Notes Taken On my Phone Throughout the Semester

     In this thread of blog posts, I intend to develop a habit of blogging daily, or semi-daily, and the only prompt I'm giving myself is "what would I like to remember from today". It took me a while to get off my ass and figure out what format I wanted to contain this project in, so my blogs start from decently far into the semester. 

    Friday of Week five: 

            All week I've been telling Amani there will be a surprise, he has pestered me, with his tooth-gapped grin and continually dancing limbs, as to what it will be. It's his twin, of course, my sister Olivia. She got out of work for Friday and made the drive up to Iowa City for a birthday celebration weekend and to see the club kids. Des Moines feels far away for me, as I'm used to her being a few blocks up the street, not a few hours. Liv got me the job at boys and girls club, and I've been working there a year, and it's the only job I've worked that I would clock into if there was no money involved. These kids have my whole heart, they're my icons, the little concentrations of wonder that give me withdrawal when I leave work. They're my bosses, critics, motivators, and little buddies. Amani was mad that he didn't get to spend the entire day with Liv, Bella was sad that Gemma didn't come, Angel, who has never met Liv, is balling at her sudden appearance, Daiquan is on his phone, trying to act too cool to care, Nasiya is holding onto Liv for dear life--not knowing how much she needed to see my sister on this humid Friday. 

    Week six Monday:

        Five for five at the rec, fuck outta here Mikey and Mo. 

T: 

        From work: Justin droppin sum off for juliessa, angel noticing my chain and saying "it's me", i said "I take you with me everywhere angel". Serpico, Camera work is interesting as metaphor for writing lenses/perspectives. Gautemala trip coming together. 

Layla 2nd grade 10/10: “every time you walk to butt shakes”

 

Daiquan: “bro you really gotta stop cutting that mustache”

 

Issanet: “nun of yo business” ( I asked how her weekend was)

 

Moriah: “I’ll come over there and slap you in yo big white head” (I told her not to stand on the slide)

 

Aaniyah 5th: “I sat in my house all weekend rotting”

 

Bella: “I found a firefighter!”

 

Tito: “hey, I’ll beat him up in his face!” (About madden)

 

Ronnie: covering amaris ears “my homies a little on the spectrum you know, so he’s gonna hang out over here by you”.

 

 

Spot 10/11: (walking in after Adonis didn’t want to let me in) “yo who iisssss this??! Who is you!!”

 

Ronnie talking ab how god sees everything in us but still loves us, sincere goes “yo he on his phone”.

 

 

10/16: saw Allen and keonte at the rec, saucy white boy went for a contested pass, mossed a less saucy white boy and got the layup. Crowd went wild. Keonte runs the wrong way down the court galloping full speed putting his hand by his knees. “Little ass boy”!

 

Keonte: “ I haven’t been home since Friday” (walks away I forget to ask)

 

 

10/17/:

 

Imani: “these are my doll shoes! It’s my birthday !”

 

Amani. (I asked about his 4-day weekend) “It was amazing. I got to go to the childrens museum and my momma got me Chick-fil-A”.

 

Tifiane: “look” (unsheathes lollipop), “the birrffday girl should be first in line” (mmh finger wag)

 

Tayshawn: “my birthday December 17th im havin a sneaker ball you gone come right?”

 

Angel: “Isaac I missed you! How are you. How is me?” (talking about my angel pendent).

 

Tayshawn: “they done let the gds in the doe, they done let the gds in the doe”. Me: “do you even know what a gd is” T: “gd is a gangster” (runs away to play tag)

 

Nasiya: (mom walked in to get her wearing a t shirt yoga pants and flip flops) “eeew you look so ghetto, you look so ghetto”

 

Ronnie: “daiquan you wanna meet Jesus” (grabs his head and lifts him by the neck)

10/18: Eli was helicoptered out of Guatemala today due to political unrest between the newly elected democratic candidate and the incumbent right-wing military government. The Peace Corps didn't want to risk foreigners being taken as ransom for the military faction unwilling to let go of corrupt profits. My mom is watching her phone religiously today, her firstborn is a continent away and in the hands of foreign governments.

