Dating : Justice & Ghosts

In my lifetime, liberals in public education argued for years that American and British literature were essential to the canon despite the fact this canon was made of mostly of Shakespeare, Austen, Emerson & Poe.

Leftists in academia were running circles around the system by playing this liberal game. I was taught the traditional Western Canon. But, leftists in literary criticism and world literature argued students blow up the cannon as a way sink nationalism & white supremacy. That could be done through literary criticism. It could also be done by writing essays. It could also be done by calling out the performative nature that binds and keeps together a public education system still largely rooted in the ideologies & -isms that distract from democracy.

We were taught to view the works not for some tankie revolution, but rather in hopes to trigger another Renaissance — which our world despretely needs. We identified years ago colonialism is a problem, the left also then said you cannot just say decolonize look at France. Empires can also become empires within empires. Mexican Nationalism and all of its myths are the perfect example.

This belief in an imaginary people slights the struggles of generations of migrants who never bought into statism. They wanted to live their lives peacefully as they maintained their own personal sense of justice that was rarely in line with governments & the powerful.

Manzoni’s The Betrothed is a dense multi-directional story that searches to ask what justice in faith? What is justice in love? What is justice during a pandemic?

Now, these are questions that should always come into the consciousness in looking at how we treat each other and how our institutions are treating us during catastrophe.

While the novel presents the age old case that the legal justice system is an illusion used by the powerful to exploit for their benefit, it also pushes the age old narrative that love when it’s written in the stars will bring two people together into union.

In the novel, Lucia & Renzo are separated by the plague. Both endure a great amount of trauma. But, there was a force greater than them guiding the way despite the neglect of the church & newly emerging shifts in geopolitics.

It was their unwavering faith in each other that brings them together. Renzo reunites with Lucia during a rain storm. Not even a storm could keep them apart.

My own views of faith are free flowing. But, I always believed that justice in true love will always seek to right any past injustice.

I look to the Catholic Church in my small town – I often stand outside and wonder, to what extent has the trauma of my mother as a child seeing people whipping themselves bloody before mass in the 1960s, has been passed on to me?

Till this day, she can recount the terror and confusion she felt from seeing violence in a space that was supposed to be about justice in faith.

My mother Bapitzed my brother and I out of fear we would go to hell. But, we never were expected to attend a Catholic Church again. She circuit broke generations of women in her family who devoted themselves to the church. She wanted her kids to develop their own sense of justice.

Yet, in my darkest of hours, I will always walk by a Catholic Church and feel in awe of the beauty of the architecture.

In 2013, I sat in Holy Family Church in South Pasadena, totally lost. I was exhausted from working for crumbs as I tutored the wealthy & worked in summer camps and after school programming. Wanting to give up, I would stare at the statues of saints and Christ which felt so removed from my everyday existence yet, I prayed, hoping that I would find my way.

In the Rider Waite Tarot, there is a card called Justice. In a tarot deck, the major life lessons that can take years to learn are found in the major arcana or cards like justice.

Justice has been a card that has been following me since Summer of 2012 when a tarot reader told me justice in love would arrive at the right time. But, my equal & I both had to find our worth and personal sense of justice in love.

In some tarot illustrations a person holds the scales of justice on the left (I am really happy to be a left-handed person because of this card.) and a double-edged sword on the right.

The card over the years has meant life choices will hold the lessons for moving forward in search for personal justice. The justice card has always been powerful in answering my question as to why my relationships went wrong. I either gave too much or not enough.

There will come a time in my life when I will receive justice from being mistreated. I see justice on a deeply intimate level because wrongs will find a way to be righted.

In world affairs for instance, apologies just like confessions rarely have the standing power. They are often turned into sham PR campaigns when all people want is human rights respected. But, until a wrong or imbalance of power is actually righted. the lesson will be on repeat like ghosts on a ship. These days, my sense of justice comes from leaving behind people, situations & stories that wound my mental state.

I have to really learn my value. Not write about it over and over via Tweet or essay, but to practice it. It is challenging. I have my days when I feel pretty low about myself because I do not understand how there is so much suffering when we have the solutions. I also will feel low because I don’t not have much worth under our Capitalist system. I am over qualified for most jobs yet, lack the connections to obtain career paths that I am worthy of. It’s the double edged sword for me as the scales oscillate balancing my perception of myself.

I begin to often go down the old dead-end ways of thinking that I should have listened to my parents more.

I know a lot of people have issues with their parents — my parents made plenty of fumbles and we have had our Cold Wars. But, one thing my parents always told me is to live my life, justice in love will find me. I don’t need to prove anything to anyone.

They argue because I was spoiled as a child — I literally had Toys R Us in my bedroom, I needed to learn about balance of scales through a lot of travel alone & with perceived lack.

Every time I showed up at my mother’s door over the years, she knew it was because a man harmed me. I know it pained her to see me going through such unspeakable violence as I downplayed how they didn’t hurt me as she quietly cooked me dinner & advised me how to exit the situation.

Years later, she told me, as an act of faith in me, she had to let me go. She had to trust that she did her job that I would learn about my sense of justice in love. The moment she let go, I returned home.

I am still finding my balance of scales. My mother has the habit of making life a little too cozy. But, I also know that my highly independent nature where I zone out in front of the computer with minimal conversation is challenging. But, she knows I am at an important part of my journey of becoming once again. It is not a stage to be rushed or even forced. She is letting me fully rise again.