Notes on the Moment (02 Feb 2025)

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Notes on the moment feb 2025

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Hello. I have like… the tail end of a rooibos blend that’s cold now. It’s the middle of the night in Sierra Leone, there’s a small and lovely gecko in my room with me keeping very unrepentant company with me, and I do relish that this teeny being does not fear me. I killed a beetle last night in my sleep because it fell on my face and I reacted immediately, and I am still sad about it today. I want to consider life sacred, even when I am frightened and don’t understand.

I have for us a quarry of thoughtless ponderments of sorts— which, if you’re new: when I started journaling at an almost-fourteen, I had all these little rhythms and rituals I made up to… I don’t know? Treat my journal like a holy place? Like something set apart and sacred. To keep me entertained enough to journal (I did not spend time on electronic devices for fun in that era of life). So, among personal holidays (that I still observe) and recurring inside jokes (party of one), one of those rituals is called A Quarry of Thoughtless Ponderments, which is exactly as titled. AQoTP functioned as like… me digging in the mines (the quarry) of my mind, for nothing in particular. I simply wrote down, in a bullet-pointed list, every thought that had occurred twice in 24hrs, or had occurred once and annoyingly stuck around. Sometimes they would thread together, sometimes they would not; each time, I experienced a lot of relief no longer having thoughts rolling around, untethered, making the sound that loose marbles do when they’re rolling about a big steel vase.

Occasionally, I would go to write down AQoTP and then realize quickly that these ponderments were not thoughtless at all. Thoughtless ponderments are about homework and my social life and what’s for dinner; the moment I start to write, I think the civil war I have always feared nears ever closer... that’s an entry that needs a title. Big brained thoughts are occurring. Hence,

Notes on the Moment (from 02 Feb 2025)

• In a twist of fate, there is now a baby on my lap. Everyone say good evening, Fredricka. There is such a joy in being amongst my family units (even when it is sometimes loud and frustrating to my very American Here are some of her midnight musings to start us off.

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• Phenomenal. A star! I believe that children are our future.
• Someone asked me recently how likely I believe a civil war is in the United States. I think it’s the chosen path that we’ve been set on by the war-makers, I mean the world-makers.
• War is simply too profitable to say no to, and we are entering into another wealth grab. Disclaimer: I, an English major, am not an authority on the economic systems we have in play. I, a former stripper, see the parallels between the micro-system of the club and the macro-systems found in geopolitical areas. In the club, there comes a time each night when the fish start biting. It comes in waves and usually starts around 10pm, but that varies depending on the day of the week and on the crowd present. Sedentary men don’t buy champagne rooms, they buy wings. So, you add some agitation: someone buys a bottle with their club-invite discount, the DJ plays a particular turn-up song, a girl undeniably kills it on stage (and, might I add: it’s so sad being the first girl to show out on stage. You set the bar and the mood but are rarely financially rewarded in the moment). Sometimes, the agitation is spontaneous, bigger: like a fight, or a deal made, or a goal scored on the Big Sports Game, or blue-band hundreds raining from the ceiling. The best nights have a mix of planned and surprise elements for movement— but whatever the case, there’s a shaking of the fish bowl. There’s a tapping on the glass. You can catch it if you’re looking, and if you know what you’re fishing for. After enough agitation, people become… willing to spend $2,000 per hour on a very fancy room with glass doors. Agitation allows space for movement and coins tossed up in the air for a wealth grab.
  • Now extrapolate to nation states, or empires: feeding time necessitates a bit of chaos. There’s a lot of money to be made and traded when everything is up for grabs. So the system of capitalism is designed to crash— every single individual market is set up with that Yahtzee moment in mind: from the housing market to the food market or the stock market. All of these things are designed to crash. You know what’s a great way to get stagnant capital (fiat currency, land, natural resources, manpower, media making, belief) into motion?Agitation. Get people real, real uncomfortable. Push long-standing dynamics. Remind people nothing is safe, nothing is sacred. In this world-making, note two things: (1) the fastest and most profitable way to move shit along as a capitalist with a bit of world-making money is war. War feeds (and sometimes reinvents) the machine. And (2) the people that made this world up know that they made it up. They know they made it up! They teach the insider rules to their successors. They know it’s a game. They have no problem playing with our lives; would you? It’s just Yahtzee. Two more subnotes:
    • I don’t use “world-making” just for shits and giggles or to sound cool. I write it out every time I want to say something like this world, or the world, because the use of that suffix (-making) reminds me that this world is made up. That there is nothing inevitable about the circumstances that we have chosen. These rules are made up and, by our mass participation, we are all choosing to play.
    • The United States is following the same playbook that Sierra Leone (and many other countries) did when setting the stage for war. Gut public services and prepare to get out quick. Set your succession plan up early. The parallels between Buchanan + Biden, Trump + Siaka Stevens… I would love to be wrong. I would delight in being wrong! I do not think I am wrong. Entirely separate essay.