 I found this news of his evacuation out when I checked my phone at noon--arising hungover and sweaty on a goddamn Wednesday. It made me feel like goop. My brother is dealing with his life being turned upside down in one day, factors much beyond his control are causing an exit of unknown length. But I feel nervous that my writing is shit and will never make anyone feel anything. This anxiety makes me want to drink, a classic writer's trope (even my suffering proves utterly unoriginal), and the drinking muddies my thoughts, which makes my writing worse. Which makes me anxious that I'll never get into grad school, or be published, or write an essay that makes people feel something. Which makes me want to not feel much. I hope Eli's alright. I hope I'm not permanently fucking my brain up. 

Ronnie being extra dressed up for spot, necklace matching the Jordan’s and everything

Jaylon playing his music for me td I the car

10/19: (amani show me your runway walk) hips swaying confident sass.

Amari: can we draw todya!

Jonothan: “you got no rizz bro”

Justin; (about a piece of paper) “who’s is this?” (Samira says mine) “IMA SRIBBLE ON IT” (samira takes paper away) Justin (hurt) “heyyyy”.

Amani: (after taking a video that turns him into a girl) “I looked like such a slayer”

(After being told by Carl that playing with lol dolls is weird as a boy) “that’s all my parents worry about, play with boy toys play with boy toys they want me to play with boy toys but I like playing with girl toys it’s so stupiddd”

Little Ava: (after I told Dante to find a seat) “you built like a seat”

Genesis: “you need to go get a haircut” (I start laughing because she said it dead serious) “it’s not a joke you really do”.

Mariah: (walking past an older African lookin dude who starts chirping her about something) “whattt you want a cookie? You a retard!” (Me) “Mariah don’t say that word especially not at club”, “I don’t care retarded retarded retarded”

10/24:

Ronnie opens the door and grabs my left boob “hey daddy”

Angel: “we went on a leaf walk!”

Kaniel: “I’m going to west it’ll be more safe for me”. (Bc he’s maybe gay)

Adonis drawing a comic of woo-lottis death like it was a joke.

Miss P: “Annis” lots of (French band of garlic) ohh gahhlic “

Main point of beginning of “I” essay. The hardest touchstone to keep returning to is that more thinking is not the answer. That in fact following conjecture as it moseys through the mind gets in the way of the true self. The witness, the awareness not identified with the thoughts, but the one subverting the torrent of inner chatter is a self more foundational, universal, and in the way than the one so perfumed by mappings of the future, ruminations on the past, and hypothetical situation simulating that it doesn’t realize it’s human and.

(Connect to hinduisms idea of humans as points in the web of being).

“The wheel of time”

“Most people look but don’t see”. To the shamans of ancient Mexico seeing was the dissolving of the veil. Viewing the earths energy as it flows through all things, seeing our humble inclusion in all things. How can we be separate from that which birthed all elements of our bodies. How can we be special on the grande timeline of incomprehensible experiences undergone on this one tiny planet. That’s the beauty, we are not special because we are not separate. Under the personality crafted on what other people tell us we are, or are supposed to be like, we realize that the ego associated with our name is built on thought—a phenomenon which cannot contain or grasp experiential aliveness. When we think our eyes dart back and forth in their sockets, tracing the connecting neurons as they alchemize feeling into language. This particular incarnation comes at a time when so much language is pumped into our sensory inputs that we begin to fully align ourselves with the ego driving our body. By ego I mean everything that can be called Isaac. All my dreams, goals, inside jokes,lyric archives, plans on what to eat for breakfast, insecurities, grudges, routines, bits, meme references, media consumed, family stories, and every minutia of English language formation undergone internally and externally. The main conflict of the human game is the tension between the levels. Because of course im all the above facets of personality. Hell I sit here crafting my feelings into emotion while on the verge of telling you that identification with our thoughts is the main issue pervading our lives. It’s all paradox. We carry no consequence on galactic scales but mean the world to each other. The dao that can be spoken is not the eternal dao, yet here I am, part and parcel of the oneness, trying my damnest to speak my way closer to it. Fuckin hurts my head sometimes.

