Query: Home?

two notes, before i fully dive in:

1) this stems from the second part of an earlier post; Meet Your God (faith is different than dogma).

2) this is also something i'm publishing as both a personal story and an elaboration on a critique i have of something a friend said. if there's something you don't quite understand, just know, i'm mainly talking to them.

and we begin by breaking the vase. 🏺⛓️‍💥

1) FAMILY

my friend, you once told me that it is not [] who need to be saved (did you think i pitied you, saw a need to rescue you?), but instead, it is [] who need saving. instead, i offer you this; that either *nobody* needs saving or *everybody* does, but in either case, whichever it is, *nobody is exempt* from the conditions of humanity, unless they so choose actions that make them exempt. i have been complicit in horrific actions, and now i am resistant. no, i have always been resistant. i have not always been capable. now i am capable.

have you ever been to a Greek (Orthodox) Easter celebration?

the Easter the apparently-secular-yet-very-Christian dominant society enjoys is centered around capitalism and dogmatic propaganda (propaganda that preaches values the the dominant don't actually believe) (something we both really, really don't enjoy).

i have noticed, that although the Greek Orthodox community my friend's family serves as a portal to is more visibly religious; they are less strictly dogmatic. and to be specific, i do not speak about the wider community of the Greek Orthodox Church, but the smaller, more intimate community my friends' family has gathered. my grandma didn't bring her faith with her, at all, and my friend's dad is a recent enough immigrant to still have his accent, to have taught his kids (including one of my closest childhood friends) the language, as well as encourage them to learn Greek dancing. and yet, when this man, whose name means Deliverer, hosts Greek Easter, and invites his neighbors, and cousins, from the islands, and their children, and my family, it is not to wield ideology over our heads like a cudgel. it is just to talk. to everyone, everyone there. i will admit, as an autistic person, sometimes it's a lot. sometimes it's uncomfortable. and i share this with you not because i believe holidays are safe from interrogation, or because i believe the celebratory, communal nature of this one will convince you to let the rest of this be regardless of whether it's harmful or holistic or what, no. i share this with you to show you that although even i at times have forgotten, if i thought about my separation from that place as a political process of assimilated as combined with a series of people & their stories instead of a passage of time, in both lineage and friendship, i would be two people away from the islands, and that's not very many people at all.

not in comparison to the many, many more feet just like mine that have walked that ground.

my grandmother's maiden name, it means little gem, it means that there was one lineage of people from one part of one island in all the world that were said to be very short and very beautiful. yes, i think that's hilarious. but it also verifies we have history there. the island knows our body; and yes, i say our; the older i get the more my body resembles that of everyone i am related to, especially that lineage. and i am short. (and beautiful!) i dislike Christianity for what it took away from my people. emotionally, and i acknowledge it is a culture-destroyer. our relationship with nature did used to be stronger, we used to have differentiated houses of worship for different aspects of life. real reverence. but perhaps, if real reverence can adapt the way you have shown me it can, there is still something there. something practical, to work with. i would like to have it be found as relatively true that i do not see this work through the lens of family, but instead, family, my family, through the lens of this work. if i do not try, my friend, i cannot say i have tried. much of Greece has 'poor,' rocky soil, and people have thrived there for thousands of years. if there is anything worth learning there, if there is anything worth salvaging, if there is anything salvaged, it is my responsibility to find out. if i were to imagine my family standing in a circle facing each other, i do think we would all know who we were looking at, and i do think that i am not too far away from the others. i have cousins who still live there. but i don't think i'm entitled to anything, i know that if the land welcomes me back there, i would be reconnecting, de-assimilating, and that is work that would continue. that is not the finish line. it is a portal.  

it is time you know who my great-grandfather was. he was not just a journalist, he was not just a journalist that wrote for & about the common folk, he was, i believe, an anarchist and/or communist. while the labels he would've used do matter, how he operated and how those in power responded to him matter more; he was killed. by Nazis, yes. and no, i do not mean he was picked off in an alley somewhere, although that would've been harm enough. no, my great-grandfather, the journalist, was dragged to a concentration camp where he was presumably tortured and starved and he died there. it just took a year. he 'survived,' and a year after release, he was gone. this response to his actions tells me something about the man he was. they were scared of him. they were scared of a writer. and a father, and a neighbor.

