2020

 

Adieu

to a bastard of a year

whose father was no father at all

but a diaper they attempted to clean with a dishrag

and strapped to a mannequin

with the voicebox of a 10-year-old

whose mother did not protect him—

was perhaps unable to do so—

from the ills of the world.

 

Farewell

to another year of black throats crushed,

suffocated for all to see,

of faces scraped against concrete,

shot in their beds or left to rot in cells,

but also of those who balled their fists,

refused to be silent and took to streets,

who organized behind the scenes,

took to the ballot boxes and screamed.

 

Good riddance

to hordes of gnashing teeth between gingivitis-laden gums,

Whopper guts and confederate flags,

Boogaloo boys with happy trigger fingers

who comforted themselves with silky lies,

who bathed their skin in the oils of dead whale calves

and toasted Coors Lights as they downed their fill

of fascist tripe, Mussolinian entrails,

and thought they did it all in the name of the Lord.

 

Goodbye (but not quite yet)

to strangers seen as threats (more than usually),

whose very breath, a dangerous vector,

to third-world-country mills of polypropylene masks

that some viewed as signs of oppression,

that some clung to in hopes of staying safe,

that some scoffed at while their grandparents died,

that became an indicator of whose gaze extended beyond

the clippings of their own toenails

and whose was mired in solipsism that could not permit

of empathy to break their autistic fever-dreams.

 

(and hopefully) A tentative hello

to commutes to work that no longer need to exist,

to painfully waking up to social responsibility,

to digging our leaders’ heads out of the oil-sands,

to clean drinking water in Flint and on indigenous reserves,

to no longer tolerating that which can be changed,

to forgoing our opiates in the name of tears

that need to shed aloud.

Black Lives Matter

As I sit here comfortably in my home in one of the more affluent regions of the planet, I nonetheless experience a combination of sadness, anger, disgust, and fear in response to what is happening in the world. Particularly, I feel overwhelming sadness for Black people in the United States, not just for the recent murder of George Floyd by the police, but for what his death represents: literally centuries of oppression, persecution, and murder of Black people in America. 

As I peer down at my hands, my fingers typing away, I am aware that the pigmentation in my skin would fit with the label of “white” or “Caucasian,” and I question if I should even be speaking on recent events. On the one hand, I’d rather boost the messages of leaders within the Black community (which I do whenever I see the opportunity) than add my own voice. On the other hand, I am bombarded with messages that say “silence is complicity,” and being a descendant of Holocaust survivors (only two generations removed), I feel the need to write in order to express something:

When I fully allow myself to contemplate the horror that is racism, that a human being could be reduced to an object of scorn because of the coding of their skin pigmentation by nothing more than genetic chance, and that this is the basis upon which they could be murdered, I am deeply horrified. I am at first filled with immense sadness, because although I am not a person of colour, I am a human being that can empathize with other human beings. I don’t know what it’s like to be the target of anti-Black racism, but I do know what it’s like to have hatred unfairly projected upon me and as a result be a target of violence. It’s a horrible, terrible, and potentially traumatic experience. What I don’t know is what it’s like to live with the threat of that sort of violence every single day because of my appearance. Not having that experience on a daily basis is part of what is meant by the term “white privilege.” And the fact that there are literally millions of people living society every single day with this experience fills me with despair.

 

After the sadness comes the anger. I am enraged that we live in a world in which we allow these events to happen. I say “we” because we truly are one species, one human race, and as such we bear a collective responsibility for our fates. The reality of our interconnectedness becomes clearer to me with each passing day. I am angry that those in positions of power do not put fixing this problem at the top of their list of priorities. Not only that, but in the year 2020, the president of the United States literally repeats the same phrases as those used by racist politicians and police chiefs in Jim Crow South in the 1960’s – and he doesn’t seem to see anything wrong with it. 

The anti-Black racists have not disappeared. The KKK has not disappeared. They are employed in government, the media, the military, and police departments. Instead of openly calling black people “n*ggers,” they call them “thugs” – this is the new codeword that they think they can get away with. It is not a priority for them to address the systemic issues that perpetuate racism because in order to do so they would have to own the darkness within them – the darkness that they have projected onto Black people. This darkness is what Carl Jung called “the shadow” – and for racists, it involves the rejection of feared (and possibly traumatized) aspects of their own humanity. This suppression results in their fear, rage, and disgust (which would be more appropriately directed at the racist parts of themselves) being ignorantly projected onto people of colour. 

