what feels like lifelong,

habits of mistakes and mistakeful habits

why is there such difficulty in doing, becoming, being better? 

"i did not choose to be this way" i protest

 and yes, such is true-

the self is a most measured formation

 shaped by the hands of environments, and environments of people

the self is a chronic series of doing and undoing

moulding and shaping, 

crumbling,

                           re form ing

much like the clay

in which we come from

and we are responsible for all we do, 

until we return

do you believe change is possible?

i ask this earnestly, 

considerably, 

i believe it is

i know it must be

i have seen it, lived it,, 

i know it must be

and still these rock hard habits slow

me,

they remain debt heavy, ready to drag

me into regression

i choose to change but ironically that 

does not change the difficulty 

of the             process,

or lessons in the journey 

and still i choose though,

there must be something in that, right?

so i say to myself: be accountable for your mud, 

do not attempt to hide it 

your hands are already dirty, sticky, 

filthy as life is the cause, 

embrace the grime under your fingernail

use it to better grip your soul 

to be active in the shaping of yourself

...i am sound in my belief that there is something in that                                                                                                                   in this.

so, i attempt to change 

i try and try and try

grimy i will be but still i work towards a reshaping

and still,

i continue.

i no longer get the urge to slice through the bindings and peek at the inconsistent, beautiful mess of youthful first love. i don’t get the urge to think of you at all. i have buried the path to you in reminders of why it ended and glimpses of bright futures unanchored from this. now when i think of you, i do it with intention. yes, the days may bring reminders of you and the reminders bring thoughts of you, but they’re not loud and jarring, they’re subtle and fleeting. i’ve released in such a way that they don’t need labels and analysis, they just are.

this is freedom and i can’t describe it but god, am i grateful.

april, in her wet budding shyness, brings forth blossoming greens and a reality where you are only a memory. i have planted flowers next to this ending’s grave as i will always cherish what we were, what we gave. but what’s dead is dead and what’s done is done. i turn towards sun-soaked may and she smiles back at me with so much hope that the air clears and my lungs feel almost new. they expand so wide now, i can even feel my breaths again. my heart no longer pounds, my shoulders no longer so tired and heavy. i wonder if you could hear the featherweight of my freedom on the phone. love, there was so much relief in that last call. i hope you know it was not a sudden but building decision.

i have buried the thought of you. the dark and heavy ones, the consistent and persistent ones too. now i only welcome the ones that you can receive only when you have accepted, only when you have let go. soft and sweet these are.

to conclude, i wish you the best. congratulations in advance on all your endeavours and achievements and wonders. i am excited for our futures apart and my feet have already taken me forward. truly, i cannot remember the last time i felt this airy!

i hope you feel just as light, i hope you feel just as free.

cheers.

further and further

with time

forgive the years it took for me to reach where you are forgive the relentlessness of my love forgive the depth of longing of my desire forgive the reluctance

of

my

steps

as i finally move on

allow me

the solace of relinquishing you

allow me

a life where i cannot recall the shade of your eyes

allow me

a future where i do not wait for your return, or change of mind

allow me

a timeline where i do not search for you in a crowd at a place you would be

allow me

the freedom of not knowing you

forgive me,

for loving you as hard as i did, for wanting as much as i yearned for and for my unyielding loyalty to our connection

i forgive myself

for being so stubborn i forgive you for all you left unspoken and i welcome this new beginning with open arms

the space between now and then is widening and stretching and loosening it is not so tight now, not so taunt it is less heavy, there is less resistance.

it has been witnessed

the space between, is everything we need then, no?

yes,

i think yes.

rjl

poet’s note

the original/first version of this poem is about a specific connection, but this version that i am sharing is with all the endings and experiences i have long held, in mind - friendships, lovers, trauma, family.

2026 seems to be the year i make amends with saying goodbye (something i am not the best at and trying to be better). but things have been a bit different and it’s easier.

i am getting better at watching people walk away. for some i wave, for others i blow a kiss to your back, for all - i wish you well.

it gives me so much hope, this idea of starting over with something lost. i can only feel loss if i have loved and i’d never give that up, not for anything. it is always better to love and lose than to not love at all! i would rather love and lose and remember and hurt and change than to never love, or to lose and forget or scorn. i think loving wholeheartedly is the bravest thing we can ever do. at the core of every feeling i truly think there is love.

so cheers to being brave and letting go.

“what if i get arrested?”

we are too afraid for material militant action. we abandon the struggle in exchange for positional safety. we lack organization and consciousness. we avoid big action and stick to what is local, we say we ‘will change what we can from here’. this is not inherently bad, but do we even abide by this? do we stand principled when faced with attacks on what we stand for? do we? in what small everyday ways, do we abandon the people of Palestine, of Congo, of Sudan, of the oppressed world? if it means you get to keep the cheque or buy the newest product or if it means you get to keep the convenience of our privilege - how often do you abandon our causes?

“what if i push back and lose my job?”

“what if i say something and they take me off this gig?”

what if?

what if, what if, what if.

what if…300+ underpaid people, 70 of them children, died in a landslide while mining coltan, the mineral essential to make our devices, in unregulated artisanal mines in the south of the Congo’s Rubaya? what if that was not the second time this has happened in those mines this year? with the first occurrence in january amounting to over 400 casualties? what if i told you over 50% of the world’s mining and mineral exploration companies are canadian? what if we are witnessing multiple genocides live on our phones? what if the premier of the province of ontario welcomed ICE’s (amerika’s fascist border regime), order of armoured vehicles from a zionist manufacturer in brampton? what if we are witnessing multiple genocides live on our phones? what if the new gold necklace you just got from your trip to dubai was soaked in the blood of the Sudanese people? what if an UAE-backed conflict has placed 33.7 million Sudanese people in a crisis? what if we are witnessing multiple genocides live, on our phones?? what if our tax dollars funded these genocides? because they do. these are the horrors of our reality, these are the peoples we’ve failed, these are the sins we bare. what if we, settlers in a formerly british, ongoing colonial project, live an entirely different experience of privilege from the Indigenous peoples whose land we occupy? what if our governments and leaders gave weapons and arms and and fuel and armoured vehicles and money and power and permission to the horrors we witness live?

