May 13, 2022
Treading Land, Treading Water
I was having a mildly dreary sort of week. And he is quiet, in a period of occasional dead air, radio silence. I still miss him.
I miss him terribly, in a way that feels tired and threadbare. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him, and a part of me feels as though I’ve been a lone castaway afloat on the ocean for months, enduring the elements. He hasn’t said anything for a while- and not much for a while before that, except one or two tiny coded clues (that I may just be inventing). He goes quiet sometimes. With that query he posted relatively recently, it’s all very mysterious.
I’ve been alone out here the whole time, and now I’ve lost my beautiful pea-green boat. Clinging to a section of its pea-green hull, I’m treading water and hoping I might see a sign of my lost Owl. But I also know I might never see him again.
So I was already having the mildly dreary week…and then Wednesday, fucked up shit breaks out at the library, and a distinctly coked-up-acting white guy suddenly gets obsessed with the perceived disrespect of a young black teenager who is stretched out in a library chair quietly minding his own business. He seems to be angry that the kid may have been asleep. He won’t leave it alone, staff assure him we will take care of any problems and to please let us handle things. He’s seen monitoring the kid and the kid’s mother, who he got in a brief shouting match with earlier, from a distance. Someone decides to call the police. But still, there’s no reason we can claim to ask him to leave this public place- we don’t really get the right to refuse service unless someone violates the conduct code, and this guy did not.….up until a police officer approached him… then he began shouting and took the police officer straight to the ground with him in a violent outburst. The officer, I guess, thought he wouldn’t need help from the other officer that came along, but he used some signal device while grappling to get handcuffs on the aggressor, and backup arrived quickly. The guy was conveyed out, shouting and resisting. Staff were all worried and freaked out, and still are. Everyone wishes we had some sort of security guard, which we have requested many times.
As you know, I’ve dealt with this sort of shit before, most recently a few months ago, last year, when a man propositioned a young female staff member as she waited for her ride at the library’s front door, then when she refused him, he punched her hard in the face and took off on foot.
I was depressed after that episode, and depressed after this one.
I love you so much. I don’t know if you believe that I do, but I do.
