Day Four
I woke up crying. I’d been dreaming that the contacts in my eyes were too big — they were like saucers — and I couldn’t make them fit. 

A couple nights before that when I was going to sleep, I suddenly started sobbing. 

My body, I was beginning to realize, was so emotionally full that the feelings were leaking out around the edges.

***

At the church in Hillbrow, the largest Brethren in Christ church in South Africa, our bus dropped us off a couple hundred yards or so from the entrance. The street was teeming with people. Move quickly, we were instructed. Stay together. I shifted my backpack so it hung on my front, a safety technique I employed regularly when we lived in Central America.

At the church’s gates, we were warmly greeted by the leaders and then guided to our chairs at the very front and center of the sanctuary. Along with one other person in our group, I had been assigned photography duties, so I soon slipped over to the wall so I could more easily take photos without being as much of a distraction. (Not that my photos were any good, and not that I was any less noticeable, but I tried.)

The morning’s service was a celebration of the elders. At the start, the elders — anyone 50 and above (to realize that I was just one year away from being classified as an elder was a bit of a jolt) — were told to gather at the back, and then they all made a grand entrance together amidst the congregation’s cheers and ululating. 

Throughout the morning, the worship leader shared quotes from the congregation’s elders about their favorite scripture and/or some insights about what’s truly important. Different congregational music groups performed, a traveling singer did a number, and then two women in our group each gave a sermon. When the three(four?)-hour service was over, we were ushered to a room at the back of the church sanctuary for a brief visit with the church leaders and refreshments.

Afterward, I sent a clip of the service to the family group chat. “I bet my Sunday morning was louder than your Sunday morning,” I said.

***

That afternoon, the cooks prepared a braai, which is the South African version of a cookout: a feast of grilled meats, sides, and salads.

Our leaders told us that friends of Iziko who were curious about Anabaptism would be joining us that afternoon for conversation. The idea of a theological discussion on a Sunday afternoon didn’t exactly make my skirt fly up — my friends and I don’t typically sit around and discuss church theology in our free time, and a dry topic combined with language and cultural barries sounded about as fun as spending a Sunday afternoon sitting rigid on a wooden bench and reading the book of Leviticus.

starting at the top: chakalaka, potato salad with green beans, lettuce salad,
grilled chicken, cucumber salad, pap, tomato and feta salad

But whatever.

We were finishing up our meal when the friends began to trickle in. At first I thought they were college students — they looked so young — but it didn’t take me long to figure out that these young adults were definitely not college students. Turns out, they were theologians, philosophers, and writers at Unisa, the University of South Africa (and, fun fact, the longest standing dedicated distance learning university in the world).

I’m not sure how to describe the next three-plus hours. How can I possibly convey the depth of academic insight, passion, and intensity that was in that room? These people knew their stuff. They had a comprehensive understanding of theology, politics, history, and philosophy, as well as a profound, gut-level awareness of how everything connected to each other. The whole time I felt like I was in the same room with a bunch of Steve Bikos, Mandelas, and Maya Angelous. I could hardly take a deep breath for fear I’d miss something. 

I don’t remember how the meeting started, exactly (and what follows is an inadequate and clumsy summary*), but I think one of them asked us how we were finding South Africa and if we had any questions for them. A woman in our group asked how they felt about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). “What did the TRC get right? What should it have done differently?” 

They all laughed — ooo, jumping right in there with a biggie, aren’t you! — and then said that the TRC didn’t end up hearing many of the stories because the TRC’s limiting guidelines (around who qualified as a victim) didn’t allow the depth of the problem to be exposed. 

“Let’s talk about your country,” said Obakeng, a philosophy scholar who was sitting to my left. “If you think about truth and reconciliation around the Trail of Tears, what does justice look like for you?”

His question was met with silence, and after a number of reframed questions, long pauses, and restarts, Obakeng turned to me and whispered, “Do people in the US know about the Trail of Tears?”

“Oh, yes,” I said, “but it’s not something that’s really talked about. Kids learn about it in school, like in the fifth grade or something, but then that’s it.” 

Obakeng nodded and then turned back to address the group. “There is so much silence in this room, so let’s study it. What makes it so difficult to respond to this question?” How interesting that these South Africans understood, and valued, our own country’s history better than we did, I thought. 