what if?

what if we, comfortable labourers of the west, deny the truth of our guilt and perform revolution rather than act it? what if we abandoned the theatrics of complicity and struck the crumbling ourboros of an empire from where we can? from where we must? what needs to happen to provoke action? what will be enough? if not the current terrors, what will be too much? is it when it’s us? when it’s you? directly, instead of slightly? will it be enough when it’s off your screen and on your streets? my love, is it not already on our streets? again, i repeat - we are in the belly of the goddamn beast. but we’ve become accustomed to the stench of its imperial rot, so much so, that it has become our daily perfume. we stink, a rank of cowardice, complacent oppression, with subtle notes of self-victimization. what if you stink because you only say you care, but never back your words when it the situation demands it, regardless if the case is big or “small”. everything must matter, we must align ourselves to our values and causes, always. a compromise of your principles is nothing short of betrayal, lest a liberal tell you otherwise. nothing, to me, in relation to this-the horrors of capitalism’s genocidal conditions-will ever be small.

i often consider the ways our cowardice and hesitance seeps into every aspect of our lives. i am in a lot of artist spaces, and many of my comrades are artists. this is not a new condition of revolution, art has never been removed from the liberation struggle, art has always bene a part of the liberation struggle. George Jackson was reading poetry while in amerikan prison. through song, voices have carried the tunes of revolution- many times unwritten but still remembered- from the throats of elders to the growing choirs of children, from the free to the captured, from the time before until now. Third Cinema emerged as a visual revolt against the white supremacist Hollywood and Western media’. art had always been at the core of movements, and many Black artists like Audre Lorde, CLR James, Nina Simone, James Baldwin, Med Hondo, June Jordan, Nikki Giovanni, Ousmane Sembène, Claudia Jones and more, spoke of the role of the artist in revolution and highlighted it in their work. most figures in struggle actually, were either lovers of the arts, constantly referencing it; or artists themselves. if you know me, it would have come up at some point. i speak often of art as revolution, of the inherently political nature of art i am always talking about this because i am constantly disappointed by the decisions of artists i admire or am in community with, - who they decide to work with, projects they support or go through with, brands / corporations they take money from - who abandon their values under pressure or when met with social or financial opportunities. often in my disappointment, i think of this quote by Sékou Touré, brilliant Pan-Africanist and the first president of West Africa’s Guinea, that is featured at the beginning of Frantz Fanon’s essay “Concerning Violence” in his anti-colonial text Wretched of the Earth:

the African and Black revolution aligns with all anti-oppressive struggles so this quote is universal. we, as artists and intellectuals, must always be concerned with, and at one with the people. so what if? what if a cheque meant more to you, than your principles? than your solidarity? what then? how will you face yourself? what will you change?

what if (y)our cowardice did not stop you us from material revolution?

the question of what is to be done, has been answered enough times over that nothing i say will be revolutionary or new in its meaning. i constantly question what does a local to global revolution look like? if we are to imagine a future, it must be with a material analysis of the present through the conditions of the past. we have the privilege of the guides from the revolutionaries before us, as well as the means, the tools of the world ahead. what we lack is collective conviction. a new world order built amongst the rubble of capitalism’s superstructure will not come by one pair of hands. but if we are to grip each other, united in struggle, our commitment to our collective future must be unwavering and true. even if we disagree, even if we do not align on every point - in action, i must know the comrades to the left and right of me, in front and behind me, are committed to their principles and will take the necessary steps, in any situation, towards revolution. should they waver or hesitate, may it only be momentarily. if they drop my hand, may they know even upset, i will reach out once more to struggle with them again.

we must start with critiquing ourselves, holding our own hearts accountable. we must surround ourselves with souls who will be firm in challenging us, who will hold us steady and steer us back to the path of revolution. i am eternally grateful for the comrades who have held me accountable, fermenting my principles in me with each mistake and hesitation of my own. may i stay committed to improvement and acceptance of critique.

may we abandon the cowardice of hesitation and always move in the uncomfortable commitment to action.

in love and solidarity,

your local comrade ☭

references

Touré, Sékou. “The political leader as the representative of a culture.” Address to the second Congress of Black Writers and Artists. 1959.

i hate how knowing you makes me feel.

sigh

how many times have i written something of this caliber?

i am fine and then the thought of you disarms me.

i will never forget how pathetic it felt to desire so much more, but to be so quick to drop to my knees and scavenge the little that is, was, thrown my way. i think back to the point where i am looking the mirror, in a tank top and shorts, and think to myself “of course it ended this way”. i have hated my flesh, i have found myself comparing and wondering and loathing.

how horrible

how demeaning,

the mind can be.

but knowing, loving, knowing (?) you? God at times, i think that might have been worse. so often, it (knowing, loving, knowing (?) you) reduced me to who i am only in relation to you. reduced me to my perception of how you perceive me, in my connection to you in the materially shared world. no one has made me feel so known, no one has made me feel so unloved. no one has made me feel so cherished, and no one has made me feel so shallow. so flimsy. paper thin. you disorient me. i have pages and pages of written confusion, of material sorrow. the act of mourning you as i loved you. the act of mourning myself. i mourn my body, my stolen flesh, i mourn what i thought love was. i mourned a me who was not so desperate. i mourn a me who could still feel. you disorient me.

what is the solace of poetry when i cannot feel my hand? what is the flavours of dishes when my tongue is numb? what is pain when i press a blistering cup of tea to my thigh and feel nothing? what is feeling, when a connection can remove you from the world and leave you on dissociative autopilot?

do you know what it is like to be unmade?

how do you bring your self back to feeling? being? how do i once again become? i cannot feel, if i am numb to the physical, to touch, to my foot on the ground, the fabric on my skin, the pen in my hand - if that sense grows dull, what then, in this journey of remaking, do i use to ground me?

