hateful

 A sunset walk, a book, the lake, the silver light shimmering on the water as the sinks under a blanket of night and leaves us until tomorrow. People are calm and smiling, saying hello, and I feel grateful because the book that I am reading is disturbing. It is Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng, and it is essential for us to know because so many were or are unaware of the suffering that minorities feel at the hands of a ‘patriotic’ mass at times. The book takes place in an imaginary post-crisis dystopia, but it is remarkably similar to the events that occurred during covid, whereby a government trying to ramp up anti-immigrant war fever kept repeating ‘China’ and blaming them for everything from the virus to the economic downturn of the US economy. It resulted in a wave of anger, hatred, and attacks against the Asian community. Hateful leadership leading hateful people to do hateful things. 

Finally, I go to bed and fall into a sleep of dreams. In one of those dreams, I was in the garden with my English love… but it was a garden in Africa, one from my youth. The passion was building but at our feet was an egg. As the passion was about to consume us, the egg broke open and a vulture fumbled out. I immediately took action to care for the bird, and, within minutes, it had grown to the size of a dog… it was grey and fluffy and strong. It was beautiful. But my English love started to prepare to leave and, ultimately, she left. There was a feeling that I would not see her again and all was lost. I awoke wondering what to feed the baby vulture.