This has been a month where friends of mine have come out and offered me shit that only family should offer...it is heartbreaking...I suppose if you are a young person in the 21st century, U.S.A., you maybe live alone, and try to pay your own bills and debt on your own, and maybe buy your own cereal and make your own lunch and dinner by yourself. Maybe you eat with a roommate or maybe one Thursday your good friend, newly employed, spots you a hamburger. Or maybe you eat on your boss's dime. Whatever the case, I understand family through two lenses. The first is as I understand it through the lens of my adopted peoples who I've known either since childhood, met at Vassar College, or even more recently, a Great Dame and an Irish-Italo Gent from the ICP. I understand these to be loyal, solid, dependable, lifelong unions. I understand that sharing is no big deal and that cooking together is better than eating what you made. I understand that we chose different paths, and it seems no one wants to hold me accountable for this! Jeez. I understand that if I had cash like I would some day like to have it, it wouldn't last long anyway, because I love spending it and because not like my peoples are 'buyable' per sé but that I would use money as I would use my love : I would give it away. I would give it away because it looks like paper and so I treat it as such. I understand, too, family, that money is not actually paper and you can't just light it on fire. But you CAN rip it in half and tack part of it onto your wall above your pillow and hope that in your sleep one of a thousand yoruba gods or goddesses will work on making that money come back in full. Or you could get a job. Or a big break. I understand this family to the extent that it is chosen...it is a chosen family. You get to choose who is in your life. You do not have to have that annoying aunt, or that slutty cousin. You don't have to have that selfish brother or careless father. During times like the present, it is very easy to see who your family is, and what we are made of...those people who have REACHHHHHHHHHHHHHHED out reached out reached out extending their thoughts and concern in a real way, are the hearbreakers of my chosen family. I mean, if even for a second they mentioned 'it'll be ok'...it's all part of the same heartbreaking machine. To say 'thank you' sounds too humble, so I won't say it. I don't exactly know what the words are, then. Thank you is like "thanks for the sandwich, boss." But I mean to tell them that I feel what they are extending...I know that for them it is very easy to imagine themselves in someone elses' shoes. So I feel them...in my sleep or in the morning, when all of this is so acute and solitary. I wish I could rectify this quickly so that I don't become 'that' friend. I don't want hand outs. Nobody does. Not from your equals. So money leaves a mark on all of us...it is a razor's edge, this money thing...a certain song would also say that beauty, too, walks on a razor's edge and that someday we'll make it ours, but the point is...we are equals, that's why we chose each other...money tries to get in between the letters of e / q / u / a / l / i / t / y but with family like this, you could roll that shit up and put some bob marley on because........anyway, we are equals because we see each other as such and treat each other with respect, communication, open veins, proper space, honesty...and that is, I guess, why money -- to this family, is -- actually, nothing but paper...Here is Pop, Sabina, and Beto a long time ago cooking lunch. Sometimes, being able to wash the dishes since your sister bought the chicken and your brother chopped the cilantro, is a nice thing.
(foto por laura paull - who never gets any credit)
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