Author: Graeme McMillan

I write elliptically, in the space between ellipses, sometimes. I don’t lay everything out, even here; I don’t explain it all or put the pieces in the right order at the right time.

At some times, that’s an intentional decision for any number of reasons, ranging from wanting to make things more inviting (or enjoyably frustrating) for the reader to make them read on — if I just told you everything, you’d get bored, surely — to, quite simply, not feeling comfortable sharing everything and wanting to keep some things to myself despite this whole space. In work mode, sometimes it’s also a function if not being able to say everything, because sources won’t share on the record, or there are things that aren’t my stories to share just yet.

But then, there are times when I write around things because that’s all I can do, when I don’t really know what it is I’m trying to say when I set out in the first place. I might have a vague idea, an imagined destination that may or may not be real, but I write in circles, I use words like echolocation to find my path when I don’t actually have a map. I’ll find my way somehow, I hope, as I get started.

When I was a student, I discovered the term “emergent research,” and remember to this day the definition I was given at the time: it was, I was told, what happens when you only really find out what you’re looking for when you’re already looking for it. In other words, you start out without a plan, and then the revelation comes midway through: Oh, it was this all along!

I’m unsure if that’s what “emergent research” actually means, or if it’s a recognized term in academia at all, I’ll admit. I could look into it, but that feels like it’d be risking bursting a bubble, or bringing some magic to an end by looking behind the curtain. Let’s enjoy that definition and idea of reality, even if it’s not true.

More often than not, I write as my version of emergent research, at least in the meaning I was taught. It’s the way I think, and the way I feel most comfortable doing it, I think. Sometimes, I just start a post with the words “I write elliptically,” not knowing what’s next, and enjoy the ride.

I keep thinking about a sign I saw during one of the Portland protests a couple weeks ago, as you read this. The majority of signs were exactly what you’d expect: variations on Black Lives Matter or Feds Out of Portland or Defund the Police, each one something I agree with — each of those mirroring chants during the protest as well, with so many of the familiar favorites being screamed at the Justice Center walls. (“No Justice, No Peace, No Fascist Police,” or “This Is What Democracy Looks Like,” they seem to have multiple applications, but maybe that’s a sign of the protests I show up for; the more simple “Quit Your Job” was a new joy, however.)

I’m distracting myself. The sign that I keep thinking of read, simply, “Fix Your Hearts Or Die.” It wasn’t a threat, or at least, that’s not how I read it; it’s not as if  the person holding the sign was threatening to kill anyone. But the simplicity of “Fix Your Hearts” as a demand sticks with me. There’s a cleanliness, a bluntness, to it — a reduction that feels assured and correct. People not supporting Black Lives Matter, people not appalled by what’s happening here in Portland in terms of federal agent overreach, people standing on the wrong side of history… their hearts are broken. Of course.

I keep thinking about the federal officers that night, as well. I keep wondering what they were thinking, what stories they were told and that they tell themselves to do what they do. In the middle of the protest, being there, it’s so clear that the lie of rioting protestors or violent agitators is just bullshit; there’s passion and anger and, yes, power in the crowd, but the tear gas is fired into the crowd for none of those reasons. It’s violence in and of itself, an attempt to disrupt and destroy protest. Who could do that?

(But then, I am just as unable to comprehend who could have a problem with protests saying “black people matter,” and here we are.)

Fix your hearts or die isn’t a threat, it’s a forecast. You might be living in the medical sense, but there’s no soul there. No true life worth living.