My Jandek Plague Journal: 7/2/20 "Here Now Today"

"Yesterday I had to run away/Couldn't stand the depression/It didn't matter what I did/As long as I got away from myself/And the blue thoughts I was having." I found a journal entry from 2017 talking about my sense of exhaustion. I'd just come back from a union rally that I'd spent ages recruiting for only to have no one show up, the sense that everyone I was talking to was abdicating responsibility because I had it covered. I wrote, "I don't have it covered and I'm looking for ways to leave." After the rally I had to remove white nationalist fliers from the building my classes were in. Seeing the work happening in the US now--the solidarity, the anti-racism--makes me feel both heartened and ashamed. I was part of this fight. I burned myself out fighting this fight. And I left before the fight was over. I quit not just my job, not just the struggle, but the nation, going as far as I could be leave it all behind me. Only I never let go because the work was not yet done. -7/2/20. "Here Now Today" from Gainesville Monday (lyrics) (one week earlier)