My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/4/20 "Don't Go Out"

"Don't go out don't go out/It's only flowers and trees/people and machines/buildings and despair." In talking to my students about the police riots in the US, I started telling them not to go. That they can't go to the US right now is obvious--the pandemic is still on, the country has no plan to handle it, and no healthcare system even if it did. I'm telling them not to apply to college there, that things will not be better by fall 2021. And it sound alarmist. It feels alarmist. I think I'm being understood as saying the police will still be rioting in a year-and-a-half, and I don't mean that. Instead, the systems that have made this moment happen--police impunity, their co-ordination with white supremacist groups, and the racialized violence that is the bedrock of our nation, like the compete absence of anything resembling a healthcare system, will still be present next year, and it's not worth risking. -6/4/20. "Don't Go Out" from Canticle of Castaway (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)