Simone Weil 48

Every separation represents a bond. Your meditations' obscurity lies not in history, my friend says, but in your memory of it. Self-separation precedes the act of memoir, muscle pulled from bone. Our friend with Parkinson's buys pot from a dealer, then takes it legally to ease his chronic pain. Such are our laws. I remember Freddie Gray, dying in the police van of a broken neck. I won't remember the officers acquitted of killing him. Failure to remember is sometimes an ethical act, but only if you know what you're undoing. Tapestries of dissent cover holes punched in the dry wall. If you take my skin, you get my emptiness. On Bishop Street, a homeless man yelled at a shopkeeper: “I will rip off all your skin and stuff it in my shoes.” The shopkeeper pounded at his phone. Beauty's purpose is to mask our pain. A boy with brain cancer chooses a Batman mask: he loves to watch him beat up the Joker and the Penguin.