i reduce myself to my flesh and mistakes. i forget i am a person. a human being, a being experiencing humanity. i think these of myself so permanent, as if this is all i will be. as if i have not lived. as if my mother did not curate and carry me for 9 months - the doctors of my island carving me out of her as i declared my arrival. how then, can i reduce myself to only this? i have loved and kissed and i have scraped my knees. i have felt the weight of eyes and i have lifted my head, my voice, in defiance. i have been called names and i have hurt others. i have been stolen, i have been dismantled and i have put myself back together. i have felt i am a worthy choice and i have known the devastation of being the second, the third, the last one. i have known the grief of not being chosen at all. grief and i, actually, are most most familiar. i have known loss and i fear the losses i have not yet suffered. i have withered yes, but i have also been watered by communities, both chosen and the one formed from the blood that keeps me. i have witnessed the tears of my father. i could recognize my mother’s voice by a single note. i have watched my little sister become. i have tugged the thread between my siblings and i, connecting us through time, across borders and oceans. i have lived through the undoing of my grandparents. i have created and i have destroyed. i have flickered and i have burned. i have hated and scorned and i have believed. i have doubted and i have begged on my knees for forgiveness, redemption, and salvation to a voice i do not know will answer. i have discovered myself, and i have lost myself along the way. i have been ravaged and i have been held dearly. i have been made to feel as though i am nothing. i have had loved ones whisper that i deserve everything. i have dreamed and i have succeeded, i have hoped and i have failed.

how then can i continue to reduce myself? do i not owe it to all the life i’ve lived and the lives who’ve lived in and through me, to reconstruct a me beyond the rot of you? of us? and will the stench of us linger? will it adhere to my skin like the sticky dark cologne of the hands that stole me?

no.

i remake myself and am reborn smelling like a future you will not know. if it lingers so be it, that is the stench of me.

I sometimes find myself desperate for a love like I once had. I ruminate on how slickly it shifted from a soft, sweet love to a murky concept that was clung to. It was my very first, how was I to know it was a life lesson in the making? Even when most turbulent, the notion of being wanted, kept me (seemingly) whole. The ending left me in pieces. And in the last year, I have been used and sought after and used again. I want to take time for myself yet I so easily find myself craving intimacy in a devastatingly needy way. But it is not the ravaging of flesh I desire, but the gentle caressing of souls. So when I succumb to boredom, and fill out a profile on those soul sucking dating apps, many of them ask ‘what are you looking for?’, and I worry about how honest I am to be in these things I write that no one really reads. Also, how should a yearner summarize their desires with a mere 225 characters? I question the worth of this online endeavour. Can my fingers really capture, with such a short character limit, a virtual glimpse of me? One that would engage someone similar to my genre? Would said glimpse also give a peek to the scope and trench eerie depth of this longing I feel? In regard to said longing, is what my heart is searching for, really meant to be found via a virtual, shallow, Godforsaken digital dating stratagem? And finally - is question two of my Hinge profile really the place to energetically unload? Probably (definitely) not.

I search through faces on dating apps when I am bored because I am looking for company. The kind that friends cannot give you, the kind that even with all the self love in the world, you will still crave. The soft, endearing, romantic kind. I hope it finds me but time has never known me to be patient. I betray the fates, I betray God’s divine plan, and I take love into my own desperate hands. I venture for it through this parasitic Sierra Blue aluminum box that I am addicted to. I search for meaning in these apps I despise, when what I should be searching for, is the feeling of home I have lost within myself. I should be searching for the me that was lost, (or maybe stolen might be a better word). Perhaps it was both a process of losing and stealing that I fell prey to. So now, I am…displaced within my own soul, entombed in my flesh - this is something I said once, and keep saying because I got the words right and it fits how I feel perfectly and that can be rather hard. Yes, I am displaced within my soul, and I search for home in the validation of others. Now, you say this and people will genuinely look at you and say “You shouldn’t do that”.

Thank you! I hadn’t considered it!

Except I had and I have and I do. It is a considerably pathetic compulsion, and I am most embarrassingly aware! It is a masochistic self torture to know something is not good, and to still find yourself doing it. I believe they call that addiction. For a while, when I was so out of myself, when I could not even tell someone, should they have asked, what my ‘self’ was or what it meant, validation was a hot commodity. I exchanged it for self doubt and found temporary confidence. But if your love of self is not based in you, but rather others, you will find yourself purchasing the illusion of self love at the premium cost of external validation. It feels good then empty, because at its core, the feeling is manufactured and often from people who do not truly know you and who you do not truly know. Remember, the search in question, is for validation through romantic means, the non-platonic kind of intimate company. I have grown tired of consistently searching for a feeling externally, knowing I will never be fulfilled by connections with time limits, that fall short of my standards.

So, this journey to look within myself, to not only be aware of my trauma induced behaviours, but to actively stop and proactively prevent them, is what makes adulthood both riveting and terrifying. For example, to my trauma-altered brain, a compliment is immediately an affirmation of worth. From what I was surrounded with growing up, to what I have endured, I find myself subconsciously comfortable with the unsafe and the uncomfortable. The uncomfortable and the unsafe relationship dwindles me yet I will find myself struggling to leave. If a person is staying with me, by me, despite my reactive and triggered behaviour that means that I am good, no? I am worth it? The search for the answer to these questions are propelled outwards. This is how my brain thinks. I then have to constantly be checking myself, which feels…it is much more mental labour than I would like to do. It is exhausting, actually. Rather than upholding inherent value in myself, my brain is now hot wired to think that any attempt in wanting to know me, to understand me, means that I am something worth keeping around.

Something.

Something?

