+++ title = “10” date = 2020 +++ I was at my parents’ house earlier, on their deck, eating brunch with my family. I haven’t been inside their house, the one I grew up in, since early March. At one point I pressed my face up to the screen door to look inside. I smelled the same house smell that I had grown up with, the cleaner from the floor, the air freshener, the smell of the furniture.

+++ title = “10” date = 2020 +++ There are certain inflections, certain tones that a person uses when they say certain phrases. I enjoy these when I hear them. The slang phrases people use and the perfectly predictable intonation and cadence they use while saying them. I want to tell them how much I appreciate this about them, but it’s a bit like popping a soap bubble: the act of pointing it out causes consciousness, and along with consciousness comes the tendency to self-edit.

Here is a continuum in which you have business (busy-ness) on one side and stillness on the other. For so long, I was focused on the business part, and from looking at my various media feeds, it seems that the algorithms want to feed me this content as well. But on the other hand, I crave stillness too. Of course I do, because too much busy-ness can become overwhelming. Perhaps a good life goal is not to be productive all the time, or to hustle our way to freedom, whatever that means.

I’ve spoken to a number of friends in the last few weeks, and I’ve asked all of them what they are doing to address racial injustice. Sometimes I just bring it up, other times it comes up naturally. I do not ask in an accusatory way. It’s good to know different ways people are coping with the ongoing tragedy of the unnecessary and unjustified loss of black lives. The most common response I’ve gotten so far is voting.

After one of the many stories of horrific police brutality against black people, I was on a business trip in Boston interacting with someone I barely knew. “After this happened, I asked my boss if he thought I was racist,” he told me. “He told me I don’t have a racist bone inside my body.” I’ve heard this before. The not a racist bone argument, which absolves the person saying it of all potential racism.