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On the desperate longing to not be the source of our own problems
Liminal dispatch, 05.31.20
I have lived in Southwest Minneapolis for 13 years, and I love my city.
This past week has been a nonstop horror show, from the moment the world learned of George Floyd’s murder — and as a white woman, my feelings, intense as they have been, are those of a bystander. The true terror and rage and grief that lie in layers and years before this week are things I can never fully understand.
I woke up Friday morning, after a restless night of hearing gunfire, explosions, flash bombs, and tear gas canisters going off in the near distance, to St. Paul and Minneapolis officials claiming that all or a majority of the people arrested Friday night had been from out of state. Briefings from the police that morning told them that these were parts of well-organized groups bent on fomenting destruction and chaos.
I felt two things. The first was that sluggish subterranean fear, a familiar feeling in the last few years, this sense that the world has gone utterly mad — or rather that it finally has taken off its mask to reveal just how insane it really is. It feels sometimes as though we were being targeted for destruction by some massive, unseen, untrackable force that relishes chaos, death, and destruction, all for their own sakes. What kind of…