I stopped writing for a moment, and came back. My fingers were distinct in their choosing of ‘thing’ rather than ‘one’. sometimes the way I naturally dehumanize myself shocks me. It reminds me that i am not always writing with intention nor thoughts in order, but I am sort of just seeing where my fingers take me as my mind moves - the process sometimes unconscious? Or subconscious? What I write is what I am thinking and I am allowing it to manifest materially from the pen to the paper or in this case, through these keys, onto the screen. The ease of self dehumanization is the result of lack of self love. How does this come about? I know I am more than worthy, I am inherently worthy, we all are. Do you know what it is like to know one thing for certain and still think otherwise? To be, internally, in constant contradiction? It is stranger than strange. For example, even in knowing I am worthy, validation - romantic, familial, academic, cultural, platonic - is still unfortunately centered in my thinking and motivations, and its stake in my perceived self-worth is high and heavy. Then, consider my borderline obsessive longing for intimacy. Real intimacy. I don’t mean a few great first dates, or a Battle of the Non-Chalant that goes nowhere, or an impassioned fuck, or being an filler for an inconsistent, two-times partnered solo-poly person in an open relationship (lmao). No, I mean intimacy as in I would very much like to be loved again. In fact, I would (metaphorically) kill, or do a decent amount of illegal, unethical, or just averagely accepted bad things, if it meant I would be loved genuinely, wholeheartedly, entirely. I am constantly thinking about what it would be like to experience such a love once more. This is not to say I am not loved wholly by friends or my fated family. But to be cherished romantically, is a sensation unique in its own right, and I crave it. Deeply. I would very much like to be loved again - not with hesitance, not as a distraction, not as a pastime, not as a breathing unit of pleasure, not as a trial run or experiment or catalyst, but simply, as me. I want for someone to want me, and hold and know and care for and choose to be with me. I want them to want me for all that I was, all that I am, and all in which I will be. I want them to know the depths of me and still choose me everyday.

I think of my recent ex and our breakup, a prophecy I predicted from when we first started dating in 2021. My biggest fear was the difference(s) between us would be the reasons they would leave me. Those anxieties were the foundations for the walls I had up. fast forward a few years, those very contradictions are at the centre of our ending. Suddenly I was 19 again. But this time i was right. June 2024 showed that there were no anxiously projected fears, just an even more terrifying reality. Annoyingly, sometimes it is still hard for me to accept that it’s over. My occasional rejection of reality is not due to a desire for the connection once more but because I fear love, passionate and deep, will not find me again. So every once in a while, I unconsciously fiddle with the idea of possible reconciliation. The connection is not something I truly crave, but still attachment lingers, dangles the notion in front of me, and smiles. Frustratingly, I have had some of my friends think I am choosing to still feel this way. As if my knees have not memorized the planks of my bedroom floor from my daily prayers to the God I was raised on, begging for mercy, pleading again and again for Him to please take this from me. Why would I choose to hold on to a turmoil like this? Do you know what it is like? When you are young and someone tells you for years and years “I love you. I will always love you, nothing will change that” and for years and years you say “I love you more”, but worryingly think (and even in the beginning, would anxiously say) “Forever is a long time, you don’t know that”. Do you know then, the utter betrayal, a sting beyond reference, of when you are young and they look you in your eyes, and say “I don’t love you anymore”. Even if it is expected, there are no words to describe it. It is a knife slicing your finger on its way to the cutting board, it is hot coffee splashing in your eye, it is friends laughing and refusing to tell you why, it is your mother asking why you ‘can’t be more like your sister’, it is your father telling you he could not care less, it is a phone call letting you know someone you love has been in an accident, it is a press on the intimate bruises from the hands that stole you. It is, it is, it is.

It is the grief of us that plagues me. A seemingly incurable pestilence embedded deep in the abandonment wound that has fostered well and true from both my childhood, and the turbulent ending of friendships in my formative years. It oozes and grows. Distractions are but bandaids when the infection is bone deep, however they can provide temporary relief. It is here that dating apps offer me solace within my sickness. I swipe and get complimented and go on the occasional date and I pretend a connection can be more than it is and I avoid the gash that is begging me to confront the ways a breakup can shape how you love others and yourself. I wish I could say I have already found a cure, but like the rest of us fumbling through dating in modern times - though I am disgustingly self aware of the unlikelihood of my romantic success - it is these dating apps that have succeeded in trapping me in a cycle of hesitant participation, predicted failure and defeated return.

But is this trap eternal? If I lose faith in the romantic, am I not denying what I have already experienced? Have I not met a lover by chance in the low light of a speakeasy on Dupont? Did I not meet one on a purple lit couch on New Year’s Eve in Montréal, only to discover they too are visiting from Toronto? Did I not meet another at my favourite neighbourhood cafe? And another at Sometimes I think too much, an intimate poetry and music event series in the city I love? I lose so much hope in the bleakness of the digital dating scene that I forget the potential of fate, the endearing possibilities of this material world that exists and persists even when a Hinge match does not reply. I am in such a rush for connection, but has the universe, has God, not already strung a line to connect my soul to those it is meant to meet? Originally based on the Chinese deity Yuè Lǎo (月老), in Japanese folklore, this is called unmei no akai ito (運命の赤い糸) - the red string of fate that ties us to those we are destined to meet.

In returning to these apps, am I not then desecrating the sanctity of fate? Am I not hastily tying digital knots to souls I was never meant to meet? I have decided I don’t want to find solace in these apps, I don’t want a chanced lover woven into the fabric of distractions I use to cover my wounds. I am not choosing to long for past loves but perhaps subconsciously, I was (am?) choosing to hold them deeply in my present because I worry I will not find anything with such depth again. But this is a fearful delusion more than it is a guaranteed fact, and I refuse to give it power any longer.

When I first began writing this piece, it was spring 2025 and I wanted to analyze how I was interacting with dating apps and how trauma had shaped the way I view and approach love, laying the foundation for external validation to become the most valuable (abstract) form of (perceived) love which was leading me to settle and stay in situations I knew I should not, in fear of being alone, or worse - unlovable. I wanted to address the avoidance of loving myself. It is now January 2026. I wish I could say I fixed everything within the year, but instead I will say I have made progress in how I hold myself and have been steadfast in keeping the boundaries that solidify my values and respect for myself. Cheers to this resilient, self cleaning soul. I wanted to scrap this piece and write an entirely new one, but this is proof of loss and the ways in which I process it. This is proof of progress, of my lifelong odyssey to love myself. God knows I am not finished, and truly I never will be, but my, look how I have stepped forward. I do not know if I can easily say I love myself but I do know that I want to! I know even if my first thought is to care what others think and say and think of me, my second is to disregard it all. I know I hold myself gentler. I am unsure if my loved ones have noticed, but I am kinder to myself because of them.

