rwd fwd
notes diaryland
random! older
current

state sanctioned and defined violence

14 April 2021
1:26 pm

I've been avoiding Diaryland. Not just like, not coming here, but avoiding. I don't know why, don't ask me. If you know why, you can tell me, but I don't have any answers. I'm occasionally journaling elsewhere, but when I was writing more here, I was writing more there, so I don't know.

I don't have any answers.

I wanted to come write in the last couple of days, but... I didn't. I'm just so tired. I'm not tired. I'm sad.

I cry all the time anyway. I mean, I am capable of crying all the time. If something is happy or sad, if I am saying a sentence with any feeling in it, if I simply *remember* a feeling or a time when someone liked something... crying is easy. But the last few days have had a run of one outburst or another, and it makes me tired.

Why am I writing now? My thoughts are tired. I don't have the fire behind the poem I imagined I was reading at 6 am when I couldn't sleep the other night. I don't have anything to say. I have the half breath of a poem about the roaring twenties: alexa, am i under curfew

hilarious

I have the memory of saying, "Well, I guess I should check in on trial news now that I'm awake," and Dan warning me I would find new news. The crying, and the crying. Courtroom live tweets. Why is a stun gun remotely like a regular gun. Why is a gun. The memory of my own arrest. Another pointless, useless death. Sympathy for a person, not a position, that no one wants to hear and could very well be unwarranted, but I can't stop that, that's who I am. I avoided last year's video until the first day of the trial, and for SOME REASON decided to finally watch the whole thing. To bear witness. Could I be on a jury? My own arrest. I've joked that I "lightly resisted," which is still an accurate description, but there's no humor in it. There never was. It was only to lessen the idea that I thought my experience was comparable for my own edification. But it is. It can be compared. It's one of the experiences in my life that I've been able to look at and say, hey... things could have been much different in that situation. I didn't understand what was happening. I didn't know I had a warrant. I was confused when they told me I had to go with them. I was scared. I panicked. I put my hands up and moved away. I wasn't going anywhere, but I was in freeze and flight mode at the same time, and I moved away. One officer started to move toward me, and the other. one. stopped. him. "Give her a minute." Give me a minute? Let me collect myself?? Eventually they collected me anyway. I had a very weird emotional breakdown in the back of a police car and an annoying six hours overnight in the equivalent of a waiting room.

I was afraid to go with the police. I didn't know I had a warrant because, preoccupied with a strange and emotional summer, I'd forgotten to follow up with the legal system in time. "Give her a minute."

I may have said these things before. I don't care. I'm just trying to stop crying. Not that this is helping.

One time a cop apologized to me that he couldn't let me go more than he already was. This is all when I lived in Florida, mind you, because somehow I had "better" experiences with the police in Florida than I have in Minneapolis, where I had my car impounded after being pulled over while coming out of my driveway - literally feet away - because my license was *revoked* after I hadn't paid a ticket in time (this was shortly after I'd gotten here and I didn't know rules were different) - a ticket I received on the 4th of July when I was pulled over and informed that, though it was seen I was not driving under any influence, the tint on my mostly rolled down windows was too dark. Cool. Tight.

Anyway, the cop in Florida apologized to me after a truly insane situation. I didn't have insurance. I don't remember why I was pulled over. My tags might have been expired. When I told him we might have trouble because I didn't have insurance, the guy I was with (also white) told me he would be going to jail. I pulled into a parking lot and the polices came to talk with us. He gave them a different name - I didn't know him well, but that wasn't his name - and he said he didn't have his ID on him... so he gave them a DL number or a social security number, I think. They went to their car. They came back to us and asked us to get out of the car. They chided him, said if he was going to give them false information, he should not use the info of someone in jail in Connecticut. It was clear that I had no idea about any of this. They had to take the plates from my car because they'd run them through the system. The cop apologized that this was the case. He said someone could come pick us up. He said the car would be left here, not impounded, and more or less implied that I should be careful, but just come get it later. That is, TO DRIVE IT WITHOUT PLATES.

I'm sure I said all of this last year, but I don't care. Florida is lawless and Minneapolis is segregated and I don't feel guilt, I feel rage. I feel my own rage. My mind is warped and my back is crooked and I twisted my knee and I only have little bits of money to throw at local organizations, so all I can do is throw pennies and rage and cry and count the beads on an imaginary rosary I don't believe in.

And say completely undercut things like, "This is stupid. This is all so stupid." because language has left me

so let's not even touch upon what I was pondering last week: how to reconcile wanting someone to be punished to the fullest extent, while believing the prison system is fundamentally garbage

cool cool cool. tight.