Let's twist again

Turning and turning in the idling fire

I didn’t think I was going to return to this. Like many of you, I’m tired of the fire - burning through the forests of Los Angeles; bursting from the mouth of a Russian Kalashnikov somewhere in Kursk; fringing the remains of a Black Hawk and an American Airlines jet as they sink into the Potomac; unfurling from an exploding rocket over the Gulf of Mexico America Elon Musk. I’m tired of the long collapse, an endless sigh that lulls you to sleep, greets you when you wake, the sound of a deflating planet wreathed in smoke.

I’m tired of the fire, but I’m also tired of pretending not to be tired of the fire. Whether because we actually deny the heat, or because our bosses need us to deny it, or because it’s passé to acknowledge it, the conflagration makes liars of us all. Smile for the kids. Book that Miami beach house for Labor Day weekend. Smile at the new neighbors and overlook the Punisher decal on the hood of their Cybertruck. To the office, to the Whole Foods, to the movies, to that new Ethiopian place, to the old pizza place, to all the old familiar places, singed and crisping in every nook and cranny.

Like Thomas, I doubt the Logos. In the middle of collapse, I lose the faith that the Word has what it takes to put out the flames, that language and expression and love-in-reason can, in fact, vanquish the pyromania of our dumb unblinking tyrants. I need to press my fingers into the victory of the Word. Till then, every time I tap keyboard, I’m doing so simply because I’m tired of pretending not to be tired of the fire.

I am employed in academia at the hour of its undoing. I’m paid to pass on knowledge when knowing things, and acting on that knowledge, can cost you your life, or at least your visa. I am one of a smattering of melaninated professors, in an English department whiter than the freshly fallen snow, at a school where I once heard “Dixie” playing on the PA system. I teach online because I’m good at it, and also because, after decades of budget cuts, the physical campus is a monumental petri dish of mold and asbestos and, in all likelihood, copulating strains of H1N1. And yet, at this tattered bastion of white paternalism, earning a paycheck means pretending not to be tired of the fire.

ICE officers cannot enter campus without a judicial warrant, so I’m told. The school remains committed to DEI, so I’m told. The enrollment numbers are very positive, so I’m told. Meanwhile, America’s already-bedridden educational system is being tortured into its death throes, and signs of its renal failure pop up all over campus. Students were forced to take down a Palestinian flag because, apparently, this now amounts to prejudice. The library staff has been eviscerated. My attempt to start a website platforming the voices of immigrant students has been met with eerie silence, such that the office of student communications will not communicate its existence to students. The authoritarianism of the world’s favorite demented assclown has, with brutal efficiency, produced ranks of faculty eager to obey in advance. Now I find that faculty are required to add one more paragraph of jargon to our already overstuffed course policies, a helpful reminder to students that if they do not attend with sufficient frequency, they will fail. Our windowless classrooms require their unstinting devotion.

I’d say that I refuse to obey, that I will be that one German refusing to thrust his fingertips to the sky, that this Substack stands for #resistance. I could do that, but it feels as phony as pretending not to be tired of the fire. I’m going to rage against the dying of the light, to be sure. But it feels like the easiest way to lose that rage is to take it for granted, to become satisfied with one’s internal dissent, so satisfied that one never thinks to externalize it. I would rather fight fire with fire.