"To feel so alienated in the culture of my birth suffocates differently. [...]
Somehow, I betrayed myself: Having approval from the government allowed me to believe in that approval, to find a sense of safety in it, so that now, when it is being taken away, the loss hurts and I am resentful and afraid. No wonder I pass for CIA: a true believer in my country’s say-so, eager for a hug from the State Department.
By the last police checkpoint, I began to consider whether anything taken from me so easily was ever mine in the first place. Whether one should pragmatically navigate bureaucratic documentation for reasons of safety but refuse to believe in it — whether denied or, especially, when granted. My state of being, or anyone else’s, isn’t really a question of what’s in the little blue book. It’s everything outside it: the nations and genders of birth that seek to follow wherever we go. I had planned an escape, but there is no escape — except for what we reject in our minds and create with one another.
last night on the train home from work, a quiet friday-evening mostly-empty train in the dark winter night, i started reading marguerite duras' 'the war' -- the title given to the english translation of 'la doleur', a collection of texts that are about her experiences in france during and after nazi occupation, beginning with an account of the repatriation of her husband, who survived dachau and wrote a book of his own about it. in the book she's petrified with grief and fear and love for him, with an intensity that is reflected in the chaos convulsing the world around her -- saying that she's living only to wait for him and that she'll die when he returns. (apparently they divorced amicably once he had regained his physical health.) she says people died in the camps after germany's surrender because the gaullist government prevented the resistance movement from participating in the liberation, because it would have undermined their authority. her husband only survived because people were looking for him and waiting for him and had money to care for him, so it's impossible not to think about all the others. it is hard to read. i thought about the AIDS generation here, people who are not remembered because their families cast them out and all their friends and lovers died. i had forgotten my phone at home and when i got back i opened up social media and saw steve bannon doing a nazi salute at cpac. his eager smile and gooey nod, childishly delighted with the audience's approval. i can't share a planet with these people. i don't have any dignity as long as these people are on podiums.
reading about post-WWII europe reminds me of the stories of migrants today, the people europe and the US are salivating to terrorize and incarcerate, to collaborate with violent regimes in brutalizing - the ways hospitality is offered and denied based on status, how the wealthy sit on piles of violence everywhere, how borders exist to keep victims in their reach.
today i'm too tired to get out of bed.