Flood the World: What Is This?

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve taken a bit of a break from poetry for a moment and have been making these “Flood the World” posts. So what exactly is this “Flood the World” thing?

I’ve been reeling from the election. Election night I broke into tears when I realized the direction it was going to go, and then I got numb. I scrolled through Facebook seeing the statuses from dozens of people I care about saying, “Just hold your loved ones tight. Tell each other you love each other. Don’t back down in the face of the fear. Have each other’s backs, stand up in the face of discrimination and hate.”

These messages allowed me to sleep a little, but I cried again in the morning, went numb again, and went to work at school where I couldn’t stop asking myself, “If I’m not supposed to talk politics with kids and co-workers but politics has descended to the point of bullying, harassment, and psychological and ecological violence, how and where am I supposed to draw the line?” I was numb just to get through the day, but I also texted the people closest to me to tell them I love them.

One of my friends responded, “I love you too, Tahni… Let’s make a lot of art.” I answered, “Let’s flood the world with art and poetry and stories.”

A few days later my partner mentioned to me that it feels like we’ve just been counting the days since the election. “On the first day,” he said, filling in the blanks with the various things that had happened on that first day.

These two things came together into the spark of this idea: I want to make an effort to post a piece of simple art accompanied by a brief description of something that has actually happened since election night. I’m classifying these as “creative nonfiction” because these didn’t necessarily happen to me or weren’t necessarily witnessed by me, but I’m trying to limit them to things that people that I know directly witnessed themselves or things that I have experienced. I will also make a concerted effort to include aspects from both sides (I plan on addressing the destruction that is happening in the Portland protests, for example, and incidents of falsified accounts of harassment or violence).

Obviously the timeline is warped. It won’t perfectly align with the actual timeline as it unfolds, because I want to keep the entries simple and to the point rather than a long and detailed records. As a result, the timeline is a part of the “creative” aspect, but it was also better enable me to continue this project on indefinitely.

Though I’m going to make an effort to post every day, I will also occasionally take a day to  just post poetry. On other days I’ll post both art and poetry.

So we’ll see how this pans out. ❤ to all of you.