Atmosphere

View of Earth’s atmosphere at sunrise over the Indian Ocean from the International Space Station. Photo Credit: NASA

From the airplane window the red of sunrise looks like a protective layer around the planet that I love. I now it’s just light breaking apart, the radiant limits of what I can see from this angle. But how long have I wished for a halo, a transparent barrier around me that universally signifies as STOP. I mean one that works.

My photo of the atmosphere from the airplane the other day.

I remember at some point earlier in this pandemic when Sangodare and I were considering going to an outdoor birthday party on the top level of a parking deck downtown. It would be safe, Sangodare pointed out, if I could just stay 6 feet away from other people. Was I laughing or crying? We didn’t go to the party. And I realized one of the defining realities of my femme gender in this society. Has it ever, for one moment of my life in public, been up to me whether someone stays 6 feet away from me or not. 3 feet away from me? What has ever enforced or protected my right to personal space? People, mostly masculine presenting people, push up, press up all the time, ignoring my implicit or explicit barriers. Social distance? My life in public in this body has felt like an anti-social collision most days here in the time of rape culture. Imagine if whether or not I had 6 feet of personal space was just a question of whether I wanted it. Whether I said so. I wish.

Is it a coincidence that when I’m in public now most of the other people I see wearing masks are people of color? Or have we always wished for some agency over our breathing, a way to signal unavailability to the aggressive breath of entitlement. I love my mask for how it frees my face from having to make that face that means get out of my face.

One of my favorite things about Earth is her atmosphere, because yes, thank you for making it possible for me to breathe, but also because of all that nitrogen. If any space rock comes out the blue to penetrate the radius of this planet that space rock or other wayward body will burst into flames as soon as it hits the atmosphere. As it should.

I don’t think I’m the only survivor of sexual violence, street harassment, unwanted advances, eager hair touching attempts, or assumptive intimacy who wishes for that exact superpower. I want an atmosphere.

What does it take to have a functioning atmosphere? Well the astrophysicists say a sustainable atmosphere requires that your escape velocity is significantly larger than your than the average molecular velocity in the gases surrounding you, your would-be atmospheric layers. In other words it it has to be harder to move through the barrier than it is to be the barrier. Because escape velocity is kind of what it sounds like how fast and in what direction does one need to move to free itself from a gravitational pull. A higher escape velocity means the gravitational pull is stronger. But in this case the gravitational pull isn’t that thing I’m trying to escape from, the inertia of a culture built as if violation is inevitable. The gravitational pull must be the planet itself. Must be me.

I must become gravitational. Because the reproduction of entitled violation is the world I live in, but the world is not the planet, it is just a story we tell about it. That’s what I need to remember. I planet, precede and outlive every scarce and grasping world ever invented. And as a planet, if I am to maintain an atmosphere gotta gravitate greatly, gotta stay. Could it be that I am actually safer the more substantial I become to myself, the more I stay here in this body, the more I value all these layers, the less I escape?

Because I may not have control over whatever unhealed broken piece of you comes hurtling at me through space. And some of you just aren’t solid enough to stay in orbit. And it does sometimes seem like the more attractive I become to myself, the more likely some other heavenly body is to see me as a temporary fix, short-cut around the work of loving themselves deeper. Have I been afraid to be so massive, afraid that my activated air, my atmosphere will saddle me with your problems?

Thank goodness I am not the only planet in the universe. I remember. Many years ago in Oakland while we were planning for the Critical Resistance 10 convening to celebrate the first decade of Prison Industrial Complex abolition I experienced the magic of orbit. After all day planning we went out dancing at some cute popular spot with a wonderful DJ. And what always happens happened, some guy interpreted my dancing which for me is usually an internal exploration as an invitation to push up, press up behind me. But this time, we were the planets gathered in the solar system of abolition, training ourselves and each other in transformative justice, and Ejeris Dixon, our beloved who is training us all to activate safety beyond policing (and if you and any of your formations are missing out please look up Vision Change Win) activated on purpose what we sometimes activate by intuition. She drew on the embodied interventions she had been practicing as part of Audre Lorde Project’s Safe Outside the System Collective and made a circle. She got our folks to make a circle around me in that moment (because the space debris of socialized masculinity can come from any direction) and now I want to live my whole life in circle.

So maybe atmosphere is another name for community, the context where even I can be free. Atmospheres are variable and astrochemists still don’t know what happened 19 million years ago to drastically increase the oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere so much that now we can breathe, but I imagine it was something like remembering to love each other protect each other dance in circles. And when it happened, was Earth laughing or crying?

Yes. I commit to be a planet. Be the depth of who I am. This massive showing up. Could we know ourselves so well we earn a sky? Could I call on you in circle. Love myself so heavy so thick so consistent that anything that comes my way bursts into love. As it should. As it should. Because love is my gravity and my air. Love is all that happens here. And here you are.

P.S. If you are looking for a teacher who understood the gravitational power of love this Black History Month, I recommend Fannie Lou Hamer.