3/7/26

Post by Josh Rubin

Yesterday:

Leaving a vigil isn’t easy, I have found. Although my home and my home life calls me, more so than ever as I get older, as I leave I find that I shed pieces of myself on the side of the road where I stood. And I take pieces of each place home with me, traces of the souls imprisoned. These traces, that float in the thickened air above the swamp, are with me as I pack my scattered belongings to throw into the back of my rental car. They swim like floaters in my eyes, clouding my vision until they suddenly become vivid and sharp when I blink, or later, when I close my eyes to sleep.

I am at the airport, and lonely. Though I look for all the world just like a fair number of the older folks rolling their bags along, I am stuck feeling apart and different, as I imagine all of us who have stood at the gates of hell for a week or so feel , as we conjure images of the humanity caged inside, making pictures in our minds from the fragments we are allowed to see, trucks and cars and buses and equipment making the turns in and out.

The last time I was here, a great many tanker trucks were carrying in fresh water to this camp in the middle of this limestone and alligator wilderness, as others removed waste. This time all the tankers carried waste. It took me days to realize that wells to the aquifer must have been dug, through the limestone crust, and that thought weighs my spirit: more permanence.

My flight is getting ready to board, to fly me away from this dream. A dream full of fellow vigilers (vigilantes?), nightmarish times and shreds of hope. Faces smiling, eyes tearing, thumbs up of support, honks of encouragement, hating fingers, threats. Pictures burnt into eyes that want to stop seeing, but can’t.