Fire inside the belly of the beast
thoughts on grief and liberation
Hi, hope you are all safe and as well as you can be.
My heart is heavy, maybe yours too, for one reason or another. I’d guess that both of our heavinesses can possibly, probably be attributed to the suffocating reality of this nightmare world that we can’t seem to break loose from, where grief is isolating and there is rarely even an opportunity to imagine something different in-between the close quartered cogs of this forever grinding war-machine, which is oiled and greased by our tax dollars, where we have no real input on what kind of world we want to live in and how we want to care for each other and the earth, the earth that is collapsing around us as we fully enter this deadly stage of disaster Capitalism. Only within the collapse can we begin to imagine something different, where momentarily, the curtains part and that caste system is revealed in all it’s ugliness, and the illusion of peace is broken, and so my feelings + thoughts around the LA fire are complicated.
As soon I saw photos of the scorched LA neighborhoods I thought of Gaza. The recent fires feel like a detonation of a settler-colonial bomb that was planted years ago, when the land was first stolen with the same unstoppable violence that we’ve watched play out on our screens in Palestine, but this time, instead of their houses, neighborhoods, treasured mom n pop shops, generational artifacts, and memories of home that are demolished, it’s ours. And although part of me feels this is some sort of Karmic retribution ( & I do feel great satisfaction at the thought of burning Zionist houses), the tragedy of these historic neighborhoods and landscapes and animals and life diminished to nothing is still unspeakably great. I just want to try and hold the scopes of these destructions side by side, to thread them together through their puncture wounds and observe the closeness of our struggle for liberation against a common enemy. Of course the fire is political, because environmental catastrophe is almost always due to or made worse by the infrastructure of Capitalism, and community is all that is really left when everything else burns away. Community, which is mostly an overused, bastardized word in my opinion, for me is rooted in a sense of place over anything else. Community is the people you live with and around and who you can depend on, and who can depend on you. Catastrophes bring out the worst in people but also the best in people, and the best in people is the community that always emerges in full force to provide resources and support for each other during these life-altering events. I notice that a cycle emerges though, where people are mobilized by some reactionary spark, but that momentum dwindles as soon as the urgency of the moment subsides, and most of the time, understandably so because of the inevitable burn out and desire to return to the comfort we had before, as dysfunctional as it was. At least with each injustice and tragedy more and more people become radicalized and aware of how little we have except for each other, and a shift occurs. I just wonder how many more catastrophes we must all face in order for us to get on the same page, to really divert from the predetermined path we're on that only leads towards imminent apocalypse and total annihilation.
Well, in that way, the Socal fire gives me a bit of hope, because although so much was destroyed, so much gets to be rebuilt, hopefully in a way that gives the people who are affected most a real say. Many conversations that might never have surfaced now must be had, and this talking amongst each other about how to do things differently is what delegitimizes the flimsy power of the state, so even during this traumatic event they try fuel a divide. City officials refuse to take accountability for their role in the disaster, and seek to disperse the feeling of solidarity amongst the people. The power company that had ample warning to turn off its power due to dangerously high winds did not, so their power lines caught on fire. The city failed to properly notify residents to evacuate, and many people noted that they didn’t see a single firefighter during their evacuations. To deflect from accountability, the city points a finger at potential unidentified arsonists to stir suspicion amongst people already shaken by disaster. On top of an already nightmarish scene, ICE roams the streets seeking to deport immigrants meanwhile, Mexico sends firefighters across the boarder to help control the fire. Underpaid and mistreated inmates are deployed to put out fires but their hoses run dry, hoses that are hooked up to the aqueducts that steal water from Native reserves in the Sierras, reserves that were already depleted from having to support the demands of an overindulgent and ever expanding settler-colonial city hundreds of miles away. And as the fire burns, it is supported by the bountiful eucalyptus trees that dot the landscape, trees that were planted by settlers as they arrived decades ago and that burn like gasoline. In occupied Palestine, historic towns and centuries old olive groves were set on fire and pine trees were planted in their place by Israeli settlers to make the landscape feel more familiar to them. I think about how violent even a seed can be if its planted within the interest of colonization. And just like those invasive seeds, most of us were planted or migrated here, and maybe we are as much responsible for our part in spreading the flame as a highly flammable tree in a wildfire. I suggest this not to discredit anyone’s sense of loss or place here, but to acknowledge from an Indigenous perspective that most of us are settlers here, and that we do not exist as neutral inhabitants of this land that we have grown up in and call home, so we must continue hold decolonization in the forefront of our fight for liberation. That acknowledgment does not have to discredit our sense of belonging; we can to learn to move through contradicting truths. Our investment in capitalism and internalized individualism only serve to keep us chained to a sinking ship. And though my heart hurts for those affected, especially those already disenfranchised people who lost what little they had, for once the grief of this disaster gives me hope, because we cannot rebuild what refuses to change, and maybe destruction is the only way out from this cage we are all trapped in.
