melannen | (no subject)

I haven't posted here for a bit because I have all these things I'm going to post as soon as they're done! (mostly GO-fandom-related, because that's how it's been around here lately) and then, well, they're not done.

But tonight I went to the #lightsforliberty anti-concentration-camps candlelight vigil/march event in Canton. The best of the speakers before the march was a Dominican woman who had come to the US (legally) to be pastor of a Hispanic church in Highlandtown in just the last two years, and she spoke about how the job was so different from what she'd expected, how so much of what she was doing was community work and crisis management and helping people who are terrified deal with their lives, and how sometimes it seemed like in the list of work the church needed to do, worship came last. And then she said - paraphrase, but close - that she'd learned that the only way she truly worshipped God was to learn to live as one of them, to be alongside the the people she worked for.

So there's your Good Omens fandom moment for the night.

Also it was the first time I've been to an actual candlelight march with both real candles and a significant amount of marching - we marched a mile from the White church in the gentrified neighborhood to the Hispanic church in the immigrant neighborhood - and it had not occurred to me just how difficult it is to keep a candle lit while marching for a mile. If you try to go too fast, your own movement blows the candle out. And you will burn your fingers in the process. But I was there with a friend, and we managed to be some of the only ones who still had lit candles at the end. Because I knew I had to keep mine lit, or she wouldn't have anything to light hers from when hers went out. And she knew she had to keep hers lit, or I wouldn't have any way to relight mine. So that was more important that just keeping our own lit. And between the two of us keeping a light for each other, we managed to keep it going the whole way when everyone around us had lost their spark.

#metaphor

(she's the houseplants friend and I'm the used books friend.)

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Aw that's lovely.

We didn't march here at the vigil in Boston, but it was awfully windy, and the candles kept blowing out and then you'd run over to light yours from the person closest to you, and try and keep it lit long enough to get back to the people you were with so they could light all theirs too -- and eventually with everyone trying very hard to nourish their lights and being very generous about lighting other people's there got to be a critical mass of candles in the area where we were standing, so when yours blew out you could re-light it from a neighbor, and everyone could keep the lights burning collectively even if not all the time individually. That felt very metaphorical, too.

I went to the one in Jersey City, which didn't have organized speakers but had a good turn out anyway. (I also hadn't realized how taxing it is to chant for any period of time. How is it I can sing for three hours, but lose my voice after chanting for ten minutes?)

We had a pretty stiff wind, so the candles were a problem. I'd brought a half burnt pillar candle from home, though, which turned out to be a perfect wind guard. Course, it means when you are done, you are holding a hot pool of wax that needs significant time to cool off.

yes good.

Yes!

Thank you for marching.

I enjoyed how Good-Omensy this got.