Time and reflection have reduced the importance, and therefore the purchase result, of validation. Expensive and addictive as it may be, I find myself in less of a rush to open my heart’s pockets. As an alternative to the high demand of attention, I have now started buying love from the future. I have purchased a rationally kind inner voice that allows me to exist in my mistakes without drowning in them. I built more room in this beating organ so the longing I didn’t ask for can roam free without blocking my arteries and capsizing my chest. I purchased patience, lots of it. It allows me to sit with grief and not rush its process or presence. It allows me to take time to forgive myself and deprioritize my lust for romance. A Hinge match will not save me, and a failed relationship is part of life, a rite of passage even. I am not less than for connections miscarrying, or for struggling to find love in the romantically forsaken and yearnless city of Toronto. This new found self patience has allowed me to conclude that I am okay with waiting. I release the habit of swiping through profiles in hopes of finding something that would have eventually found me in due time. If I crave an embrace, I will text my friends. If I crave what friendship cannot give me, I will go see a movie. I will not meddle with fate but instead wait for things to come to me as they will. Yes, I still yearn (as poets tend to do), but this year I will love and pour into and validate myself.

That to me, is priceless.

image credits

receipt graphic / hand string graphic

Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther felt like, at the time, a revolutionary mode of heroic Black storytelling that was most necessary when it was released in 2018. It is a Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film, (a predominantly white amerikan, when expanded still Western, franchise) directed by a Black man, with a star-studded, almost all Black - not Hollywood’s typical light skinned / biracial / somewhat- melanated-racially-ambiguous idea of Black, but darkskin, brownskin unambiguously Black faces in the spotlight - cast, that took the world by storm at a time when the Black diaspora worldwide was divided more than ever. I remember watching it in theatres, I remember being a young Black kid and seeing hope on the IMAX big screen in a theatre full of shining brown eyes on melanated faces just like mine. Coogler’s film covers themes of imperialism, corruption, privilege, Black nationalism, land theft, the Black question in so-called amerika, Pan-Africanism, isolationism vs communalism and more. We are presented with Wakanda, a fictional African state, that has tricked the world for thousands of years that it is poor and ‘underdeveloped’, when in reality, it is more technologically advanced than any other (known) nation on Earth, due to the mound of vibranium (a rare and powerful fictional element) that it was founded on. The reason the film’s notion of a technologically advanced African society that hides in plain sight, works so well is because the continent of Africa has been, throughout modern history, so destabilized and exploited by Western imperialism, that the average person outside the continent has been socialized to believe it would be almost impossible for one of the so-called ‘poorest’ (though resource rich) regions on Earth to be more advanced, in any way, than the industrialized, capitalist behemoths of the Global North. But our propagandized conceptions of Africa are anti-Black and revisionist. Africa is the dawn of life, with lifetimes of histories and societies and empires prevailing long before European colonial contact. So if not invaded with unprecedented violence and imperial threat, if the already great nations that existed on the African continent were given the opportunity to continue without colonial interference, would they, could they, not have expanded technologically? Of course they would/could have, and though we will never know what the results would be of that passed future, Black Panther offers an Afro-futurist imagining of that stolen possibility - a central African nation that was able to escape the horrors of the colonized world with the power of vibranium and create the most innovative and secure state the MCU world has seen.

Coogler’s film, though wonderfully nostalgic for me, and imaginatively uplifting for the global Black population, has many short falls. Regardless of how much it seems to uplift Blackness, it is still made by an amerikan (derogatory), and therefore privy to amerikan propaganda (pro-military with sprinkles of orientalism). Why, in the beginning of the film when T’Challa is on a rescue mission to save Nakia, are the Nigerian militants (we do not get a backstory, we just know they are The Bad Guys) covering their faces with keffiyehs? The Black Panther costume and design team chose to dress The Bad Guys in the easily recognizable patterned scarf from the South West Asian and North African region, worn for centuries in the Arab world. A scarf, with the black and white colourway popularly associated with the Palestinian people, their freedom fighters, and their (ongoing) struggle for self-determination and liberation from the violent zionist entity. This same pattern, through zionist Hollywood and Western news propaganda, has long become a popular symbol for ‘terrorism’ in the Western world. The Palestinian struggle against zionist colonialism and apartheid (which is powered by Western imperialism) makes the Palestinian cause antithetical to the Western cause: profit, power and global expansion, or simply - capitalism. One of the prime ways the West has and continues to cripple the revolutionary causes of the so-called Global South, is by manufacturing consent from Western so-called civilization through propaganda. Film styling and costume is costly, and therefore intentional. I was disgusted and (I’m not sure why) surprised to see Black Panther display the keffiyeh in this way; and I was shocked that I never noticed it during the 6 other times I watched the film - propaganda is subtle like that. Another thing that bothered me during this scene, was one of the Black male militants grabbing a girl hostage, and saying to T’Challa: “Wallahi, I’ll shoot her”. Wallahi is a well known Arabic word, meaning “I swear by/to Allah (God)”. It is used by followers of Islam and also a popular phrase by those who speak Arabic. So now The Bad Guys are African (bad), wearing keffiyehs (very bad), and Muslim (very very bad). Watching this film critically, knowing so much more than I knew in 2018, altered the way I digested the story - formerly subtle things I in ignorance did not previously catch, stood out like a sore thumb, and I once again was reminded how much I hate amerikan media.

