Then This is the Year

oh, i've made it, i've made it! 2007 is finally behind me. and even though there's a long road ahead of me, i feel better than i have in years. i remember sitting up late one night with Adam, probably in late 2005 (the "golden year"). the world seemed like it was positively exploding with possibility then, and we were swimming in the joy of new found friendship and ALL CITY, a new popular education organization on campus. but that night we talked about something else, the feeling that a difficult time was coming. the memory of those words is clear in my mind. we knew that what we had gained in the past two year or so would be put to the test.

for the next two years life came at the ALL CITY fam fast and hard. organizationally we fell apart, emotionally we were stretched thin. friendships were tested, some breaking, some strengthening, others warped out of shape by all the pressure that we radicals place on the few loving relationships. some of us moved, all of us were in motion. on all of our minds were questions about what to do with our lives, what kind of people we wanted to be, and how to escape the constraints that were suffocating us.

2007 has been the most intense and difficult year of my life (as far as i can remember). i broke up with the first man i had loved and been in an intimate relationship with, i left new york city and came to raleigh, and i lost one of my best friends. this whole year my emotions have been in high gear, violently fluctuating from ecstatic joy to morbid depression. i've never had a year where i had so many breakthroughs and so many breakdowns. 2007 took the unpackaged experiences of homelessness, dropping out of school, and being broke that had begun to fester in 2006 and exploded them. i lived 2007 in a cyclone of furious emotion.

through the entire process i was relentlessly forced to choose between my radical politics/imagination and an attitude of political cynicism and despair. this wasn't simply a choice between available options, it often meant building radical options where despair seemed like the only thing possible. somethin out of nothin, as they say.

but of course, it wasn't out of nothing. it was built from the love of my community. it was built from the conviction that i gained from experiencing profound change with others. it was built from the memory of the "impossible" obstacles that we have already overcome (don't forget them!). from the faith in the irrepressable tenacity of the human spirit.

it's been a struggle, but as the new year opens i am more clear about who i am and where i'm going. and this isn't divorced from a clearer understanding of the political possibilities and strategies of our times. the process of authentic self-discovery is inextricable from the process of social analysis. as i've clarified what it means to be authentically myself, i've deepened my convictions about what justice and dignity mean.

my explorations of queer politics, the (regional) geography of race, feminist materialism, US history, economics, and participatory democracy (phew!) has sharpened my understanding of the possibilities of revolution in this country. wanna know more? come visit me in n carolina. can't come to the South? well stay tuned. the dispatches will only get better from here forward.

If the abolition of slave-manacles
began as a vision of hands without manacles,
then this is the year;
-from "Imagine the Angels of Bread,"

over and out,
Don Petro de Vagabundencia