I can't believe Breonna Taylor's killers are going to walk free.
I mean, I can believe it, in the sense that racism is real and cops are killers and they're killers because they kill and get away with it in this country.
But it's just...hard to grasp that after all we've been through, these United States, in 2020, a group of people could decide it's just fine to charge into the home of one of their fellow citizens and murder them, so long as the murderers are wearing badges.
It's also hard for me to wrap my head around the President of the United States saying for months that the only election he could lose is a fraudulent one, and there's no howls of indignation from his side of the aisle. No Senators lining up to condemn his words and ask that the House open a new impeachment investigation.
Nothing. Not a fucking peep.
Meanwhile in my state, in supposedly progressive California, we still use inmates as firefighters, paying them perhaps a dollar a day, which is slave labor by any other name. And once they've served their time, if they happened to have been born somewhere else, we hand them over to ICE for deportation.
Oh, and there's still a pandemic on, so walking around outside to enjoy the air newly-cleared of smoke and ash means constantly dodging people who aren't wearing masks.
So it's all I can do right now, when I'm not doomscrolling, to keep editing the novel. One chapter at a time.
I feel like I should be making more progress. Editing more than one chapter a day. Maybe even racing to the finish line.
Or picking up the story I was outlining a few months ago, and starting to actually put words to paper.
But I can't.
I just...can't.
The writing spirit is very willing, but the writing flesh, the meaty brain and hands that would summon words from the void, are quite busy right now.
So I press on, one chapter at a time. I'm not stopping, but I'm not able to move any faster right now.
Because this book's become even more important to me, lately.
It's about prisons. It's about all the different kinds of people that get locked up, and why. It's about exploitation, and greed, and how it's all kept going by the people that look the other way. The ones that hold their noses so they can benefit.
It's also about forgiveness, and change. About making yourself vulnerable again, after holding onto a hurt for so long.
I want to finish it. I need to finish, to have this story told. To share it.
There's not much else I can do, so I'm doing this.
Voting. Donating. Speaking up.
And writing.