Ram Dass said that the name of the game is being on all, or many, planes of consciousness at once. Inhabiting the region of soul—pure loving energy of the universe attached to the karma of human reincarnation— while identifying with the underlying fabric of eternity, all as you respond to the pancheros worker that you’re good with water and mental math your way into an ethical tip.

Existence right now is expensive. Of course this proves the main conflict of most people’s lives on the planet. And my midnight diatribe here runs inconsequential to hunger, poverty, warfare, oppression, and the myriad daily threats to survival faced by so many globally. Part of cultivating simultaneity in your awareness/ identification however, is the action stemming from compassion—if you’re connected as firmly to soul as you are to ego then you can recognize that everything you do you do to a part of yourself. Being a human is fundamentally so interconnected that tapping into the present moment—the one unclouded by identification with thought—reveals mindful compassion to be the way. Because we do have to figure out that tip percentage, because we do have to pay for food instead of growing it, the best way forward into the murkiness of climate change in the 21st century is in service of others. If you aren’t one of those pained by daily fights for survival, if you’re one of the ones afforded enough time to really ponder meaning in you’re life, then I say end the pondering. Use all available resources and platforms to try and uplift those being marginalized. Make no money at a nonprofit and give yourself to developing sustainable community. Especially people like me, whose entire lineage has made money because others were being exploited and violently repressed. The only way to eat the karma of your ancestors, and the only answer that makes sense to—what’re you gonna do with your life? Spend everyday in the egoless, intentionally present service of others, not to better yourself, but to come closer to there being no self to identify with.

But what can you do when life’s inevitable befuddling, consuming monotony, and apathetic ephemerality center you back in thought? Back in ego?

You can meditate with maharajis words to ram dass “ram dass can’t you see it’s all perfect”. He meant—as ram dass would come to interpret and speak about—that we are all carrying out our dharma. The arch towards Buddha nature that our souls are taking as they cycle through lives on earth. That each lifetime contains lessons whose spiritual residue will linger in each incarnation. Percolating to the depths of awareness, magnifying with time and experience. The spirit of this karma guides our actions, and so no matter the horror, no matter the abuse, we are on the path of our dharma.

This sits unwell with most who hear it. But maharaji would point out—as much through action as words—that it is not quite as serious as we make it. I mean, the implication of astronomy, quantum physics, Hinduism, Buddhism, and many other storytelling containers is that this universe is just a granule of sand on chaos’s beach. We are one of the timelines. One of the multiverses. And even if this isn’t literally true—other timelines like a marvel movie—science would tell us that the rapidly expanding universe in which earth exists is 117 billion light years across. Across. Whatever that means in a 3D vacuum of unfathomable size. There’s no one side or the other, but the point is it’s basically big enough to be infinite in size.

Carmelo: 10/26: crying because Ava wouldn’t give him her birthday candy. He cried so hard that she shared then he kept crying.

Kelvin comes in and gives everyone a hug

Daiquan turns his phone around and typed in the top bar is “fuck you”

Mimi’s mom comes in dressed as a ghost, face painted white and red, arms out, tifaine breaks down crying.

10/27:

Bella: (walk over in front of meosha and Alexis) “what’re thooosee”

Nasiya: “we’re the rizzler, we’re so skibity”

Melanie : “tell samiya to stop textin you” (they’re talking? She’s jealous)

All the kids asking me if the frat dudes were my friends/ asking why I wasn’t hanging out w “my friends” bc we were the only white folks around.

Daiquan: “you cock blocking me bro” (I told him to shhh bc Juliessa was trying to talk)

10/31:

Amani about coloring in the lines “this is kindergarten work, I don’t do kindergarten work! (Slams fist) this is rigged”

Started changing pi-caaa-chuu

Amanis choking on candy “help I’m choking” “are you really?” (Cough) yeah I heimlick him and he wipes his drool on my sleeve laughing outrageously at how much spit he got on my sleeve.

Daiquan holding a notebook: “what’re you writing a lil 16 bar” ( he didn’t get what I was saying) “nah a diss track. Someone made one about me and I gotta make one back” (Adonis) “boys ain’t nobody make a diss track on you shut up”.