Therefore if I am to remove the nostalgia, and reflect on Black Panther from a critical lens, this film is littered with orientalist, anti-revolutionary, amerikan military propaganda. It is liberal heroism at its best, and it vilifies Black radical anti-imperialism through Killmonger’s character, at its worst. Erik/N’Jadaka ‘Killmonger’ Stevens is a half African-American half Wakandan from Oakland, California. The same city where the Black Panthers Party was founded and where Black communities were and continue to be disproportionately targeted by poverty, mass incarceration, police brutality, and drug and gang violence. Killmonger is a former soldier, who served in the amerikan Navy SEALs, specifically an elite JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) black-ops ‘ghost unit’, meaning he has years of experience overseas destabilizing sovereign nations and murdering who knows how many innocents. He brags about serving in amerikan operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, mournfully admits to killing his own people, and has his kill count scarred one by one across his body - he is more than desensitized to violence. Killmonger is a blood soaked product of the amerikan military industrial complex, a guilty soldier, a special ranked perpetrator of imperial violence from the largest empire in our current times, the United States. Killmonger is also a radical Pan-Africanist and Black nationalist who wishes to liberate all Black and oppressed people through armed struggle and violent revolution with Wakandan made vibranium weapons. Violence here is not the issue, but rather, the way his revolution is not violence as a means for a liberated future, but violence as a tool he has been well trained to ‘win’ (conquer) with. Note that Black liberation, dictated by the Black radical tradition and its many scholars such as CLR James, June Jordan, Malcolm X, The Combahee River Collective, the Black Liberation Army, Angela Davis, Robert F. Williams, the Black Panther Party, Cedric J. Robinson, and more, does not exist within white notions of power. The film therefore mangles the Black radical tradition Killmonger wears as a compass, and mutates it into this ‘anti-white’ fever dream to tilt the scales of oppression, to, as Killmonger said, “put [Black people] on top” (Coogler). It is a twisted version of Franz Fanon’s theory of double consciousness in his anti-colonial and psychoanalytical book Black Skin, White Masks. In his work, Fanon details the psychological fragmentation experienced by Black individuals in colonial/racist societies, where they internalize colonial ideology and experience a split sense of self, adopting these “white masks”, which Fanon uses as a metaphor for the behaviours, language, and cultural norms that Black people adopt in an attempt to gain acceptance, recognition, and an equal footing in a white, colonial world (Fanon). In this film, Killmonger’s vision of globalized Black liberation (the core of his Black self, his Black Panther), his internal true intentions, are distorted and presented through an European-imperialist and amerikanist filter (white mask). We see Fanon’s notion of double consciousness, the Black divided self, present in Killmonger, with his hope for liberation juxtaposed to his years of trauma in amerika and imposing violence while in the amerikan military influencing his actions. I love Erik’s character and I understand his complexities, but ultimately I hate how he is framed and I hated watching his Black radicalism rot and lose meaning before my eyes. I hated that he had the Wakandans burn the heart-shaped herb, a sacred and seemingly magical plant they use for rituals and coronations, that allows the consumer to gain the powers and strength of the Black Panther. I hated how he was imposing gendered violence on the women in the film - lifting them up and choking them, killing them with glee. I hated him sitting on the throne and saying “The sun will never set on the Wakandan empire” to the Wakandan council. These are the words and actions of a colonizer, not a liberator. Through Killmonger, the film takes radical anti-imperialism, 100% justified and in this version, aligned with the philosophies of the Black radical tradition, and presents it as extreme, distorting Black (and in consequence, all other oppressed) liberation movements and fitting the popular and well funded narrative that non-Western power is inherently violent.

In the end, I wondered if Coogler tried to save revolutionary face with Killmonger’s dying words: “Heal me so you can lock me up? Nah. Just bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from the ships because they knew death was better than bondage” (Coogler). ‘They knew death was better than bondage’ - this line always moves me, and never fails to evoke tears. What a strong reminder of the heartbreaking and historical reality of Black revolution and resilience, yet it is delivered by the same character the film demonizes to the point that his rational and scientifically correct revolutionary principles appear extreme and childishly angry, seemingly fueled only by revenge. Black Panther stripped Killmonger of his revolutionary character by mutilating his dream, and instead giving us a draconian anti-hero who serves as an example to the audience of what one should not do for liberation. This film tells Black masses that the only good type of revolution is the peaceful kind - cue the ending scene with T’Challa at the United Nations giving a speech as if international law substantively exists. The film then, is a beautifully shot program for political complacency, offering examples of armed struggle as Something Bad, and suggestions of non-violent alternative approaches to systemic oppression operating within existing colonial power structures, as Something Good, Something Better.

I have plenty more to say on this film. I would love to further dive into other present themes of tribalism and civil war, isolationism vs communalism, CIA propaganda. However, my focus here was to briefly analyze Killmonger from the opposing frameworks of anti-imperialism and liberalism in Black Panther. This movie is nostalgic, yes, but I will never forgive it for diluting the hope of Black revolution and instead feeding us propagandized amerikan cinematic mush.

I conclude with this: Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther is a liberal, reductive, commercialized mockery of Black liberation movements. I vehemently reject the presentation of a Black Pan-African, anti-imperialist who is reduced to only being a violent extremist. The Black radical tradition is founded on the right to armed struggle, and it is both historical and futurist. It can not be erased or rewritten.

Perhaps this film then, is simply an example that the revolution will not be televised.

References

Coogler, R. (2018). Black Panther. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

Fanon, F. (1986). Black Skin, White Masks. Pluto Press.

i am alone. it is quiet, but not really. someone’s laundry tumbles in the dryer downstairs. there is the faintest mumbles of tv playing from my roommate’s room down the hall. there is a soft ringing above me that lets me know someone is in the washroom upstairs, and the fan is on. i am alone. it is quiet, but not really. the kitchen window is open and the voices of children at the park across from us, floats through the mesh. my thoughts are a symphony. so it is quiet, but not really.

it is a fake quiet because the world is moving and i feel so much and my feelings are loud and if they are loud then there must be noise. so sure, it is quiet, but not really. and in this false quiet, i once again notice the strange phenomenon that has endeared me for as long as i can remember. it is actually this strange occurrence that makes me question my relationship to sound and feeling. by this, i mean i have noticed that if i am in a quiet or empty place for too long (and honestly i don’t really know what counts as too long, because sometimes it takes a couple seconds, other times minutes, before my eyes well), even if i have music blasting in my ears, i end up crying. this is because my thoughts fill the space with a heaviness that pierces the ears and doesn’t need to be visible to be tangible. in fact, my chest feels it before i do. why is that? is it because i have experienced so much and then i find myself in simple places, just existing. how can i just exist after all fo that? isn’t that strange? maddening, even? the notion of living? to continue, despite it all? look at all i have loved and suffered and fought for and lost and gained and mourned and then i am just to continue sipping my ginger tea on a saturday evening? how does the mind not break? how does it piece together sanity in the crumbling weight of what is known? the heft of what is left ot be felt? even in the most mundane of places, such as my kitchen, i am overwhelmed. because always, there are too many memories and moments. but still i search for quiet. i crave it but find i can never truly enjoy it because even in the plainest of days, my mind is full of unrest.