 

---

"A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbour."

-Carl Jung, “The Philosophical Tree” (1945). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.335

---

After the sadness and anger, comes the disgust and the fear. I am disgusted when I see pictures and videos of white cops killing unarmed Black men with impunity while bystanders watch and film. I am afraid at the lack of political will and conviction among elected officials to draw a firm line in the sand and declare that these atrocities are not allowed to happen anymore. And I can’t help but feel helpless. 

How am I supposed to make a difference in all of this? Does sitting here typing out my thoughts and feelings and then posting it online actually do anything? Will anyone who needs to read this actually read this and if they do will it make even the tiniest bit of difference in addressing the enormity of the problem of anti-Black racism? The cynical side of me says, “probably not,” and the truth is I have no idea. Maybe this is just an attempt to help myself process what I am seeing and reading about online. Maybe it’s an attempt to address the assertion that “silence is complicity” and add my voice to the growing number of people who refuse to stay silent. Maybe it’s an attempt to heed the wisdom of calls to action from far greater people than myself. 

Regardless, I can think, I can feel, I can write – and so I write. When and where I see opportunities to speak out or to act, I will do so. To whatever extent possible, I will do my best to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. Black Lives Matter. Taking a stand for the basic human rights of all human beings matters. Let’s all of us, please, take these turbulent days as opportunities to make this world better than it’s been thus far. 

Insomnia Poem

Perhaps a natural consequence of giving too much of myself
to too many people on a given day,
that later shift in the middle of the week
that just shits all over the routine I try to build for myself,
leading to that extra mid-day coffee that I justify because it’s going to be a later night—
leading to a much later night than it would have been—
practicing the progressive muscle relaxation, mindfulness, controlled breathing skills
that I recommend to so many clients,
until I get up to make some tea (which will wake me later I’m sure when I finally do get to sleep)
and realize I haven’t written anything poetic or horribly self-expressive
in a very long time,
and I have a moment of poet-ception as I write this line
and feel almost bad for the reader for getting him/her/themselves into this mess,

but maybe you’re already in a mess
and it’s comforting to know that you’re
not the only one.

FÜBB Unlimited

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

December 1, 2016

(Toronto, ON) – Just in time for the holidays, seasoned Toronto hip hop artist MC FÜBB (pronounced “emcee foob”) is proud to announce the release of his new EP: FÜBB Unlimited. The seven track album is produced exclusively by Toronto beatmaker Justunlimited, with guest artist features by Mississauga emcee Es (Toronto Independent Music Awards 2015 winner for “Best Urban Artist”), KRS-ONE cosigned emcee Bad Newz, and DJ Xplisit (“Toronto’s Craziest Beatboxing DJ”). Being his fifth official non-mixtape album released since his debut EP Foundations back in 2009, FÜBB Unlimited is a testament to the persistence and tenacity of an artist committed to improving his craft and developing an extensive body of work.

Here are MC FÜBB’s own words on his new project:

On the surface, the reason for the title of this album is straightforward (MC FÜBB + Justunlimited = FÜBB Unlimited). It’s about an emcee/poet and a producer/beat-maker combining their talents to make something that neither of them could have created on their own – music created through the efforts of their synergy. It’s a work of art that can be enjoyed by listeners today and will remain available for future generations to come, long after we are no longer here to make new music.

On a deeper level, creating this EP has given me pause to reflect on my career as a hip hop artist; a lot has changed in my life since I started taking my rapping seriously over seven years ago. In recent years, I’ve drifted away from my fixation on the dream of “making it” as an artist in the music business and toward a life that is fulfilling in a broader sense: the kind of life where I can be fulfilled and “make it” in a variety of different ways. But despite a recalibration of the priorities in my life, I continue to heed the call of the pen and pad, the microphone and the recording booth. Regardless of what else I’m up to in my life, I feel the need to express myself creatively and to transform my raw experience into something tangible that can stand the test of time.