Zion: (being too cool to sweep) I hand him the broom and he says nah I said “I knew you wasn’t standing on business”. “Schttsk. Cmon bro” ( takes the broom and sweeps aggressively)

Jooda: (after being asked what he would pray for his family) “I’d pray for my uncle he in jail 15 years for shootin a man for my auntie” (his brother goes,fist as gun, “boom boom boom”)

Journie: (wearing a coat inside) “you know journie you can take that off” “oooooohh I should take it off yea, before I cook! Like fries”

All the kids hiding behind stuff whet it was Dariannas turn to pick in bball.

Imani: “where were you yesterday?? “I was at school, my school goes until 6pm sometimes” “what type of school?” “I go to college” “wooahhh that’s what my dad has, some college!!” “What!! Maybe we go to the same college!” “Woooooow”.

Bella: “what are those” “they’re pumas” “oh ok, we’ll mine air Jordan’s so mine cooler” “yep. And?” “Nothin you just lame”

Layla: “Getchyo big eyebrows out my face”

Frantic planning of little dances “daiquan you jump over me then imma jump over you!” (Al the lighthearted dead seriousness he usually has)

Justin: “can you tell cj to get his dusty hot stanky breath out my face, he breathing on me”

Tifaine: “you a snake, slither slither” “youuu a cock-a-roach!” “You’re name cock-a-roach Isaac” “you got crocodile eyes”.

Today I went to spot and afterwards a fight was breaking out between I don’t even know who and I had to tell people to go home Ronnie came out then a lady asked for a ride to get some money to feed her grandson (Tiffany) and she said someone said to her “let him starve” when she asked for money for her grandson. Saw a man getting dragged out of Kim and go white and skinny. “Is that Jeremy?!l” it was not Jeremy and we drove off, he might’ve gotten his ass beat. Gave her my leftover pasta and dropped her off, before all of this will had Called me to tell me Russell died and mason and Gary will be devastated. A night of chaos and randomness. Then I go to Greta’s bday celebration and drink for the next four hours. Wild night.

Watched the movie “My dinner with Andre” where two men have a profound conversation over two hours. I resonated with the sentiment

Sat in club on Thursday I was struck by the thought that maybe I am staking too much of my life and happiness in these kids. They provide the most fulfillment to me and I will be moving out of their lives. Am I even a good influence on these kids? Will they remember me?

Ram dass in “the thinking mind”: you can’t grasp who you are you just see it. You functionally need somebodyness but don’t get lost in it. We’ve been doing the whole reincarnation thing a while but it’s much looser-/tell the reincarnation joke (I wake up everyday, eat have sex and rest and do it again, oh man sounds like you’re in heaven now! No man I’m a moose in Idaho).

Drive with keonte: “so is Iowa city actually got any shiestiness or what?” “Man, a little, but it’s a lot of wannabes out here”. “Although some realness I guess, apparently there was a shootout somewhere river by city the other night”

His cousin keyshaun was also arrested for the street racing manslaughter case w Elijah. One stupid night, lives irrevocably altered.

He had to move to Iowa city because his dad’s place was becoming too dangerous on the east side of Chicago. There was a shootout in front of his house when he was in 3rd grade and he had to run across the street as mfks were shooting to get to safety. Two bullets hit his house then he moved with his mom to Iowa city. Where he kind of lives with his her and dj’s dad, his stepdad. He spends most weekend in Burlington and he referees games, he’s tryna study accounting at Iowa or kirkwood. If he’s not in Burlington he’s at the “well”. Adonis, Peyton makenzie and dj have all different dads. Keonte just broke his foot at spot and can’t workout or ref.

Hermit funeral- multiple prayers for Harry

Journie: I can whistle like a bird”

Tifaine being emotive asf talking to herself in the Mirror w a phone case pretending she grown.

Dj bites my arm and tries to grab my chain off me.

Went bowling and got red wine spit on me—haven’t laughed that hard in a while thank you Isaac koenig

Modern ere is easy on the body but hard on the soul quote in my midwestern daoist piece to tel the story of dissonance between aliveness and selling our time and labor for survival also the news stimuli ajs could tell the story of yore a do and ivy as hard on the soul.