and today, i did nothing really. yet i am tired as if i did much. i have so much going and doing in my head, that i (have) struggle(d) to continue within the world we share. i find my body physically pays the toll for my mentality. and the nothingness of my day, centers on the fact that i felt myself getting sick yesterday afternoon, and have since taken all the appropriate measures to counteract - garlic and ginger and lemon and onion and buckleys and spicy soup and black pepper and peppermint tea and honey. i woke up when the birds were chirping, and bed rotted until 4:15pm. i cried. i sent out invitations for my birthday party (i am turning 23), i read a couple articles and one essay, i facetimed my little sister and i made lunch for myself. it is now 7:45pm. i have cried some more, i have wrapped up loose ends for my summer job, i have online window shopped, and i have not spoken in over 3 hours. i am still in my kitchen, at the table. the remnants from my i-am-about-to-be-sick meal are to the right of me (one sauce stained noodle bowl, one mug, one mason jar with a gulp of water left), and i feel so strange.

i read a piece today i really liked about the possibility of connection through strangers and the strength of choosing yourself, of loving yourself. i am still sitting with the work, not much i can say as of yet. not that i do not have things to say, but rather my mind is so large in response to everything that i must let things marinate sometimes, so i may shuffle through the unnecessary, to find the thing that struck me most. but then again, by sitting here in the “quiet”, i suppose i have been doing that for the last couple hours. so far, my conclusions and reflections are plentiful:

1. i want to indulge in my hobbies more (and hobbies i have yet to start or find or know).

   love to collage! i want to paint! i want to sew! i want to dye clothes! i want to make jewellry! i want to print my poetry! i want to work on my CB project! i want to style outfits and post them! i want to read and read and read until i think in Times New Roman!

2. i want to be consistent with moving my body.

   i used to do track. i know what it is to feel my skin push against the wind and to have my lungs fill up at full capacity. i miss stretching my body and feeling all the ways in which she can move. i need to get back in the gym! i need to unretire my yoga mat! i miss going for runs and that was not even something i did consistently. i yearn for a routine (athletic and otherwise) i lost, or perhaps never even had. i suppose i must step towards creating one.

3. i do not truly love myself and this contradiction entirely shapes the way i move through life.

   i want to change that. more to come on this…

4. i do not think i have ever stopped loving a single person. i still love you, all of you.

   this is not a new revelation, just a reminder what a blessing and a curse, this big heart is.

5. i need to remember i cannot control how i feel, only how i react to my feelings and how i act on my reactions.

   i have spent so much of my life being angry. it is generational, ancestral. often it feels inescapable, unequivocally true to who i am. but it is not. at the core of everything i feel is love and my goal in life is to have that shine through everything i do.

…and many more conclusions rush through my mind with these. i am not sure what will come next. why am i writing? what will come from this? i struggle so much with motivation, that though i have so much i wish to do in my mind and my heart, i find myself always coming up short. how do you start? how do you really get yourself to wake up and do the things you want to do? i wish to not just get up and be (the autopilot mode many of us may be used to), but to get up and live. it seems so easy for others, but i am sure that is not the case. i think there must be a life worth of dedication to get up and live. there is intention, decision, a will (!!!) to move forward with vigour and to have (or make) a day mean something. i find that i lack that. i don’t know how or why, but i do. most days at least. it is not that i am not grateful for the things i have and the people i love and the city i am in and the people who love me. it is not that i do not have goals and hopes and dreams. yet i find i cannot will myself into doing much because whatever internal reserve we should have to pull said will from, mine is almost always overwhelming low. if i wake up with the will to make my day mean something, it is only because of two things usually:

1. i am able to do this after a thing happens. the thing can be anything really. a cute moment with a stranger, or a particularly sweet interaction (even digitally) with a friend, a free snack, a good coffee, or a stray cat following me. the thing just needs to be some sort of day-defining trigger (of joy or happiness or purpose) that propels my mind into a state of “yes! good is possible and i am lucky and living to see it!”. when in this mode, i feel like i can do anything. i am on top of the world and my desires are an arm stretch away. but i do not wake up with this unless it is jump started by a thing or

2. there is a pre-designated thing that i am so excited about, i borrow the post-thing good feeling in anticipation for the thing that is yet to happen. this can be a meeting with a friend i have not seen in a while, or a workshop i am really excited about or something along these lines. a thing in the future that makes me excited in the present. but pre-thing joy does not always happen, so sometimes even if it is the most ru-curated thing, and i should be the most excited, it can be seconds before it is about to happen and i feel nothing. it is strange feeling to navigate.

so what then? what now? where do i go from here? i have this revelation every couple months, and at this point, it is almost laughable. like clockwork, i acknowledge my lack of will, my lack of perhaps even life, and i proceed to do a series of attempts to build a routine. and then i fail and it is very hard to try again. but i do, eventually. so here i am again. maybe this time i will fail much sooner, or maybe i will build a routine and something in me will finally shift. i have been waiting for The Shift for a very very very long time now. shifts within me have happened on minor scales,but i can feel there is a Big One that was supposed to happen but didn’t. or has not yet. i refuse to believe that this consistent lack of feeling will be my regular, my familiar, for the rest of my life.

now i type with more drive, i feel something building in my chest with a good luck for tomorrow. so to conclude, i end this still in my kitchen. i actually have not moved from my chair since i started writing. i am still alone. the sun has set and the night has casted a shadow throughout the kitchen. i typed by the grace of with the glow from my laptop screen, the fairy lights strung across our kitchen ceiling and the warm basement light visible down the hall. my house is quiet, as am i, but not really. as i type, a hundred thoughts are yelling that something will happen!!! something will change! if not by the fates, i will wake up tomorrow and will it to.