Perhaps it’s a way that we, as artists, try to cheat death – a way to overcome the existential dread that comes with the realization that our time on this earth is limited. Against the backdrop of the infinite, we are flashes in the pan of existence. But in the context of the lives we touch through our words and actions – be it through the structures we build, walls we tear down, or works of art we create – we have a chance to leave a legacy behind after we die. In that sense, the potential difference that our lives can make is truly unlimited.

My hope is that listeners’ lives are impacted by our music for the better, if even just for a moment, as they take in this new EP.

FÜBB Unlimited can be accessed directly at this link:

https://mcfubb.bandcamp.com/album/f-bb-unlimited

and here:

https://soundcloud.com/mcfubb/sets/fubb-unlimited

An Open Letter to Professor Peterson from a Former Student

For context: http://thevarsity.ca/2016/11/21/the-explainer-timeline-of-the-jordan-peterson-controversy/

Dear Professor Peterson,

I am a former of student of yours – I took the “Personality and its Transformations” and “Maps of Meaning” courses that you taught at the University of Toronto during my undergraduate years, where I double majored in psychology and philosophy.

I am writing this letter to you directly, but also publishing it publicly in the hopes that it furthers the advancement of the current conversation/controversy that you are surrounded in at this time. I am doing this for three reasons: 

1. I hope to provide you with some thoughts for self-reflection about the issues at hand, not because I am sure that you need assistance in your process of self-reflection or because I am sure that reading this letter will benefit you, but because I genuinely want to be helpful;
2. I want to aid in my own process of reflection and to help contextualize my own thoughts and feelings on these matters (and I thank you for validating my proclivity for using the written word for such purposes during my time as your student); and
3. I hope to provide some food for thought for others who are currently following the recent controversy (especially those who seem to follow you unquestioningly with the passion of zealots).

I distinctly remember a moment during one of your Maps of Meaning lectures years ago wherein a student raised his hand and asked a question: “Why are you teaching us all of this?” Your answer rings loud and clear to me in my memory: “I want you to be free of ideological possession.” Your thesis has stuck with me to this day because I find it cogently and concisely sums up a major reason why seemingly rational and normal human beings can seem to become the embodiments of evil, something we have seen (and continue to see) far too often throughout the course of history. It helped me to make a little more sense out of the unfathomability of my own ancestry: my grandparents were survivors of Nazi concentration camps. It has helped me to more clearly recognize and appreciate the strength with which underlying assumptions about the world – call them ideologies, schemas, or unconscious beliefs – shape the realities of individuals, families, communities, and societies as a whole. I say all of this because I want to be clear that I value and largely agree with your cautions about the dangers of being “ideologically possessed”; I hold you in high regard as one of the more insightful and thought-provoking professors I had during my undergraduate years at U of T.

I appreciate the extent to which you acknowledge the fallibility of human beings, particularly their blind-spots: their biases, their emotional reasoning, and their logical fallacies. It was a point you made again at the debate this past Saturday morning as you were pitted against (what seemed to be) two interlocutors who did not share your fears and concerns about the insidious motives lurking behind bill C-16 and the “social justice warrior” agenda to silence those whose views do not conform with theirs. To some who have been following this unfolding drama, you have been painted as a hate-monger, an ignorant bigot, and the prototypical “privileged white male professor sitting in his ivory tower.” To others, you are seen as a courageous martyr, a warrior for truth and freedom, and a brilliant psychologist/professor who is being fundamentally misunderstood by a naïve world. I would argue that those who view you at either end of such an extreme spectrum are, to borrow your phrase, ideologically possessed by polarized, overly simplified perspectives, the origins of which and the reasons for I will not begin to speculate here.

As for myself, in accordance with my own humanistic beliefs, I view you as a man who is striving to stand up for what he believes is right. I see a man who earnestly believes that there is danger lurking in the shadows and is trying his best to shine light on it in order to prevent its influence and reach from growing. And I see a man who feels that he has his back against the wall, who is afraid of what is happening in the world around him, and even more afraid of what may be coming down the road. 