Use ram dass quote “fruit fly gets to noon and says this is life”.

It’s a wise person who knows they’re not

Feel how you will about another person but never put them out of your heart

For baseball essay start with memory of baseball being anxious at raccoon valley w the front desk man at central campus. “The first hat I remember donning was the orioles” “then the giants”. Connect life as “neurodivergent” to my families experience with baseball.

For the mindful daoist essay build memories chronologically, build up to me walking past my ra w a qp freshman year, talk, be brutally honest about self medicating but it’s complexities with feeling like the man but knowing the other shoe can drop whenever.

For midwestern doaist: “I was ashamed of myself when u realized life was a costume party and I showed up with my real face —kafka—tell the story of Daryl dying and no one asking me how my day was. Even when I said I had a bad day and was going to end it early. Loneliness is the epidemic and it’s in the way we converse.

Marion woodman quote about healing the lost child inside.

Japanese koan: my house burnt down, now I can clearly see, the rising moon.

Ram dass cosmic giggle.

When I let go of what I am I become what I might be -Lao tzu

I think I’m still unpacking 2021. Grandma died, Abdi, ivy, broke sup with Elle, mom got cancer,. How’d I unpack, well my parents almost sent me to rehab in 2022.

Zion: “if he run up get gone get done up frl”

Amani: “I want to go home take a knife out of the kitchen and put it in my heart I’m so mad”. “Amani what are you mad about” “everything, they were being mean and no one likes me, IM SO MAD!” (Later I walk over to amani and amari talking on the sidelines) “what are y’all talking about?” “The end of the world” “yeah when’s that gonna be” “a thousand million billion years”

Mahogany and mrs walker fought over big justin bc big justin was cheating “you just a baby mama you ain’t a wife”. Pulling weave, faith didn’t fire big justin for beating his wife (mahogany showed up w bruises before) but they fired Dre for weed.

For midwestern daoist:(relating to the first quote and it’s deep meaning when i really thought about it. How the truest essence of aliveness is in this moment, with the people you’re sharing it with, so the things we record and the archives we keep these are just fun little snapshots. The eternal, electrifying current of spirit interacting with form that some have called dao and some have called god is not to be jumped into through lines on a page, but air in the lungs) “so I smiled real wide the first time I understood my life had no consequence to grand cosmic timescales. Whew! The pressure that would carry my god. There is no deeper meaning today than waking up and seeing sunlight. nothing I do today will be remembered in the annals of history, and I get to listen to music, make dumb little jokes to make people smile even though it’s cold out, and try to figure out what it all means because even though I write about non ego and the undefinable aliveness ushered in by complete awareness of the present moment, I am an ego, and I’m trying to describe aliveness for a moment different than the one in which I’m alive. This one, right now. So take the paradoxical late night musings of a burnt out college student with however many grains of salt as you’d like. Moral of aliveness as the present moment but our brains working in abstraction being that you get to experience the up and downs of this paradoxical life. The realistic goal being that meditation and gratitude lead you to treat those around you more compassionately and you devote yourself to easing the suffering of others. Desire is the root of attachment which is the root of suffering, but i desire to ease suffering and i desire to be present. I desire to be desireless. Here you see the shortcomings of words. The eternal dao can be incubated/-harbored in the depths of awareness and soul, coexisting with the ego in this divinely mundane sentient meatsack—but it cannot be spoken. You’ll develop your “somebodiness” and play out the dharma of this incarnation, and the love you experience from being empty and present with others, that is the meaning. The paradoxes, guilt periods, abandoning of the practices, unhealthy coping mechanisms, relationship turmoil, professional or academic ups and downs, and even death experienced. It’s all perfect and it’s all necessary because it’s a part of what is. Because with the extricating of oneself from the body and personality, it’s shown to be the entirety of what is. An antennae of the entirety sure. One