A good thing that the TRC did, one of the South Africans said, was that it allowed people to talk freely, even callously, about the horrors of apartheid. In the United States, on the other hand, there’s been nothing, no collective truth-telling structure, that openly names what happened and holds people and institutions accountable for the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow (in fact, to the contrary: we erect statues in honor of those oppressive leaders), so in the United States, we don’t even really know how to have this sort of conversation. Perhaps this was the reason for our group’s collective silence?

“You took all this trouble to come here,” one of the South Africans said, “so I’m curious. What did you expect to find?”

“Well, before I came here, I thought you had it all figured out,” said a woman from our group, laughing. “I was hoping you were gonna tell us how to solve racism so we could finally fix our problems!”

“We are here because we want to learn from you,” one of the guys in our group said.

“But why do you need to come here to learn about racism? Why spend all that money? Why don’t you already know what you need to do?”

“Sometimes a fish needs to swim in new water to better understand the water it normally swims in,” Andrew said. 

“There’s the issue of sentimental ethics,” said one of the South Africans. (Sentimental ethics, I have since learned, is the belief that morality is rooted in emotion.) “Feeling bad, or sympathizing with South Africa, is not enough. You need to go deeper. Because when you feel ‘sad’ about our situation, you are still wielding your epistemic power.” (People: this is the way they talked. At one point, I tried to write verbatim what Obakeng was saying just to capture a taste, but I only got two words down before I gave up and instead settled for capturing phrases like afro pessimism, hermeneutical cycle, the perspectival nature of being human. My brain was spinning.) 

“So what should we do?” asked one of the guys in our group. “How can we help? Tell us.”

“If you can’t articulate how to do better in your context,” said one of the women, “how can you ask us what we want to do? That’s a colonial mindset, asking Black people to be more vulnerable on behalf of the white people.”

I spoke up for the first time. “I’ve been thinking a lot about listening in recent months. I think listening can atually sometimes be a form of violence. When we tell the people who have a problem that we’re going to listen to them — when we expect them to make themselves vulnerable while we disclose nothing of ourselves — that’s a power move. Mennonites, I’ve been noticing recently, are quite good at weaponized listening. Me included — I do it a lot.” 

“Having a dialogue is more helpful than sending in an NGO to help,” said one of the South Africans. “We have some deep colonial wounds, so often the gesture [from white people] is the problem. We need to stay in the problem.” 

United Statesians: “But how does that help anything? Where are you going? How can I be in solidarity with you — how can I help you — if you won’t tell me where you want to go?”

“Staying in the problem doesn’t mean doing nothing,” someone (maybe Obakeng) said. “I think what we’re trying to describe to you is Gelassenheit, a yieldedness to the problems. We’re not looking for solutions, but rather the willingness to swim in the waters. The gesture to quickly act, help, or fix is the problem.

One of the friends of Iziko, a white South African professor and Dutch Reform Minister whose grandfather had been a counselor in the apartheid government, offered a question that he said would, perhaps, get to the heart of the confusion. But before he asked it, he admitted that his white skin and ancestory aligned him more closely to the white people in the room than the Black South Africans, so the question might seem strange coming from him. “I think what is being asked of you is perhaps very simple,” he said. “It’s a question for the present — for the now — and it’s this: How will you stop the killing?” 

Silence, again. 

And then another question from the South Africans: “Who are you when you say you’re the church? Mennonites have been in South Africa since 1978, so what does it mean to be companions to solidarity on the road to liberation?”

More silence. (There was a lot of tongue-tied silence.)

“I’m trying to think of a question that you can answer,” said Obakeng, always so gentle, so serious. “You are from the US and Canada, right? Let’s talk about your ancestors. Who were they? How were they involved in the formation of your countries?” 

Round and round the conversation went, the South Africans sharing their perspectives, debating with each other, and asking us pointed questions without ever, not once, succumbing to providing answers for us or alleviating the frustration and confusion that some of the people in our group expressed. 

Finally, Mzi named the four themes that had emerged — silence, white people’s opacity, yieldedness, and genealogy — and concluded the meeting. People milled around eating cake and drinking more wine, and Obakeng and I, plus a couple others, huddled in a corner for a follow-up conversation about religion and ancestry. And then the friends left and it was just us, reeling in the aftermath.

Later, I asked if Iziko has facilitated this sort of dialogue between these Black friends and white South Africans. The answer was no. Generally speaking, white South Africans are not ready for — or available, or open to — these sorts of dialogues. Which made me wonder: was our conversation feasible primarily because we are from different countries? Are whites and Blacks in the states having this sort of open dialogue?

