Physics for Poets

All you’re really doing is speaking and giving someone money.

It’s legal to speak.

It’s legal to give someone money.

Even if they actually complete the job, you’re not the one who committed the murder.

So why is it illegal to hire a hit man?

Could it be because inciting violence is not protected under free speech?

We aren’t lacking in landfill space. The shirt in the back of your closet that you never ever wear is exactly as bad for the environment in the back of your closet as it is in landfill; storing it is just delaying the point in time at which it’ll start to break down. If I buy something in a plastic bottle, and then repurpose that plastic bottle into a garden pot or something… that garden pot is still gonna go to landfill eventually. I haven’t saved anything. The plastic was landfill as soon as it was manufactured. That shirt was landfill (unless you choose to burn it, which isn’t environmentally any better) the moment the fabric was produced.

The critical point when it comes to making a difference with recycling isn’t before stuff hits landfill; it’s before the stuff is produced in the first place. “Reduce, reuse, recycle” only works because ‘reuse’ and ‘recycle’ are strategies to feed into ‘reduce’. Recycling glass bottles or aluminium cans is useful only because it reduces the amount of new glass and aluminium being produced (note: most of the plastic bottles you recycle go straight to landfill in other countries). Recycling fabric is useful only if it prevents the purchase of new fabric, and thus on a large scale, the production of new fabric.

For example, let’s say my pants are threadbare beyond repair, and I cut them up for dusters. Important question: do I use dusters? Do I need this many dusters? Is this, in short, an act that is stopping me from buying dusters made from newly manufactured material? If it’s not, then it’s not doing anything at all to help the environment. That same amount of fabric is still going to landfill. (That’s not a reason not to do it, it just doesn’t help the environment at all.)

Another example: I tend to cut up old clothes and pick up fabric that’s going to be thrown out a lot, to make bags and wall hangings and rugs and things. I recycle a LOT of fabric. Is this helping the environment? For some people doing this, it probably is, because they’re making stuff they’d otherwise buy. But for me, it’s doing nothing whatsoever for the environment. If I wasn’t making cushions and wall hangings, I wouldn’t be buying any. I just wouldn’t own any cushions or wall hangings. They’re fun to make, they brighten the place up, but they don’t affect my consumption (and therefore the incentive for cushions and wall hanging to be produced) at all; I’m buying zero of those things either way. Is this recycling? Yes. Does it have any effect whatsoever on helping the environment? No. It’s just delaying the amount of time before that exact same fabric ends becomes rubbish.

Same is true of the aformentioned plastic bottles into garden pots. That plastic is going into landfill whether you recycle it first or not. The question is, did repurposing it stop you from having to buy plastic garden pots? Will the cumulative effect of people doing this lower the amount of plastic garden pots being produced? Will that lower the amount of plastic being produced?

I wanna expand on that for a moment. I’ve talked to a lot of trauma survivors about their backgrounds. And two things that are damn near universally true?

even recounting our abuse to our dad we are told we are remembering it wrong or being dramatic. so yeah, it was only in college and more accessible internet where i found that my life was fucked up. didn’t help that my dad would say if you didn’t have physical symptoms, you weren’t sick. so we had a whole childhood of having to prove our pain and trauma and be told it wasn’t real 

i am still working on my trauma. it is hard and a long uphill journey especially when your abuser is now ill and needs help when you know that they never have helped you when you sick as a child 

the blissey that charged in from 5 miles away and broke into my house:

That’s how I feel on a daily basis

I don’t think I CAN do anything except keep doing what I’m doing. Keep myself alive. Make stuff that helps other people be happy. Encourage activism and change. Plant flowers. I have to focus small. There ISN’T anything I can do against the big pharmaceutical companies causing millions of deaths from covid (among thousands of other medical ailments) because they refuse to release the patents on lifesaving medicine. I can’t do anything about it I literally can’t

All I can do is fucking write stories and posts and run stupid little dragon RPGs and plant flowers and hope. But if it helps other people too, what I’m doing, then it’s worth it.

I am very small. I need to remember that and not try to pick a fight with an enemy that’s much bigger than me. It’s not selfish to say it’s probably for the best if I just focus on my life and immediate vicinity. It’s realistic and I think I can do more good this way.

There’s a lot of pressure to like, fight for every problem ever but I think I need to remember I can’t do that and I shouldn’t do that and I need to limit myself to what I CAN do

Idk, it’s clear a few other folks were also Feelin’ This. I guess we all have to scale down. It feels gross because like… Obviously I care about shit that’s happening, but I literally cannot deal with emotionally and intellectually engaging with all the awful news I’m bombarded with.

Sweet Dreams - Rora Blue

2020.

Wouldn’t it?

Blacklivesmatter.carrd.co

Now try imagining how hard it is irl for Black mothers, and Black people in general. Each encounter with the police could end with our death, even if we did absolutely nothing wrong.

I think most of us deal with it—bc let’s face it, we have no other choice—but I’d be lying if I said that every single time I come into close proximity to the police, somewhere in the back of my mind there wasn’t always the thought: “what if …”

“what if today is the day” … “what if this cop had a bad morning” … “what if this cop doesn’t like black people” … “what if he thinks my phone is a gun” … “what if he thinks I’m acting suspicious” … “what if he needs to fill a quota” … “what if he mistakes me for some nondescript black man but I fit the description anyway” … “what if my car insurance payment didn’t go through and I don’t know about it” … “what if I have a taillight out” …. “what if he thinks I have a bad attitude” … “what if it was a rough day for me and I do have a bad attitude” … “what if there’s not even any cops around but a white person thinks I look out of place” … what if what if what if

Obviously I cannot speak for everyone who is Black, but these thoughts flash through my mind every single time I see a cop. Every time. Maybe it only takes a microsecond, but it’s always there. Always.

LOL. I know we may make it look easy. But yeah, it’s still there.

And even though I’m very healthy and I manage to … adapt(?) to those fears, I figure that kind of constant on/off stress has gotta be taking some kind of toll on me, right? On Black people in general. It’s like perpetually unexpected games of Russian roulette. Or maybe like the Spanish Inquisition. (No one ever expects it).

Sometimes I wonder if white people understand the constant extra calculations that Black people are doing continuously as we’re out and about. Calculations for any contingency encounter with the police. Or with some white person who might call the police because they’ve mistaken my melancholy mood for “suspicious” behavior. Calculations that white people don’t ever need to do. At least, not because of simply being in the general proximity of the police.