Channel on the galactic t.v. But I say this. Does the tv even work without that particular, often crooked and imperfect, pillar of metal translating electrical signals in the air into elegant displays of pixels? Are we not lucky enough to have our very existence be both testament to and able to remark at the undying natural beauty of this planet? Evolution carried complex organizations of carbon far enough into time that they invented time and words. I like to compare humanity to the dinosaurs. One has been around (for all intents and purposes) not even a million years, and one had 300 times that to blossom. The differing epochs of dinosaur life must have been more ecologically intricate and diverse than we could ever imagine. If there is a collected spiritual essence of the planet like Gaia it would’ve gotten to know those reptiles and giants better than us overgrown,overfed tree shrews (earliest mammal ancestors of humans’). No, I believe our species’ consequences to be local to our planet and our run in time of however long we can make it before the sun burns itself out. On a universal timescale, our individuality means nothing. And the work of spirituality is to arrive at that conclusion everyday, but find it unbearably joyful and refreshing. We are supposed to struggle with hedonism, distraction, polarization, and cynicism, that’s the dharma of this time period of ours. Attached to the ending of suffering while acknowledging we’ll never be able to end all suffering. Right now, from the perspective of a well off college student, life is easy on the body but hard on the heart. I’ll go out to the bars and see hundreds of people spending money while a handful sit on the streets silently hoping a fraction of the wealth being flaunted will make its way towards them so they may keep going. There’s a hypnotic, insulated dissonance created in people with compassion when they go back to their houses and know many in their community have nothing to go back to, but also know that they have but one roof to take in the weary. I want (although remember what i said about desire, being the root of suffering) to love like Buddha, Christ, Muhammad, or Neem Karoli Baba (again it’s hard to verbalize but my having this want or desire at all is what’s mainly why I’m not like those beings, they were so free from the desires of ego that their love knew no condition or bound, my love knows many conditions and borders). I want to love like Christ but I have to wake up tomorrow and go to class, and that reality is why I write. To find how Siddartha Gautama, or lao tzu, or mother Theresa would use the role of Isaac Dotson to ease suffering and bring people towards god, with the understanding that, because it’s all happening under the same sun and moon that those beings saw, somehow they already are.

Stories oscillate every other quote prompts a “this is why we need spirituality” story, then a story or memory of how I’ve been dealing (weed dealing, now writing and basketball , basketball at my tai chi) talk about how I met keonte at the rec. Bring up the coping memories in chronology starting with walking past my ra with a qp.

For personal narrative about club, do boldy, hundred ninety bands “they fount him hanging in his cell”. And outcast, da art of storytelling pt. 2 “she thank for a minute and say Alive, I coulda died”.

Find a quote about the significance of dreams. Talk about my dream about grandma hugging me and liv and then her dying the same day. How now I see that the message was I didn’t need to be physically with her to feel her love. Now I feel her love when I make food for someone, host people and make them feel at home in my home, or give my mom a good long hug. That feeling of hugging grandma in that dream is her legacy and message to me. Love the people in your life fiercely, you don’t know when they’ll be gone. Connect to seeing a sunset and feeling ivys presence on this planet. Yes they are dead and it’s sad and I miss them, but to wallow in this missing and let it cloud the mission of helping and loving those around me, well grandma wouldn’t want that.

