Sunday 8.23.09: The Desert (Night time)

Pulled a tarot card from the deck--Contemplation. A woman in the desert gazing at a hare, who is gazing back at her, under a starry nighttime sky. Footprints everywhere. I just burned some sage with Wendy, Vivian, Sofia, Robert and Kendra. At the entrance to the camp the sky felt so big.

There are migrants running all around us. Even though we can't see them, they are there. Sofia said she thought she heard singing in the desert. Marching songs, like the slaves used to sing when they traveled North, these people are traveling, North. They don't have time for tarot cards, Coleman tents, sage and duffel bags and pillows. They are right here, listening to the same thunder, the same coyote's cry, enjoying the same cool weather, under the same giant starry sky. Walking to Tucson, a land it will take them days to reach, that some of them will never reach. They'll collapse from dehydration or they'll get picked up by the border patrol or they'll twist they're ankle and have to stop, or they'll make it, to Tucson, Chicago, San Francisco, Detroit, or Lansing, Michigan. They'll suffer through their first Northern winter, or maybe their second or their tenth. Or they'll wash dishes or make tortillas in San Francisco, in Arizona, in Michigan. They'll send money to their families or they'll make new families. They'll miss home or they'll create new ones where they're at. They'll call their moms and tell them not to worry, they'll hide out from La Migra, they'll worry about their kids and they'll pray and they'll come out and they'll go to bars and they'll live.

I've done a lot of those things. I've been a migrant, I've traveled thousands of miles alone to find new opportunities for myself, to carve out a better life. The people I organize with in San Francisco always talk about the connections between queers and migrants, how many of us are driven from our homes and sent off to create new homes elsewhere. How we seek out "sanctuary cities" too. I've missed my home and made a new one, missed my family and started building a new one. I've found my sanctuary city and grown comfortable there. This is my privilege. I was allowed to do these things, these thing that are so natural, that felt so necessary at the time. Artificial borders, built by humans, didn't stand between me and where I knew I needed to be. Who is anyone to impede the movement of another? When I was a kid it used to drive me crazy, the idea that there were places I couldn't go, places I wasn't allowed. Who are we to create these boundaries?

That's all for tonight. I'm sleepy. Tomorrow: 5am wakeup, more training, lunch, and our first patrol.