As I think back at all of the knowledge I gleaned from you in your lectures and writing, all of the insights and perspectives you shared with myself and my fellow class-mates, I also recall certain off-hand comments you made to us at times. Some that I can still hear echoing in my memory include: “If you believe that, then you’re an idiot!” and “If you think that, then you’re just plain wrong.” I recall these comments now not simply for their (perhaps?) inadvertent crassness and their (unintentionally?) entertaining shock-value. I recall them because within the tone and the very nature of the content of these statements, I can’t help but find an inherent arrogance – a definitive, dismissive quality of cocksureness that is, I think, unbecoming of a man who claims to recognize the uncertainty, fallibility, and tenuous nature of the human mind’s grasp on reality. I recall these statements because I have seen/heard them again in some of your recent statements, lectures, and debates regarding the issues surrounding Bill C-16. I point them out to you now because I think they may be symptomatic of one of the reasons that you find yourself in the position that you’re currently in.

Rather than make psychoanalytic assumptions about you, I would like to pose you a series of questions – ones that I have been wondering in light of recent events:

Is it possible for any human being, including yourself, to be fully free of biases, mental blind-spots, and underlying assumptions that may be erroneous? Is it possible for any human being, including yourself, to be completely “free of ideological possession” of one sort or another? Is there such a thing as a “completely analyzed analyst,” one who can view certain phenomena which such a degree of objectivity that he/she/they/[insert preferred gender pronoun here] are free of the grips of the unconscious? Can anyone truly see so clearly that they have broken free of the inherently subjective nature of human consciousness itself? If I had to venture a guess, I imagine that your answer to these questions would be: “probably not.”

I implore you then, Dr. Peterson, to ask yourself how you can justify presenting yourself as being so sure as to the rightness of the stance you have taken recently regarding Bill C-16 and the issue of transgender rights? Is it not possible that the decades you have spent researching totalitarian regimes and their ideological underpinnings, your own education and theoretical orientations as a psychologist, your own personal upbringing, history, and life experiences have led you to see things in a certain way? Is it not possible that given your own beliefs, your own findings based on your extensive study of various texts and academic research, that you have nurtured in yourself a bias to assimilate your perceptions of events and personal experiences to fit a particular worldview? Is it not possible that in your attempts to make sense of what seems to be an often dangerous and unpredictable world composed largely of irrational and idiotic human beings, you have oversimplified your views on the nature of good and evil, right and wrong, freedom and oppression?

I ask you these questions not because I am sure that you’re wrong about what you believe to be the truth in these matters. I ask, rather, in the hopes that you will not take your sense of rightness as proof that you are, in fact, right – no matter how logical, rational, intuitive, or well-informed your arguments seem to be. I remember you cautioning myself and my fellow students against putting too much stock the in veracity of rationalization – the most valid of arguments does not guarantee its soundness. The human faculty of reason can justify just about any position, provided that certain premises remain beyond the reach of scrutiny and thorough questioning.

For what it’s worth, here are some of my brief reflections on recent events:

            I think that you’ve made some harmful overgeneralizations about the people who are advocating for the rights of transgendered people. In labelling the entire cause of transgender rights as a front for “PC authoritarians,” “Marxists,” and the “radical/fringe left,” you have also (perhaps inadvertently) called into question the validity of the cause itself. This sort of “guilt by association” reasoning, which you may or may not actually espouse, is communicated to those who look up to you: students who listen to your lectures, watch your videos, and hang on to your every word. I do not doubt the existence of the “radical leftist” people of whom you speak (I encountered my fair share of them during my undergraduate years), and I agree when you say that they are likely not representative of the trans-rights movement as a whole. However, by focusing so exclusively on them and what you imagine their motives and influence to be regarding bill C-16, you have framed the issue of transgender rights in a very particular way – one that I believe suits your own motives, beliefs, and worldviews much more than the actual spirit and letter of the law itself. 

You, yourself, have been accused of fostering intolerance and fomenting aggression towards transgendered people on campus, largely because certain ill-informed, neo-Nazi types seem to gravitate toward your messages and use them as fuel for their own intolerance. Would it be fair to say that because such people have been drawn to your rallies, people who wave the banner of “free speech” over their heads as justification for their own transphobia and hatred, that your motives must secretly be steeped in neo-Nazi ideologies? Of course not. But when you frame issues a certain way based on your own preconceptions about the world (which we all inherently do), you are likely to start mistaking shadows for actual monsters. 