◦ Find quote about sunsets. I thought that spiritual research would tell me the words I’d use for ivy in that bathroom—the grief had brought out in me a fascination with the end, with meaningless debates of what could’ve gone different. But the spiritual path has a hard lesson to learn, and one I’m inherently failing by trying to describe. That emptiness is the only path. In a more realized state I wouldn’t have had anything to say to ivy near the end. I would’ve been a vast welcoming ear. eyes to look into without fear of judgement. Gazes shared in mutual admiration of the myriad color rivers swimming in the windows of our souls. irises dancing with pupils looking at irises dance with pupils. And I would’ve seen ivy on a level where her essence is not tethered to her body, which was always just a blossoming of her spirit’s dharma anyway, but collected in something more fundamental and removed from time than a human body. Something without borders, weblike and gradient in its merging with the backdrop. something ineffable and encompassing. Something like, a sunset. A more realized me would see ivy as the deep prairie sky sunset that she is. One of those purple, blue, and blazing orange affairs that accompanies a sinking late summer sun. The majestic calling card of day as it fades into the wind-rustled, cicada clad dreamworld of nighttime. A more realized me would have to recognize that even though ivy will never see another sunset from the particular vantage point of the human form in which I knew her, we still get to marvel at the ocean of beauty in every coming sunset together. We just occupy different roles now—I’m still here using eyeballs and language to interact with the yellows and fading reds of a setting sun. She’s in the air molecules holding dust or water, close to the ground, that the suns rays throw their final light through as they scatter short-wavelength colors out and leave behind the orange-red reservoirs of longer wavelength light that greet me and my little human eyes in the evenings. The elements of ivy, the energy once packaged into her body, was released back into the planets cycles, and the oneness from which all life came, we emerged, and which we will return to. ivy has evolved, transcended, become the building blocks of, the very sunsets she once adored so as an observer. Maybe, because you know, I’m not more realized than I am. in those last moments of hers. When the pain would’ve been more vicious than my mind can imagine. I could’ve talked to her about a good sunset. And even though it wouldn’t fix anything, or make her be back with us, I should’ve liked to know the sunset that remained most vivid to ivy. Which night was it most wondrously blanketing the skies of her memory? Because I bathed in the the deepest, most brilliant twilight of my life, surrounded by her loved ones, on the rolling hills of a farm outside Des Moines, on the night of her funeral. Rest In Peace ivy Noel O’Connor.

Talk about playing basketball and the community bonding aspect as preserving yore’s legacy on earth. Find a quote from Anna blaedel realm about community as revolution.

Anna blaedel “that pain is righteous” Yores family’s scream at his celebration of life, abdis balloon release, my activism comes from the anger and griefs of dead black boys.

Emotional heart of the essay is that I try to use my voice in activism and back liberation, like at club, for yore and abdis moms. My philosophy and my activism has evolved into the turning into club into a family. The main tension is my distance to yore and abdi—- i feel their pain and yet I didn’t really know them. I am by nature an outsider to them and they were outsiders to me, am I now an outsider at club ?

The grandma dream was comfort, that was oneness.

What do grandma, ivy, abdi and yore have to do with club, and trying to be family with little black kids who I’ll leave in a year?

I think ab their deaths so much because death and spirituality cannot be the end for them. Their existences meant more than a bullet or watery grave because what they were at their essence meant more—the energies of community survival brought on by the horrible tragedies is the Yang to the violent ying which ended them.

Ending:

“Today, as I’m going home, I feel called to the river. There’s a slab of cement, behind the imu, a spot that I maybe know of because I’ve smoked a few nighttime joints at. And it’s where I want to sit. I need a good sitting and doing nothing after all my standing and doing a lot. I park behind the epb, and take my time strolling the path. It’s one I walk almost every day on my way to class. Usually I have my headphones on, finding stories of resistance over a beat—secretly hoping the confidence and perseverance of these artists will sink into me if I know their music front to back. It’s refreshing not to have a destination right now and, perhaps for the first time, I say hello and thank you to the massive pines eeking out an existence by the railway. I listen for the voices of the sparrows as they navigate foraging and mating. And I take my time. Eventually, I arrive at my little cement throne and I take it. Butt down, legs pointing towards the beautiful dance of currents.

I used to think the river was ugly because of its brownness and incessant frothing. But those are symptoms of our tainting, and mentally, when I view the river as ugly, it’s because I’ve been lucky enough to know the pleasure of a mid afternoon dip in a crystal clear mountain stream. And there’s no need to compare the two. prairie rivers and mountainous streams both inherently play the role they need to. Water has been cycling between ice, liquid, cloud and vapor, carving and nourishing the land in its march from sky to sea, for an incalculable time, it’s not suddenly going to end in my silly old lifetime. Despite the losses and ghosts blanketing me in the morning like the stink of the laundry monster, I’m still around to smell at all, and that’s beautiful. I’m 20, I’m supposed to have a lot of laundry to do. As I go about life, I’ll hone my specific techniques for spinning, drying and folding away the lumps of the laundry monster’s mass. But I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be because I am here. A form within creation, admiring the tapestry, proud of being but the singular stitch. A pulsing, radiating calm comes over my body. I can feel my heart and my toes and my eyelids and they all feel coordinated in beating harmony. Emanating from the base of my spine, fractal, riding the rising and falling of breath is the type of calm that makes you forget the border between body and ground. Forget, lose attachment to, not feel the importance of—all to say that I feel a blurring of the boundaries. It’s suddenly not entirely clear where my breathe ends and the surrounding air begins, and it’s not clear that the two are separate at all. Feeling truly grateful and alive for the first time in a long time, looking up at the deep, rosy, open-skied sunset. serenaded by a mysterious, expansive river, I feel grandma hugging me from the grass, Yore, reminding me of the stability of the ground on which I sit, Abdi using a passerby’s face to flash the most compassionate of smiles at me, and ivy painting the brilliance of it all on her canvas of passing clouds. I nodded my head in greeting to them all, the only thing I could think to say: what a beautiful night we have on our hands.

