If you’re reading this letter,

Then congratulations:

The land you stand on has officially been reset. Wiped out.

Would you believe me if I said that the greed of human beings grew so catastrophic that it erupted out of their bodies because their bodies could no longer house it? These green-eyed, insatiable voids consumed everything until they had nothing left to consume but each other. And they did. Bit by bit they consumed every traceable aspect of humanness.

So here we are, a clean slate.

Perhaps we should rejoice. Here now lies a world without: Several different kinds of the same shoes that people rage war for; Various fashion molds to assimilate into; Blueberries the size of grapefruits; “Anointed” leaders and human symbols; Businesses with agendas that stretch from teaching the youth everything but how to navigate being young and making tools and cogs out of adults; The glamours of hierarchies: where being a cog of a decorated and accoladed machine is celebrated; Competition; The worst faith of all: capital. Where you surrender to the green product and damage the source; Taxes

However, we’ve also wiped out joy. Resistant joy. The joy you search for and find in the midst of chaos and tragedy. The joy you have to hold a hand of another breaking heart to feel. The joy of not being alone. The joy of finding constellations on the Earth we’ve forsaken. The joy of being under the moon with someone you love. The joy of watching a young woman ask an older woman she doesn’t know about avocados. The joy of watching her be mothered. The joy of listening to music that expresses every one of your intersecting wounds. The joy of art. The joy of creating art that serves as proof that you haven’t been numbed.

If so much joy can come from a foundation of corruption, I wonder how much joy can come from a clean slate.

Can we even conceptualize the kind of joy that you don’t have to knead out of pain? The kind of joy that bursts out of our skin and is present to simply be present?

All we have now are the generationally traumatized trees, water that holds a memory of pollution, and the air that we take for granted. Here now lies an authentic world. How will you show up? How will you knead joy?