I mentioned to Tany, a Canadian woman in my group, that I was blown away by the South Africans’ insight and passion. I don’t know of anything in my life that I am that passionate about, I said. I care about lots of things very deeply, of course, but their passion — the clarity with which they address these issues — is so much more raw and profound. Much more intense. 

“Maybe it’s because we’ve never had to fight for something as basic as our human rights?” Tany said. 

She’s right, I thought. Having one’s basic human rights collectively and systematically stripped away provides a clarity that I, as a member of the white race, had not ever experienced and might never fully comprehend. If I wanted to break with my inherited colonial mindset, then I’d have to proactively learn a new way of seeing the world.

So much of this trip, I was beginning to realize, was an unlearning. It was a stripping of my identity as a white person, an identity which I didn’t really understand or even claim. I felt bland in my whiteness. Powerful but meaningless. In contrast, the Black South Africans knew exactly who they were. They knew what their names meant, who their ancestors were, what they believed and thought and felt, and why. My whiteness, I realized, and all the power that went with it, had been handed to me — it’s who I am — yet I held it casually, almost flippantly. 

That evening was perhaps the richest time of the entire trip. That those people took time out of their full lives to come talk with us, some random white people from the United States who didn’t even know how to begin to have a conversation, struck me as nothing less than incredible.

What a gift. 

***

*Thanks to Keaton and Tany for sharing your notes/memories from Sunday afternoon.

This same time, years previous: jammy crumble cookies, perimenopause: Laura, age 48, introducing how we homeschool: a series, my new kitchen: the island, the quotidian (11.12.18), George Washington Carver sweet potato soup with peanut butter and ginger, I will never be good at sales, my apple lineup.

Even though apartheid ended a year after I graduated from high school so I was plenty old enough to comprehend it, I don’t think I knew much about it, only that it had to do with Blacks and whites living separately.

But in my world, Blacks and whites seemed mostly separate already (a reality that I assumed was by preference, not design), and since apartheid wasn’t slavery, I wasn’t sure what the problem was exactly. Apartheid was bad, I was told, but how? It didn’t make sense to me.

Constitution Hill: in a solitary cell, looking out

So here’s a question: for those of you who were alive during apartheid, what were you taught about it? How much did you understand?

***

Day Three
We headed to Sophiatown, a community in Jo’burg.

It used to be that Sophiatown (pronounced with a long ‘i’) was a mixed-race town, so vibrant and rich with writers, artists, and musicians that it was referred to as “the Chicago of South Africa.” But in 1954, the forced removals began. City officials arrived in the wee hours one morning, forced people from their beds, divided them according to race (Black, colored, Indian, and Chinese), and relocated them into separate communities from Sophiatown.

“Waiting for the Trucks”

In Meadowlands, a community in Soweto where the Black people were taken, the small houses were so identical that residents often got lost trying to find their way home. The forced removals took years to complete, and in the end the entire town was razed but for the Anglican church and the home of Huddleston, the English Anglican Bishop who deeply loved and supported the community. 

Huddleston: in Christ the King Church
^{photo credit: Betty Shenk}

As we toured Huddleston’s home, I couldn’t help but notice that it was the white man’s legacy we were learning about, and I found myself wondering what Nkosi would say about that. Sure enough, later Nkosi pointed out that everyone knows about Huddleston, “But what about all the Black community leaders? Why aren’t we hearing their stories? It’s not because there weren’t any — there were lots of Black leaders in Sophiatown.”

I’m not the only one asking this question.

Before Sophiatown was destroyed, the Anglican church boasted a glorious mural with Black angels, painted by one of the sisters.

But after the forced removals, the Dutch Reform church took over the building and painted over the walls.

A church white-washing its walls, quite literally. 

In 1997, the Anglicans bought the church back, and since then the mosaic was added, but the original mural is still buried beneath the white washing. For years, former Sophiatown residents would make the long trek back to this church for important events like marriages and funerals. This church was a touchstone for them, the one remainder of their former lives.

While we ate our lunch outside Huddleston’s home, Mbali Zwane, our tour guide, performed some of her poetry. Prior to reciting “I Confess,” she told us that when she was a little girl, she had been late for class one day. As penance, she was told to go to confession, but when she got there, she didn’t know what to confess. 