Tell the story of daiquan shutting while I was talking to Tayshaun about why he was crying. They come out and daiquan mean mugs carl. We go to Casey’s and I buy pizza, we listen to twilanta and tayshaun calls mahogany to ask if Malachi can come to his roller blade bday party.

Mackenzie, who’s messin with you? “The Chair!” (In all seriousness too)

I also didn’t know Yore well. He wouldn’t have known my name or face. He’s the only person I’ve ever met who has a basketball tournament in their honor.

Yore loved hooping, that’s the only time I’d interact with him because he was older, on a different floor of callanan during the day. But, our gym teacher, Mr. Swett (ik it’s funny right), started an after school sports club broadly titled “intramurals”. There were no teams and anyone could come through. I was in 7th grade, but I’ve always been tall, so I would sometimes play with 8th graders. Yore being one of them. Again, like I said, I didn’t know Yore, I may have guarded him a few times on the court but I don’t remember ever talking to him. I do remember one thing about Yore though, he was never alone.

I didn’t talk to him mainly because he was always surround by a group of friends—as a chubby, un-cool, white boy I wasn’t in the habit of approaching a random friend circle and conversing. I was very anxious in middle school, only I thought that the arbitrary high stakes I created in my head made me smarter. Looking back I think maybe not everyone got their first B on a quiz and couldn’t sleep that night because the knowledge that they circled the correct answer, erased it and put the wrong one, spiraled them into identity crisis. I could barely handle the stress of class, I didn’t need to embarrass myself in-front of older dudes.

When he was murdered people tried spreading rumors about “alleged gang-ties”. That sat incredibly wrong with everyone who even knew who yore was. He was never alone, always surrounded by friends, because he was smart, funny and kind. He was mature, and had solid goals and a healthy disposition. He was in science bound, he probably would’ve gotten a degree at Iowa state paid for in full and the world was his for the taking. Just because you live in oak ridge and you are dark skinned doesn’t mean you’re in a gang.

He was sitting passenger seat with his sister, they were northbound on keo way when a stray bullet hit him in the head. His sister drove right to the hospital and yore had a weeklong battle with the impossible. He died 0ct 29, 2016, in a hospital room, surrounded by friends and family.

Yores parents immigrated to the u.s in 1994 from Sudan. clawing their way towards a a safer, more opportunity filled future for their kids. And a fucking stray bullet? A stray?

To the head of the goofy-natured hooper that everyone was cool with?

It still sits so unwell in me. There is definitely someone, probably multiple people, living in Des Moines right now who know the shooters responsible for this crime. No one was ever prosecuted. The publicly trump loving police sergeant Paul parizek was “disgusted” by the community’s lack of cooperation with the police. Everyone I knew was disgusted that in broad daylight one of the kids you pass every in the hallway can bleed out in the arms of his sister and the police have no theories or suspects. I have to think, like with the bus cameras in Abdi’s case, there is some footage or some phone records that they missed.

I know you can’t solve every crime, but it feels wrong that two black boys I went to school with met their end tragically early and police were unhelpful and inconclusive in both investigations. The impotent rage that comes from attending funerals for kids you once attended class with, and having the larger public proudly wear the flag of the institution so quick to close their cases, well. It’ll have you out in the streets chanting until your voice dies. Keeping the names alive of those who died too young, who’s death was taken too apathetically, and who’s legacy you can feel growing with every incantation of their earthly name