i think my grandmother, his daughter, misses him. she talks a lot about the cruises she goes on, as an elder woman manipulated first by an Amerikkkan soldier and then by an average civilian who loves her for her money and treats her to things so sensorily pleasurable she forgets herself, literally, but i think she misses her father. deeply. the pain of his death caused her to fold inwards upon herself, individualize herself, leave her home. she ran away so hard and so fast she could not conceive of where the opportunity of Amerikkka, the famed land that's so fucking full of it, came from. i think i miss him, too, not because i ever met him, but because i wish i could've, i wish he could've lived for longer, and all emotion aside, honestly, i know he had more work to do before they dragged him away and killed him.

this is why i say i am not running away from responsibility, but instead i wish to be slowly walking towards it in multiple directions.

my great-grandfather would not encourage me to run out on you. even if he did, i wouldn't listen to him. this is not about obeying what i think his opinion, his orders, would be, but about honoring the man he showed up as. Nazis wanted him dead. that's enough for me to have faith in his filotomo. you said, not too long ago, to "consider looking at the issue of Indigenous existence through that which is evidently valuable, like family." and so i am attempting to do so, right now. my great-grandfather, he would not encourage me to run out on you. if he did not already know of the hypocrisy of the United States' government offering opportunity while denying Indigenous autonomy, he would have been reachable. this i know. i have seen photos from the newspaper he published. that is how i know. however long it takes to know i won't be abandoning anyone for my comfort or ego - supporting indigenous autonomy, and striving for liberation here on these lands my grandmother ran to - i am here, doing my best to be present, with my eyes open, and maybe then i can go home. if i haven't found...kinship, with someone, who i go elsewhere-home with, or died, by then. however long it takes. i have to support your work, just as i have to continue my great-grandfather's. i will not leave without communication, i will not leave without having unburdened you. for now, though, going home is a path i hold in me, and i would appreciate if you would consider this, and i would appreciate if you would consider why.

it is not because i have a whim to return. it's because i have faith that we never should've left.

2) PLACE

i have been to Greece, you know, around a decade ago.

i was not immediately enamored, taken in by it, i will not pronounce to you that i somehow falsely knew i had a spiritual connection to the place as soon as i landed. or, at least, that's not when i knew.

i thought the graffiti was cool, but it was uncomfortably hot, at times, even at night. we were there during summer, and one of the only reprieves - especially in Athens - was being in water.

i love being in water, and swimming in the Mediterranean Sea was not entirely romantic either. the salt water got in my eyes, and that hurt. 

when you look up Greece online and see the images that the algorithms & corporations push, you see the misconception, the romanticization, of Greece is that it is something like an earthly Eden, because they want Western tourists to become immediately enamored, taken in by it, so that they will come spend money there. the Greek government, to attempt to save the economy; because they feel it will save their people, after the EU, the IMF, the World Bank, made Greece enmeshed with, dependent, on them; they are pushing their nation as a vacation. meanwhile, their people, those with the privilege, means, need to do so, leave, as the economy slowly collapses. the tourists are coming, those endemic to the islands are leaving. when i visited when i was younger, i thought it was convenient that almost every sign was in English. now? i wish to inconvenience myself in places where Western European hegemony is challenged. those that stay have threads of nationalism tangled up in them. it is not an Eden, not at all.

i break the vase, i break whatever thing Westerners or Nazis consider sacrosanct, i open up Pandora's box. the past, the present, the future, of Greece is no Eden, not at all. i wouldn’t dare assume the work stops there. being a settler is relational, and i will be settler until i am unsettled, so no, that’s where even more work starts, and i will listen to the lessons of the immigrants and the refugees. they may remember some things my grandmother & mother, even my great-grandfather, forgot.  