I thought about that poem a lot in the days that followed. “I Confess” wasn’t just about a little girl bewildered about what to apologize for, I realized. Rather, it was about something much deeper, much more insidious and troubling. Under apartheid, melanin-enriched skin was a crime. People, simply because of their skin color, were offensive, their very presense an afront. Just by existing, they were doing something wrong. They were wrong.

What is the impact of such lunacy on the human psyche?

How does a person confess that.

***

The Hector Pieterson Memorial tells the story of the June 16, 1976 student uprising in which hundreds of students marched to protest of the government ruling that Afrikaans (a form of Dutch and the language of the minority whites) be the medium of education. That day police opened fire on the children, killing 176 (and the death count rose in the days that followed). Hector was one of the first children to be killed. 

The museum courtyard was strewn with bricks, each with a name of one of the slain.

A quote from Hector’s older sister, Antoinette Sithole caught my eye. “When my brother was killed in the June 16 student uprising, he was just a 13 year old school boy. But this does not justify the heroism around him as a martyr… He was an ordinary child without glamour. Why the glamour around his death?” 

Later that evening when someone expressed awe-filled admiration for these children who were so brave, I shared Antoinette’s quote. “When we label people as heroes,” I said, “we distance ourselves from them. Pedestaling people is a form of self-preservation. They are special, they are different, so I don’t have to be like them.” 

“The hero story,” Steve added, “is propaganda, and the purpose of propaganda is to cover up the mess so you can’t see what’s actually real.” 

“I find it interesting that our current practice is to pin all our hopes on one hero,” noted Andrew, a theologian and one of our group leaders. “Just listen to our language: our political leaders are the people ‘in power.’ Our job is to vote. That’s it. That’s the extent of our power. Everything else is up to our hero leaders.”

“We are living in a filthy rotten environment with a vocation of detanglement,” said Steve, whose sentences were so jam-packed with truth that they often sounded poetic. “It’s our job to take a long, hard, loving look at what is real and then ask ourselves what is actually happening. There’s a reason that most people don’t do this: it’s hard.”

But remember the manbaby? The sleeper must* always wake up.

***

*Which isn’t totally true, I pointed out. Some people are really, really good at sleeping.
Naps are good, Steve said, laughing, so take naps, my friends, and then keep waking up.

This same time, years previous: my kids love motorcycles and this is how I feel about it, six fun things, unleashing the curls, the quotidian (11.10.14), mashed sweet potatoes.

Day Two
After our morning’s contextual Bible study, we loaded into the bus and drove to our first site of struggle: Constitution Hill and the adjacent Prison Complex.

While we waited for our tour guide, our leaders pointed to the walkway running along the side of the courthouse. “See those women over there? They have been camping out for the last year in protest of the reparations that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission promised but did not deliver. Two of the women died over the winter because of the cold.” Almost immediately, a couple people from our group wandered over to talk to them.

GBV = Gender-Based Violence

“What are they doing?” Pokie said, when she realized what was happening. “Why are they going over there?”

“Should we go get them?” someone offered.

“No,” she said, frowning. “They’re already there.”

Later when Pokie told them they should not have gone over, they asked, “But don’t they want us to talk to them? They’re making a public statement.”

“Yes, but why would they want to talk to you? How will you help them? Who is benefited by you talking to them? Those women are living their lives. Don’t interrupt them and making them tell their story to you. Why would you do that?”

This woman, I realized then, wasn’t going to coddle me. She was gonna make me think, and then rethink my thinking. Being around her made me feel nervous, and a little bit scared.

Also, excited.

***

In the prison complex, we meandered through the rooms that housed the male prisoners, both political and criminal. (When Mandela was held there, he was placed in the white section because they feared he’s start an uprising if they placed him in the Black section.)

Yes, that’s Ghandi in the photo. He served 4 terms in this prison, 7+ months in total.

We read the testimonies and looked at the devices used to beat and torture the prisoners. We saw the small row of outdoor toilets and listened to the tour guide describe the indignities of the strip searches: in front of everyone the men were required to jump into the air and spin to give everyone a clear view of their genitalia.

One of the notes that a visitor to the prison left on a cell wall.

The prison was equipped to house 900 people, but it usually had about 2000. The men were fed a sparse diet, and proportion size was based on race. They were allowed to wash their plates once every three months, and showers happened once a week, if that. Disease was rampant. 