            

            There is much more I could write, but I realize that this letter has already become quite lengthy and that both time and attention are precious, limited resources in our world. I would like to end with one final point: I don’t believe that there is such a thing as absolute freedom. The freedom of speech that we enjoy must be tempered by our own sense of responsibility for what we say. As a psychologist sworn to a code of ethics which includes a responsibility to society at large and as a professor at a prominent academic institution, this responsibility is amplified for you. If the way in which you frame your arguments and exercise your right to free speech does, in fact, lead to ostracism from your colleagues, anger from minority communities, and the increased boldness of racists, misogynists, and bigots, then you have a duty to very seriously examine the impact of your words and actions. 

I would be happy to discuss these matters further with you, if that is something you would like to do.

Best wishes,

Daniel Farb

On the Recent Events in Paris

Jerome Delay—AP

What happened yesterday in Paris is a tragedy. The loss of human life is always a tragedy. The murdering of innocent people is an unqualifiedly terrible thing. 

Many people's instant reaction will be anger - this is normal and justified. However, if we react and form judgments solely from that anger, we are bound to perpetuate a global cycle of violence that has plagued humankind since time immemorial. We need to take the time to calm ourselves, to regulate our emotions, and then to think and make choices that will transform the landscape of how we respond to such terrible acts.

When something awful happens that doesn't fit our current worldview, our minds demand an explanation. Such gruesome acts of human-on-human violence, especially when they happen in a modern, “Western,” urban centre like Paris, do not fit most people's view of how the world is supposed to be. It shakes the foundational beliefs that we operate with in order to function in the world – beliefs regarding our safety, the progress of human civilization, and justice. Because of this discomfort, this anxiety-producing cognitive dissonance, we need demand quick answers. We need quick, simple, understandable explanations to contain the anomaly of human carnage that we have just witnessed or read about. And to this demand, we all too often rely on others – the media, our friends and family, etc. – to offer us easily digestible accounts of what happened.

This is where language serves a vital function for us. We rely on words: terrorism, evil, Islamic fundamentalism, psychopaths, radicals, etc. These words are powerful because they denote and contain within them an entire range of complicated human problems. Most vitally for us, they act as containers for our anger, our rage, and our disbelief at the cruelty we are capable of as human beings.

When we resort to these labels, we form conclusions that allow us to distance ourselves from the anxiety and difficult questions that we may otherwise have to face when we learn of such horrendous events. We other the individuals responsible for these heinous acts: terrorists, savages, madmen, barbarians, etc. In essence, we contain the anomaly within subgroups of people – other people – that we insist we do not and could never belong to. This becomes even more destructive when we overgeneralize based on these labels: Islamic fundamentalism becomes “the Muslim world,” “Arabs,” “Muslims,” “Islam,” etc. Some of us become racists and bigots who feel justified in our reasoning. We become as rigidly attached to our own fundamentalist beliefs as those who belong to the target groups that we dehumanize and demonize (if you really want a sampling of the kind of ignorance and racism I’m referring to, just read the comment sections of news articles and YouTube videos covering these incidents on the internet. Also, bring a barf bag).

By relying on these mental heuristics, these labels and stereotypes, we don’t need to fully confront our own difficult emotions that have been stirred up by the news. We don’t need to think and ask important questions about these events (e.g. why do these things keep on happening over and over again in our world?). We already have our answers. The problem is them, and we are not one of them, so the solution is simple: continue to try to fight and kill them before they kill us so that the rest of us can go on with our merry lives. Look at the example of America’s response to 9/11. Nearly 3000 Americans were killed in the World Trade Centre attacks. The response: all-out war against those who were perceived to represent the reason for this attack. The results? To date, approximately 6,800 American soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, most of them civilians (actual numbers vary widely depending on reporting sources).

But let’s interrupt that process for a moment. Let’s take the time to calm ourselves before we form our conclusions; to sit back, think, and ask ourselves the important questions. Most importantly, why does this kind of shit keep happening? I don’t claim to have all the answers for this question, but if you’re willing to actually do some research, there are many who have written about possible causes.

For a brief review of terrorist incidents in France, here’s a Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_France

Note that, like the history of most places on this planet, incidents of human terror against other humans is not limited to recent times. You’ll also note that many of the incidents that have happened in recent decades are attributes to “Islamists,” “Jihadists,” or “Fundamentalists” of one kind or another.

