Touching Grass (as a Revolutionary Act)

Or: how I learned to stop worrying and go outside

Photo by Chris Yang on Unsplash

I don’t know why I keep trying to read the news. I don’t particularly want to, don’t enjoy it when I do, and definitely don’t feel better-informed about anything relevant to my life when I finally put it down. I read the news out of habit, or perhaps out of a macabre kind of compulsion, like rubbernecking a road accident or stalking an ex’s Instagram. I tell myself it’s important, but the truth is, I’m not sure I believe that anymore. Bit by bit, the world of headlines and hot takes is losing its grip on my mind.

I’ve been political since I was seven years old, when Bush won the 2000 election after Gore won the popular vote. I didn’t know then what the Electoral College was. All that registered in my little brain was that the math of it was wrong, meaning something fundamentally incorrect had happened. Then came the war in Iraq, then the false hope of Obama, then Occupy Wall Street, Trump, Covid, the tapestry all braided through with Wikileaks and Black Lives Matter, with #MeToo and Palestine.

These were the threads that made up the fabric of my mind. It had simply never occurred to me that a person might go through their days without politics at the absolute forefront of their consciousness. Even as I grew older and radicalized, as my politics…