In the back of the prison was the row of isolation cells.

Prisoners were held there for up to thirty days, and often fed a diet of rice water — water that had been used to wash the rice prior to cooking. 

From there, we crossed the patio to South Africa’s Constitutional Court. The building, which was inaugurated in 2004, was designed to specifically counter the atrocities of apartheid and is rich with symbolism, all of it pointing to openness, light, and accessibility, a government for all the people. 

^{photo credit: I’m not sure}

For example, on the outside of the building, the phrase “Constitutional Court” is written in the twelve national languages, one of which is sign language. Inside the spacious foyer, light floods in through huge floor-to-ceiling windows. Clusters of metal “leaves” stretch from pillars that list like giant tree trunks. Slits in the ceiling allow natural light to filter down. Benches, and wooden “stumps” are arranged in clusters. At the entrance to the courtroom, there’s a sign listing all the upcoming cases, open to the public, and a TV mounted on the floyer wall plays when the court is in session so that anyone may watch. In the corner of the foyer, one of the former prison guard towers remains, built into the building as a reminder of what had been at that location before. 

The interior of the courthouse is visible from the street through a low window that stretches the length of the room. (When I went back outside, I crouched down to peer through, to double check that it wasn’t tinted glass. It wasn’t.)

^{photo credit: I’m not sure}

Nguni cow hides, a symbolism of equality and a sign of royalty, line the front of the bench where the judges sit. A portion of the walls are made from brick that was taken from the prison’s demolished guard towers.* Our guide told us that participants in the court system are referred to as “applicants” and “respondents” (as opposed to plaintiff and defendant), and that this was the first court in Africa to vote in favor of pro-choice and equal marriage rights.

Afterward, I walked down the long interior hallway.

On one side was an art gallery, and on the other side were large windows that looked out over the protesting women’s encampment. There was one picture in particular caught my eye: a giant naked manbaby, sleeping.

^{photo credit: Tany Warkentin}

The label read: “The struggle by many white South Africans to face up to the exploitation and abuse of Africa and its people is explored. Sleeping, in Kentridge’s work, is a metaphor for a state of ignorance, a return to the imaginary, which conveniently allows the external world to be forgotten. However, the sleeper must always wake up.”

***

And then, back into the bus for the 30-45 minute drive to Soweto, a large suburb that was first started in the late 1920s to house the migrant gold mine workers.

I sat with Pokie, and while we munched our packed lunches of wraps, fruit, chips, and juice (which I spilled all over my pants), she told me about growing up in Soweto (also from Soweto: Trevor Noah) and living with her grandparents during the week while her parents worked. She pointed out her grandparents’ house and the elementary school she attended, as well as the two landmark cooling towers from which daredevils can bungee jump, which is something she said wants to do someday, crazy lady. 

The now-defunct Soweto power plant (to the left of the towers) provided power to Jo’burg, not Soweto. Soweto didn’t get electricity until the 1970s (I think).

There is one road into Soweto, and there is a military base at the start of it — if there was an uprising in Soweto, the police barricade the street to contain the unrest.  

the military base

When we arrived in Kliptown, an informal settlement within Soweto, George Ranaka, our tour guide, greeted us and then led us into the Freedom Charter Memorial.

^{photo credit: again, not sure}

Inside the concrete tower, he explained each of the ten clauses inscribed in a huge concrete table. These clauses had been drafted by the South African Congress Alliance in 1955, and as George explained them — equal human rights for all, the people will share in the country’s wealth, the people will govern, work and security for all, etc, etc — I found myself wondering how he could speak without sarcasm, without rancor. Did he not see the irony?

When George finished, three young men entered the memorial to sing for us. “Young people don’t have many ways to earn money here,” George said, “so they get creative.” 

The first clip of the medley is “Asimbonanaga” by Johnny Clegg and Savuka, a tribute to Mandela.
Singers: Lehlohonolo Mei, Mmeli Thanduxolo Dlamini, Zenande Emmanuel Marcus

George led us out of the memorial, across a road, and up on a bridge that overlooked Kliptown.

^{photo credit: Arloa Bontrager}

As a 40-year resident of Kliptown (he moved there when he was two), George knew well the complicated logistics of getting medical attention, the annual flooding that resulted from being situated in the marshlands, the overcrowded housing and sanitation issues. He told us about the children’s program he works for, and how they provide food to dozens (hundreds?) of children, as well as educational and emotional support. “We have the Freedom Charter,” he said, “but this is our reality.” 

