ambivalence

i saw it probably seventy-five meters away, from the west side of the intersection.

i thought: oh, crap. whatever that is, it is for me.

i was not close enough yet to see what it was; just that it was a thing flapping on the signpost.

but i knew, you know? the same way you hold a letter and know it's bad news or you haven't seen the cop yet but you know he has his hooks into you and you've been busted for 47 in a 35.

so i drove past it to my accustomed parking place.

there was a fear to it, a dread. i do not like uncertainty. that's weird, right? because i do so many things in life where i go purposely into the unknown?

but it's different when you wake up in the morning and think: i am going to face an unknown today.

i couldn't identify it until i had walked past it. well, i could have if i had stopped, but i was wary of the thing and wanted to look at it on my own terms, from an angle where i could see it without having to stop.

you know, like it might be a tiger or something ready to leap out at me.

but yes, an envelope with my name on it. and some kind of gift bag. i did not know what to do, so i walked past it. i will keep walking past it, i thought, until i know what to do about it.


a couple of passes later i could sort of make out that it was probably some fruit, maybe some peaches. i was hungry. they were probably fresh and ripe.

but i did not know what to do.

i thought maybe it represented a good attempt at mending something broken.

i thought maybe it represented a one-time opportunity to accept that token before i am probably forced into talking on the record to news media tomorrow.

i thought: i may not ever have another opportunity to accept whatever possibility is being offered.

i also thought that i did not wish to be open to that, not to be vulnerable to the precariousness of hope.

because let's be very clear on this: the protest is not a means to an end. i am not using it for leverage to a thing i want. it is my last resort, but i am comfortable with it. i know how to do it and i know what to expect with it and i do not have to place myself in the hard position of having to hope for a better thing.

you maybe have no idea how dangerous it seems for me to entertain the possibility that there may be a solution different than the one i have settled on that will suit me as well as what i have.

sometimes i feel panic: what if there is a proposed solution that i accept because it seems like it is as good as what i have, but then it turns out not to be? the protest was not my first, second, or fifth choice, but it is what i have and it is good enough.

while i am walking, and especially when i am having to talk about what happened to strangers who stop and ask, i have a lot of time to think about what i really hope to accomplish here.

it's ironic, because before i got thrown out of the church, my work in it was the most important thing in my life. now my work against it has taken that place.

anyway, some days i wake up and what i really want is to push the williston federated church into being better than they were, to make sure that even though i can never come home again, at least there will be an actual safe harbor and that what happened to me will never happen to anyone else. that would make my suffering worth something.

other days i am the smaller version of myself and i just want those fuckers to pay. i want them never to be able to come into or go from that building without having to think about it forever and ever, amen.

those things, while related, do not rest together peacefully in my soul.

either way, the action that springs from them is the same: i walk the corner.

this afternoon i thought that while i walked i would figure out what to do about the note and the fruit.

i had a long talk with a nice young man about the walk, and about what happened. he thanked me for the work. he said he was sorry for the rest. there's a lot about that conversation and many of the others that you will not pry out of me, not even with steel.

but they're important conversations.

after that i made myself a general irritant to people in the building and entering the building. my presence has to be uncomfortable to be effective. it's sad, but demonstrably true.

in the end i decided not to open the envelope or even look for sure if it was peaches in the bag.

it came down to a thing i said to the pastor in person not long ago: i can accept nothing from you until i receive communion in the church, where i belong.

it is an odd thing, the present tense.

i know it is not my home anymore. i have no home. i can never go home again. i will never again be welcome at that table.

but it was my home. it is my home. it is my exile. i have suffered much for it.

so instead of knowing what it was in the envelope or knowing for sure what was in the bag -and do NOT make the mistake of thinking i am not wildly curious- instead of looking, instead of knowing, instead of having to figure out what to DO with it, not practically, since it would be easy enough to just take it, but harder to know what to do with it here, in my heart; instead of that i paused and i wrote on the envelope:

yeah, let's have a meeting and talk about that after christmas.

and i went home.