there is this artist, berlioz. he is a uk-based house-jazz dj / composer with a wonderful band and i have been a fan for a couple years now. i was lucky enough to see him live on wednesday with my childhood friend, shae. our other friend mel was supposed to be there, but she could not make it and i had a diet pepsi form the venue bar in her honour. anyway, i love berlioz. his waves his mixes make, the humanity of his sound, the possibilities his beats makes me feel. the last time i saw him was july 2024, he was in montréal for jazz fest and i went down there to see him. i attended the concert by myself and it was magical, i cried. he played songs for an upcoming (now out) album called open this wall, and one of my favourite tracks on there is something will happen. i am not sure i will figure out how to embed the track in here, so instead i’ll show you the lyrics instead:

[Intro]
You know, you see rhythms of failure and success
And appreciation and rejection and all that
You want things to go well, but you know
You survive things
It makes you a little easier and it's interesting

[Chorus]
Something will happen (Something will happen)
Something will be learned (Something will be learned) (Something will happen)

before the concert, it had been a little more than over a year since i saw berlioz live and i cried when he played this song on wednesday. i didn’t cry a lot, but i watched them perform this track through a salty haze, as shae swung from side to side next to me, with her hand on her heart. i am in such a different place than i was last year. i lost many friends, more than i would like to admit. at that time i was grappling with the loss of my remaining grandparents, the (emotional) loss of a lover who i had loved for 3 years, i was in a dark place. the trip gave me a break from the city, but a majority of the friends i had in montréal during that time, are no longer in my life. something will happen, the song sings. God knows many things did, but like the song says, you survive things and it makes you a little easier. i really really like that line. i would like to be easy, but i am so anxious, i overthink all the time. i can be reactive. i have even read the words of the person i love the most, during the hardest time of my life, saying i am “not an easy person to love”. things like that change you, but again: you survive things, even when we did not think we would or even if we hoped and begged and prayed that they would go differently, that things would go well. God knows in the moment, it always feels like we never will survive the thing, but we do. we did. i did, and it made me easier. i like the way the word is up for interpretation - easy as in easygoing? easier to understand? or easier to be human with? easier with myself? with others? i like that, my goal is to be easier. i love this song so much because yes! something will happen! something will be learned! i think back to last summer in montréal, and it is funny how things change and we don’t realize we are living a lesson until it is too late. but yes, something will be learned. life will make sure of that. and we will survive it.

so imagine my feeling all of this on wednesday, experiencing something will happen live again, but in toronto this time, with a friend i have loved since the 6th grade? it was staggering. it hit me harder than i thought it would and moved me beyond the dancing of my feet. life is then the familiar shifting into the new with things to be learned through the transition. it is with moments like the berlioz concert (this and last year’s) that i can borrow the emotion i felt then, to use as will, as a thing, in the now.

when i started this piece, i did not start with the intent to end on such a hopeful note. the places my mind took me as i wrote was unexpected. i didn’t plan to end on a negative one either, but my mind was a hopeless orchestra and i started typing to help ease the internal volume within the external, material quiet. and i ended with a new hope for myself, how kind.

if you take nothing from this, take my suggestion that you listen to the song when you can.

and to myself: i suggest that things (and you) will be okay. if nothing drives you, you can be your own thing, and you can wake up and will a good day into being.

something will happen then. it must.

rjl

p.s. i figured out how to plug in the song!!!! enjoy :)

now, it is 10 am on a saturday. i am here for a family breakfast / mini reunion at auntie tattie’s that was scheduled earlier than our usual past noon brunch time, just so i could attend and still make it to my events in the city later today. how often do we glaze past subtlety in which our elders show their care? today’s breakfast is classic jamaican: ackee and saltfish, roasted breadfruit, rapini (callaloo replacement), fried dumpling, and fried bammy. my plate is hearty, colourful, perfectly balanced and smells like home.

there should be more of us, but at the table right now, it is only me, mommy, uncle james, auntie tattie, and daddy. auntie p hasn’t come down from her room. i am the only one of my mom’s children here - my older sister was too tired, my younger sister has work. my eldest sister is across the seas, so she is not here but still, we feel her absence as you do when loved ones are scattered. uncle james called uncle nigel (his son that is actually my cousin but so much older than me that i call him uncle out of respect) but it seems there was a mix up with time, and he can’t make it either. so again, it is just us. we sit and eat and talk about politics and laugh and i try not to cry. look at them. my loves, my blood, my hearts. they’re talking about an upcoming church event for seniors called 'north of 60’ and daddy is laughing, saying that since he just turned 60 in january, he “isn’t north of it yet” so he doesn’t have to go. uncle james chuckles while mommy side eyes and puts another bite of ackee and breadfruit in her mouth. auntie says “the second you are 60 and one minute, you are north just like the rest of us. so you must come”. we all laugh. they continue to joke about age and the silly things it brings, like forgetting things. we all laugh again but mine dies quickly and suddenly, this does not feel silly anymore. whether by a couple months, 6 months, or a few years - they are all over 60. sixty years. fifty and ten and then some.

how do you stop time? quickly, tell me please.

how do you slow it down? do you know? even if just for a little?

my lovely family. i can only stare and pretend to not be overwhelmed with feeling. the food is flavourful and warm but the taste has left me and i am tearing up. my aunt put on gospel music in the living room. what a strange feeling that washes over me, nostalgia does not seem like the right word. no, this is deeper, clawing, anchored. it has always sat in me and it rises in my throat when i remember once more. time is always one, two, three, ten, twenty, one hundred thousand steps ahead. i am stone heavy, lugging behind though i sprint at full speed. but i have been forced into this race and i cannot retreat. even if i try to pause, my feet do not agree, they do not stutter, instead they power through, aggravatingly determined and leaving me no choice but to follow along. my niece (technically cousin but it doesn’t matter) sits in my lap as i type and squeals in my ear: “auntie! auntie ru, i want to see! i want to play a game”, her baby smooth hand reaches for the keyboard so she may participate as well. i am typing out my soul on this laptop but she only sees a possibility to play. how sweet is she? three years of life, she has seen. auntie tattie comes over and gently runs her wrinkled fingers through my locs as her granddaughter continues to wiggle for attention on my legs. we are generations existing at once. and i will never be in this moment again. i soak it in and hope i will not forget a moment as soft and mundane as this.

those are the ones we tend to take for granted, and only cherish when all has been lost.