***

On the bus out of Kliptown, I asked Pokie how the South African people, in the face of such extreme poverty and racial injustice, keep from being bitter? How does it not eat them up inside? Emotionally speaking, how do they manage it all?

“We have this word: ubuntu,” Pokie said. “Ubuntu means generosity or hospitality. It’s how we approach each other, with an attitude that says ‘your needs are as important as mine.’”

Her answer didn’t really get at my question, at least not in the way I was thinking about it. Maybe we were missing each other — a communication sideswipe — or maybe she did answer my question and I just wasn’t yet able to fully understand it yet? 

This happened to me a lot in South Africa: I would kinda understand, but not really. More often than not, I tried to keep my mouth shut in those moments. “Just sit with it,” I’d coach my ever-impatient self. “You don’t have to understand everything right away. Learning happens in layers. Give it time.”

***

Stopping at a street market on our way to supper, I met some other touristy-looking folks. When the older gentleman asked me where we were from, I told him and then asked him where they were from. The older couple was local, it turned out, but they’d met the three young adults who were with them on Facebook — they were from Kenya. One of the young women was a YouTuber(!), and her channel is all about road-tripping through Africa.

And then Pokie joined the conversation. Within seconds, she and the Kenyans were deep into a foodie debate — Pokie accused them of undersalting their food, they criticized South African coffee, etc, etc. — and then they were exchanging numbers. Pokie would be heading up to Kenya next year, so they’d reconnect then.

Later I asked Pokie if that sort of thing happens often.

“What sort of thing?” she said. 

“Meeting strangers on the street, exchanging contact information, and then actually getting together with them?”

“Oh, that,” she said. “Yes.”

***

We ate supper at Sakhumzi, an all-you-can-eat buffet chock-full of all the South African classics. The first time I went through the line, I got the basics: beef, chicken, pap (cornmeal mush), veggies, steamed bread, etc.

The second time, I got brave: tripe (intestines) and pig knuckles.

tripe on the top left; knuckles on the right

The tripe tasted fine, but I found the soft-cartilage texture a bit . . . tricky. As for the pig knuckles, they had good flavor but were mostly fat. At least I tried them!

***

Steve, who had flown in from Cape Town earlier in the day, was in charge of our evening debriefing.

Steve and Nkosi in Kliptown.

Some snippets of our conversation…
“The work of resistance,” Steve said, “is the deconstruction of civility.” Because who gets to say who is civil and who’s not?

“But I recently read that Margaret Mead said that the first sign of civility was the discovery of a broken femur that had been healed,” someone countered. “It seems to me that civility is a good thing.”

But is it? The mission to civilize has destroyed civilizations, someone else pointed out. And what’s the difference between modernity and civility? Or development and civility? All of these “good” words we use, Steve argued, words like develop and civilize and modern, are colonizer language, rooted in a colonial mindset, and deeply problematic.

“Civil society” is government in society, Steve said. In South Africa’s case, it’s the white people, the colonizers, who have decided who is civil and who is not. We decide whether or not we will negotiate with someone based on if they are sufficiently civil according to our standards, our white colonizer standards. 

“I am not represented here,” Nkosi said, flailing his arms wide. By “here,” I gathered that he was implying everything in our physical setting — the buildings, the infrastructure, the educational system, the whole structure of South African society, all of which had been built by the white colonialists. “This is my country and yet I am alienated everywhere I go.”

Round and round the conversation went. Turns out, it’s pretty hard to see our “good” language from a different perspective — a colonizer perspective. 

“We don’t need answers,” Steve said, “and there aren’t any. What we need is better questions, and then more better questions. Refusing answers is the work of solidarity. This is the work that pushes us through life. It’s okay to sit in discomfort, to marinate in the pain.”

^{photo credit: I’m not sure}

“Allow the haunting.”

***

*About those recycled bricks: skeptical-minded me couldn’t help but wonder if, while those bricks were meant to symbolize a memory of what had been, might they also symbolize that the old practices were still present, baked into the new government? Nothing is ever clear-cut, I don’t think. Nothing is pure.

This same time, years previous: guest post: Friday is cleaning day, the quotidian (11.9.20), of mice and men and other matters, maple roasted squash, pumpkin cranberry cream cheese muffins, let me sum up.