Here are just a few perspectives on how Muslim people in general have been received in France:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32053906

http://www.globalresearch.ca/french-ghettos-police-violence-and-racism/1214

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2038158/Muslims-caught-praying-streets-Paris-face-arrest-tough-new-law.html

http://time.com/3659241/paris-terror-attack-muslim-islam/

https://www.rt.com/news/234019-france-racism-jews-muslims/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/british-muslim-school-children-suffering-a-backlash-of-abuse-following-paris-attacks-9999393.html

http://www.meforum.org/338/islam-in-france-the-french-have-themselves-to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_France#Discrimination

http://socialistworker.org/2015/01/12/the-anti-muslim-backlash-in-france

http://time.com/3659241/paris-terror-attack-muslim-islam/

Here’s a Wikipedia article about the history of racism in France:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_France

AP/Laurent Cipriani

The point of these examples is not to “blame the victims” of yesterday’s events. The purpose of this writing is not to blame France for its own racism or history of Colonialism. These mass murders cannot be justified. However, that doesn’t mean they can’t be explained and understood.

France is just one country representative of problems that have been replicated on a global scale over and over again by different people and nations over history. Localized events like this are microcosms for global events. The global history and climate of oppression, of imperialism and colonialism, of exploitation, inequity, and state-funded terror against entire countries is part of this problem. The Paris attacks are a symptom of a divided world based on a history of broken foreign policies.

There are many in this world seething with anger and rage against the “Western world” and all that it represents. We are the other that is responsible for the death, destruction, and despair faced by millions of people in the Middle East, Africa, and other parts of the globe. In the eyes of those who we brand as terrorists, we are the terrorists. And if you look simply at casualty rates, maybe we are, as many will label us, “the real terrorists.”

Andy Singer

So where does this leave us? How can we all respond differently to these events so as to not perpetuate the same cycles of violence, death, and despair that continually plague the human race? 

I can only share with you my own reaction and process to hearing the news.

When I read the first headlines, I was alarmed, but not surprised. My worldview is one in which I think that such events are commonplace and I’ve come to consider them as horrendous but expected occurrences given the type of world we live in. I got angry. I thought of all those people who were out living their lives and were murdered while innocently doing so. But the anger quickly left me – I let it go. And that’s when I felt the core emotion underneath my anger: sadness. I feel deeply saddened by the recent events in Paris. I am sad that we do this to one another over and over again. I am sad because I believe that in the grand scheme of things, the world’s reactions to these attacks likely won’t result in anything changing for the better.

As much as I am upset and saddened by the actions of the people who carried out these attacks, as much as I want to hate them and demonize them for their cruelty, I refuse to. I refuse to other the people that did this. As I’ve mentioned, I think that this “othering” process is a core part of the problem in how we treat each other as human beings. But on a more fundamental, personal level, I cannot other these people because I acknowledge that given the wrong set of circumstances, I could have been one of them. Had any one of us been born into the environment that these people were born into, been exposed to whatever experiences, horrors, and ideologies these people were exposed to, we could have been them.

We all have the capacity to be monsters. We all also have the capacity to be more than that. Those of us who are privileged enough to have the relative peace, safety, security, and time to reflect have the opportunity to consciously choose how we want to be in the world. We need to exercise our responsibility to choose.

So today, despite my anger and sadness and fear, I choose not to hate. I choose not to demonize the people who carried out these attacks. I choose to strive to understand rather than to contain and separate myself from the horror. I choose to write these words to help me process my own experience, and hopefully make a difference in how you process yours.

What do you choose?

Christopher Mulligan/CBC News

Bare

As if today wasn't everything I have,
memory trails encoded in neural webs,
flashes of light across synapses
illuminate moments,
feelings, places, times
I'd sooner forget.

Dare I squander another hour,
another minute of this
flash-in-the-pan existence
before  my energy is again strewn
across the expanse,
the void,
to drift nowhere,
out of time?

Dare I be afraid of speaking truth,
of emotions, of consequences,
to standing naked against the wind,
to shivers and goosebumps on skin,
dare I hide behind a gripping façade of shame?

No, no.
I have cowered in the shadows,
I have run from the now.
I know fear
and all of its companions;
I've tasted the blandness
of living suppression.

I have learned all I can
from the dark.