Notes on the Last Few Weeks, May Day 2019

This will be very random.

Ironically, I’ve spent most of these past few weeks wondering how I’d write about self-censorship. The inspirations for this project were the sudden death of a cousin and the arson of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Writing my remembrance of the cousin might get the attention of extended family with whom I would rather avoid conflict. The business with Notre Dame has already disappeared from the media, and will therefore soon vanish from relevant discourse. Also, this involves sensitive matters of religion, culture, and the death of one major belief system at the hands of another. Here, complete strangers will be calling me bad names and wishing ill upon me. 

And those are the opening acts.

Another problem is in deciding how to illustrate these posts. Here, I’m just giving up and showing some photos I took in western Alamosa County ten days ago.

I’ve been throwing down notes on the murder of a couple of classmates over 40 years ago and contemplating how I’d get the whole mess pass the surviving classmates I’m connected with on Facebook. Although I do like a couple of them, I was the outsider at school and, as I’ve since learned to my dismay, that seems to have carried over 40 years down the line. If I can avoid these people altogether, let alone on an issue they would be very sensitive to, that would be ideal.

Also, class antagonism! Not something a lot of audiences are comfortable acknowledging, let alone reading about. It’s something I need to get out of my system, though. So I’ll write it and figure out what to do with it later. Leaving it in a folder until someone discovers it after I die is an option. There’s a growing chorus of voices in my head, however, that says pull the pin and throw that grenade. I don’t owe these people anything. 

What’s sad and cowardly about all this is I’m avoiding conflict for the sake of avoiding conflict, not because I actually care what these people think. (Ironically, the people at my old school remember me as being precisely the opposite in temperament. Of course, what creeps me out about some of them is how they still sound the same at age 50-something as they did at 15.) I’ll own my cowardice and write and print around the people I don’t want to deal with. If I get discovered, I’ll simply dodge, block, whatever.

Besides, these are great stories. It would be a shame to waste them. So I won’t.

Why anyone would brand their gardening supply stuff “Black Ops” is beyond me, but here we are. In the background is Blanca Massif, one of the four mountains holy to the Navajo.