A beast wreaks havoc on the world. It has an insatiable appetite, and eats and eats will no end in sight, only until the whole world is devoured will it have nothing left to eat. Wherever the beast goes it tramples and consumes and causes so much terror that people would rather live inside the safety of the beast’s belly than out in the world that it’s burning. Inside the belly, everything the beast eats is turned into a sparkling commodity that’s fed to its inhabitants, who eat it up and slowly get sick. But a hypnotic mirror lines the stomach of the beast, and people begin to think that nothing and nowhere else could be better, so they do what they can to keep the beast running. If you’re like me, you’ve ended up inside the belly, by one way or another, and that is where you call home. But you want out, you don’t want to be separated from the rest of the world, and you know that the beast needs to be killed in order for the terror to stop, but it’s hard to see a real way out from inside the belly, especially when the flesh and blood of the beast feels like the flesh and blood of your own body, and when the beast is wounded you are also wounded. But when a fire burns a hole in the belly of the beast, for a moment, through the scorched wound, we see sky, a way out. In that moment a decision must be made. Should we let the skin repair and separate us again, or break free from this cycle of violence, and reunite with the world? We link arms and hold the wound open, and one by one, push at the edges until the wound widens, rips, and at last! The beast is torn in half and all of its insides spill out. It is messy, terrifying, and though we all face uncertainty, there is finally a feeling of humanity and dignity and justice that binds us to one another and the Earth. In my opinion, that is the only real way to “change the system from the inside.”
Our land is crying everywhere under the abuse of capitalism and sick without the practices of its indigenous stewards. As cogs in the war machine that enacts violence all across the globe but often bear no responsibility from the comfort of our own homes, we’re used to having the choice to turn the other way, but I anticipate more and more karmic rippling to come and sweep our illusion of safety out from under us. Many of us are already living without a safety net and are one disaster away from losing everything. Strong communities should not only be the symptom of disaster, but the foundation for our liberation, and we shouldn’t wait for that moment of collapse to realize that we have nothing to catch us but each other and our determination to get out of this death cycle.
I wanted to share this short story written by my fav Ursula K. Le Guin that seems especially prominent in this moment. It describes the people of Omelas, a city that feels like paradise and is filled with laughter and dancing and celebration. However, everyone in the city knows that all the joy is dependent on the suffering and neglect of a crying child locked in a basement in one of the city’s public buildings.
“They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.
This is usually explained to children when they are between eight and twelve, whenever they seem capable of understanding; and most of those who come to see the child are young people, though often enough an adult comes, or comes back, to see the child. No matter how well the matter has been explained to them, these young spectators are always shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.”
It’s a great story, I’ve linked it here if you want to read the whole thing. Some of you might have heard or read the Disposessed, which the story about some of the people who decided to leave Omelas. It was a great way for me to start imagining what kind of world I’d want to live in, as complicated as it may be. It is the first Le Guin book I read, I highly recommend!
Here are some mutual aids helping those affected by the SoCal fire that you can financially contribute to:
PUMA: Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid: donate here
Aetna Street Solidarity: Venmo @ aetnastreetsolidarity
J Town Action: donate here
If any of you have other resources or mutual aids to shout out pls leave it in the comments.
Stay safe yall and all the power to u. Talk soon
M