking?
maybe I just shot myself in the digital foot here. but I will represent what I feel to be True -admitting my own bias in that regard, of course- to the end.
in addition, I have no delusions of grandeur, I write because I am compelled by the Beings of Creativity to do so, Beings we all share a connection to.
I'm only submitting this work because people at P.E.P. have said it was worth a go.
I grind for my bread and I'm proud to do it.
I'm no Purdy, Page, Gibran, Rilke or Rumi. or any of the others, for that matter!
just another ant on the hill who thinks, Hopes and Prays, it can give back to the Forest, from Whom it has taken so much.
with all the Gratitude I can muster for your patience if you've gotten this far,
with hopes that you can see not anger, or judgment in this letter, but a Love scorned, a hurt little child who has asked for far to long why we can't just be honest with ourselves, see past the last vestiges of tribalism, forgive (but not forget), and seek genuine atonement by being the change we want to see, in every little aspect of our lives, for better or worse, even if it means spending 2 hours on a cover letter.
with the over arching Hope that these poems can get where they seem to want to go,
Love,
N
end quote.
so much Love flows from me to you Sweet Soul, which is not mine to hold, it is given Freely without any (many if I’m being honest but I’m working on that) expectation.
hope it tickles the hairs on your Chin,
N
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