it is a place, multiple places, where the actions i take might have different meanings - my doing what you do on this land is settling, but my building a home with my & my community's own hands, continuing to mail you those baby blankets, and whatever else you need that i can provide, doing the same for the Tongva/Kizh, Tataviam, and Chumash people that live with the land i currently live on, from Greece, practicing localized "permaculture," and extending that apparently Greek 'hospitality,' that filotomo, to everyone, and i mean everyone, at cost to kyriarchy, protecting and supporting refugees & immigrants, travelers, in a direct way that does not assume any authority over their lives, teaching those whose hearts will overpower their nationalistic tangle a similar way to how you, your family, have taught me, might actually change the flow of energy there - and thank my God for that, because there is so much work to do. an otherwise random person i met on a dating app, their own great-grandfather was a slave in salt mines under the Ottoman empire. the kri-kri is endangered by colonial activity. doing the work, with a relationship to the land, i can actually claim that i belong there, and so does everyone else, everyone else with doing the work, with a relationship to the land. i don't give a damn about that country, it's the land, the water, that matters. i don't even have to only live according to the country. i can travel, too, be a nomad, bring my support to those who need it, go where i need to be, to be supported, too. i can be everywhere, within land i belong to. i can be everywhere.  

oh, i will tell you, my friend, i am remembering, the more i dwell with it, that i have quite literally dreamt of those islands since i was born. when i went there, yes, it wasn't paradise, but i swam in the Mediterranean, looking across the waters to the tallest, greenest hills i'd ever seen, and it was like something else entirely. beautiful, and many other things i don't think i could properly express in english. i'd never use the word paradise, but it was like nothing i'd experienced before. like another planet. but it was also intimately familiar to me. i'd apparently missed that water even before i was in it, and the water missed me.

Greece, to me, is a portal to - among many, many other things - finding solidarity across great difference. the Mediterranean; we are all around one sea, to a Western viewer of a world map, but one of the many things i've learned from you is that not only does each person have their own umwelt, but each family, each culture has their own consensus reality as well. there are many, many more maps i must look at, many more stories i must hear, before i begin to understand the layers and layers of reality that are those waters. Cyprus, one of the many islands Greeks call home, is actually an island we share with Turkiye.

when my grandmother left Greece, it was because she 'fell in love' with an Amerikkkan solider (who later abandoned the family, my mother still hasn't told me what happened), within the span of one week, and they did not come straight to Turtle Island. they stayed in Libya, first, taking advantage of the Italian colonies there, which themselves exist from "the 'pacification' (read: genocide) of" Libya. i don't know if she knew what that ground really was; i don't think awareness matters with a thing like that; although it is funny, tragically, frustratingly so, my grandma knew what concentration camps were, she knew what empires were, and how they were used and somehow failed to see where she was for what it was to Libyans. regardless, there were some folk who were moving to attack her - and perhaps rightfully so, in the context of colonialism, and this young boy saved her life. and so saved my life. somewhere in Libya, alive or with their ancestors, there is a person - a young boy, when my grandma knew him - who saved us. my family, all of us; my grandma, directly, and so my mother, and so me, and so all the children i might ever be the ancestor of. i don't feel like i owe him, or his family, anything either. i do not feel guilty for being alive, i am not a dog, not like i was raised. i do not need permission to be what i really am when i sit with this; which is grateful. my gratitude is immense and as deep as i have capacity to hold or feel anything right now. are you aware that my feelings towards this man, and his family, have the weight of all of our lives behind them?

3) CONTEXT OF CHOICE

i have autonomy, agency, in that nobody can puppet me around. this does mean i have choice. and my choice is to be as grateful as i can be, as faithful as i can be, and to act accordingly to my values. you are absolutely incredible, you are also an asshole, but so am i, and that inspires me to build solidarity with you more than anything else, because it grounds me enough to see everything else; regardless of how i feel about you personally, your work is important and your family is important. but it's not about just you, that's the difference in framing; you and i both have a wider affect on the world than on just each other, through how to operate around each other & others, and my gratitude means very little if it not paired with whatever action i can muster. i am the first in two people's worth of time to even start to see where i am for what it is to you. the fact that i am not on anyone's leash does mean i have choice. and my choice is to support indigenous autonomy, and liberation, which means supporting you. it means Land Back. everywhere. no matter where i go.

. . . .

"You go

Wherever you go today