• I lied, one more subnote: two theses from my text spring to mind. (1) Poverty is always the backdrop for war and (2) There are a great many kinds of war-making (not just bombs and bullets and artillery). Meaning: there is as much war in policy-making as there is in a bullet. What do you think is the better death? Die from infected shrapnel wounds given by a bomb that went off last week? Die from bone cancer after literal years of solitary confinement in a prison sentence? Die from a combination of starvation and opioid withdrawal? Do you see what I mean?
• Re: Bird flu— you will hear me talk more about this in the next coming weeks. In fact, each one of these bullet points could be an essay unto itself, but: Bird Flu is coming out with a frightening narrative. The desolation I am seeing in people’s spirits, resigning to the ‘reality’ that we’re completely fucked… Reality is what we collectively believe and witness. Right now, there is one probable case with an unknown site of exposure listed on the CDC website (last updated 31 Jan 2025).
• We can expect bird flu to proliferate amongst those cast to the margins in contemporary Western society, that “expendable” work: farmhands, migrant agricultural workers and those in intimate space with them, people living in rural settings (especially those who might interact with birds or mice), those too poor to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) for themselves, and those who might be stigmatized for doing so (the overlap between these two groups is very strong).
  • I… personally think human to human transmission has likely already occurred. Hospitalizations for the flu this year have skyrocketed. Human to human transmission will not become real with our governmental agencies tell us so; it will become real one afternoon when no one really wants to believe that’s the case. The desire to tell us the "risk to the general populace remains low"… I think that’s disingenuous on a multitude of levels. But I want us to understand that by the time we discover, without a shadow of a doubt, that human to human transmission has occurred, that will have been the case. Epidemics are like cockroaches. The moment that you see one in the light… you must reconcile with the scope of what’s been brewing in the dark for ages.
  • What does this unflinching doom and gloom remind me of [EBOLA HAS NO CURE]?
    • That was the sentiment when Ebola was first erupting in West Africa, most particularly in Sierra Leone. After actual moths of denial, of conspiracy theories, of people saying it was a government hoax, that it didn’t exist… when Ebola became a threat that people feared in their bodies, rather than, I dunno... a birds aren’t real government-level conspiracy, the first thing that people heard and the first thing that people repeated was EBOLA HAS NO CURE. And that feels very similar to the “we’re so fucked” narrative. Reality is just what we collectively witness.
• I think that we are set up to take huge hits on a global scale from another pandemic (however, I have been thinking that since the 2022 Monkeypox outbreak that Biden declared a National Emergency for with… no accompanying national plan. At least, none that was well-communicated. It was so bad, we had to ration vaccines). I would also input: it’s not as if we are defenseless against mass disease spread. It’s not as if we just have to lie down and take. It is that, like with every other facet of life, depending on our national governments to save us is a fool’s errand. We have recent history, acute history: Monkeypox (2022 in the United States of America), Ebola in Sierra Leone, the center of the 2014-2016 epidemic disease spread and fatality, AIDS/HIV in the United States (circa 1970s - ongoing), Dope is Death campaigning against the use of heroin (circa 1960s - ongoing, and exacerbated by the crack epidemic of the 80s, ongoing, and the wild rise of cannabis use in metropolitan New York). All of these epidemics were either ended by or significantly curtailed by regular people mobilizing to educate their circles and quell the spread of contagion.All of these epidemics were either ignored by the federal administrations or lambasted in the media as diseases afflicting those undesirable in the first place (or both). We have blueprints for this. It’s absolutely nothing new. But again, I did write a book comparing these above moments in history, so. Stating this bullet point could be an essay is such a wild understatement. I just think that the “we’re so fucked” mentality does little to solve the problem we have been given. And we do actually have to contend with the problem.
  • What’s more frightening is: I haven’t heard anyone talk about bird flu in Sierra Leone. I met a nice businessman from Senegal recently who talked about entire flocks being put to death in his home country. Senegal is our neighbor. Surely, then, we should have precautions in Sierra Leone, a country where people place chickens in plastic bags and carry them with them unceremoniously on the public transit. And yet, I have heard nothing. Nothing from 2025 results from online search queries. You know what has happened? A relatively quiet state of emergency declared over two cases of Monkeypox.
    • the last thing you want to be as a public health student is right. About anything. It would be better if I was just sleep-deprived and crazed.
• I said book was in print circulation January 11, 2025 and then nothing else about it. I have said nothing else because I am going about book publishing in… a very odd way. Forgive my delay. Forgive my cryptic updates. You will (very soon!) see the fruits of this labor.
  • And, in truth… I am frightened of what my life will become. Book publishing will place me in a permanent after, just like TikTok did, even though now I have a better idea of what I’m signing up for. Not just for the increased circulation, but the increased perception (thus reality) of power and authority, the proportional increase in responsibility… but also because I hate to be right! The book is called small prophecies for a reason… I am seeing much of what I have been writing about for the past six years… all these fears that I heard took up irrational amounts of space in my head… well. As I say in the book, here my grief is to hang me. And I, too, engage in that lovely drug of denial.
• Okay. My body calls me to bed. Hope the work of your day passes through your hands with ease.
  • Actually, one last note: one of my most frequently received questions is something akin to: how do you hang onto hope? I have two consistent answers: I spend a fair amount of time studying what is possible (what has been done before? Where was it effective? How might I implement these things in my systems?) and then use that knowledge to catch better fish. And I spend a fair amount of time with very young children. When I sat down to write this, I felt no small amount of terror. Then Fredrica was heard running around in her teeny sandals outside my bedroom door. At like… midnight. So I watched her for ten minutes while her mother finished up a chore. I watched her explore. She stepped on my yoga mat; I am fairly certain this was the first time she had ever felt the sensation of a yoga mat (it’s a very Western technology, lol). And she looked awed for a moment. And she started jumping (obviously). And so I started jumping. And it’s just like… difficult to be stressed about macrosystems when you, in your micro moment, are jumping in the middle of the night with a one year old in your fuzzy robe.
  • So like: yes, it’s all very serious. Also, I had really delicious fried plantain today and I jumped on my yoga mat with an impromptu dance partner. That alone is going to make me grateful to wake up tomorrow, should God will it. It’s all just Yahtzee.
    • okay fr. goodnight// i hope you do some jumping.
      • (or better said: peace.)
      • ig