On tire dans nos rangs
It's my birthday tomorrow and I'm feeling a bit like shit. Two days ago, I found out a friend died. She was a member of what could loosely be called the "activist scene" here, doing lots of community organizing and care work. Never afraid of direct action. She lived precariously, but seemingly joyfully. She was hilarious. For the longest time, we knew each other only peripherally, but started hanging out a few years back and got quite close quite quickly. But life lifed and we mostly fell out of touch for the last two years. I found out online and have no idea of the circumstances of her passing at the moment. I made a post on social media and shared some photos and many people sent me their condolences, but very few have reached out to do something, to gather, for her. Though I thought we shared many friends in common, it seems those connections were not as strong as I had imagined. One day has passed, and now that post isn't getting any reactions or comments anymore. I can't believe I won't see her again.
A few months back, another close friend died. She was part of my immediate friend group, and I saw her for gatherings and dinners regularly. She was a pillar of the community, one of our brightest lights. When I think of her, I think of the sun shining. I was away when I found out about her passing, but managed to make it back in time for her funeral. It was a blessing to be surrounded by so many of her friends and family and to share in our grief. I cried and cried, something I had been unable to do for the longest time. I felt it was a gift from her. The saddest, most generous, gift. There were many people there that I also knew through different contexts, friends, comrades that I didn't know we had in common, some that I hadn't seen in many years. So many interlocking people were touched by her, I hope she felt as held as we did. I can't believe I won't see her again.
I remember the tone of their voices. Not really the conversations we had, but the specific timbre with which they spoke, with which they spoke to me. Laughter, softness, excitement. I hear it, feel it, and it makes me shiver.
Last weekend the annual anarchist bookfair took place under gray and rainy skies. It's a gathering that used to be a tradition for me, where I would get to see many friends in a social setting that most often I would only see at demos or protests in the street. Comrades would come in from out of town and we would reconnect. The weather was usually beautiful and we would all hang out on the grass in front of the community centre. "Anarchist X-mas" my friend F used to call it. I used to be involved in some of the organizing for the fair, but had stepped away from the "scene" overall for a variety of personal reasons. The last couple of years some internal drama/politics affected the continuity of the organizing and rumours circulated around it. Though I was not involved at all, I had friends who were. This left me feeling pretty conflicted and I just avoided engaging, I had already pulled away for a while. The stepping away left a void though, and this year I really wanted to go back. I did, and had a nice time, reconnected briefly with many folks, but those conflicted feelings only intensified afterwards. The amount of lateral violence within our communities makes me sad, frustrated, angry... The last time I was at the bookfair, I was with my friend who just passed away. We hung out for hours on the grass drinking beers and bitching about things (and people).
Reading Kathy Ferguson's Letterpress Revolution, she references Manuel DeLanda's theory of assemblages, calling attention to their pattern of recurring links, characterizing them by their density (the presence of or absence of connections), strength (the frequency or quality of interactions), and their reciprocity (the "symmetry or asymmetry of the obligations"). Ferguson states: "Assemblages operate as sites of memory and solidarity (which means they can also produce forgetting and disintegration)." Density, strength, and reciprocity.
When my first friend died, a mutual friend wrote this in our chat group:
I am thinking about a sentence one of my uncles said when another uncle passed away : on tire dans nos rangs (they're shooting in our ranks). L's passing brought up that sentence in my mind. There's sadness and vigilance, and anger and astonishment, all mixed up together...
It's my birthday tomorrow and my partner has organized a dinner with some of my closest friends. I know it will be a lovely gathering and I'm so grateful for her pulling it together, so grateful for my friends. But right now, I don't know how to hold these feelings together, or how to move past them. They're shooting in our ranks... And the hardest part is that I can't escape the feeling that they are sometimes us...