Source Water

Part I — Source Water

We were told this country was a river. Freedom flowing from mountains of intention toward oceans of possibility. We were told the current was natural, inevitable, self-renewing.

But rivers do not flow by themselves. They flow because something upstream pushes them. They flow because something upstream refuses to stop.

And we are upstream.

I think of water when I think of this nation. The way it remembers every hand that touched it. The way it carries silt and bone and prayer and history. The way it forgives nothing and forgets nothing. The way it moves forward regardless of whether anyone understands what they have poured into it.

You can poison a river quietly. You can bless it in silence. Either way, the children downstream will drink what you leave them..

We pretend politics is downstream. We pretend presidents and congresses and courts determine the direction. They do not.

They drink what we pour. They swim in what we normalize. They govern the sediment we deposit through language, through silence, through what we choose to pretend is normal.

The river flows from us.

I have been thinking about two people. Renee Goode. Alex Pretti.

Not as headlines.

Not as evidence.

Not as an instrument of politics.

As human beings who walked into a day and did not walk out.

Renee Goode said, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” There is something unbearably American in that sentence. The belief that civility is protection. The belief that politeness is a barrier. The belief that saying I’m not mad might keep the world from becoming what it is about to become.

Alex Pretti knelt. Not in protest. Not in theater. Bent into that strange half-kneel where the body understands before the mind that something irreversible is about to happen. In that posture every soldier knows, the posture where time slows to a crawl and the future becomes uncertain and the present becomes unbearable.

They were not symbols until we made them symbols. They were not metaphors until power turned them into metaphors. They were not river until we poured them into it.

They were just people moving through a day.

Now they are water.

America has always been a water story. The pilgrims crossed water. The enslaved crossed water. The immigrants crossed water. The soldiers crossed water. The refugees crossed water.

We baptize. We flood. We dam. We drown.

We speak of tides of people. Waves of crime. Streams of misinformation.

We are a nation that understands power only as current.

And we forget that current begins somewhere.

I grew up believing this country was held together by institutions. Courts. Constitutions. Checks and balances. Documents on classroom walls.

Then I learned that paper does not restrain power. People restrain power.

And these people are tired.

Fatigue is the quietest tyrant. It does not wear a uniform. It comes in pajamas, ignoring another story, deciding that this one is too heavy, too complex, too likely to end in argument.

Fatigue tells you to let the river run.

But….The river flows from us.

There is a lie we tell ourselves about history. We imagine turning points as dramatic. Crowds. Speeches. Shots fired at dawn.

History is more often a couch and a phone and a quiet decision to remain silent.

History is a joke that succeeds because no one interrupts it. History is a tweet that goes viral because outrage is fun and correction is work. History is a conversation where someone says, “Well, they had it coming,” and nobody says, ‘No, they didn’t.’

The river flows from us.

We think cruelty requires cruelty. It does not. Cruelty requires apathy, repetition, and consent.

Consent is given in language. In memes. In metaphors. In the smallest of discriminations of who counts as a person.

When a president calls people vermin, he is not just insulting. He is teaching ears how to hear. When a governor calls a dead woman a terrorist, she is not just speaking. She is placing her in a category that does not require mourning. When a congressman says, “Well done,” to a murder, he is not just posting. He is blessing the current.

Cruelty is also whispered.

It is whispered when people who know better say, “Let’s wait for more information,” even when the information is on video. It is whispered when people who know better say, “This is complicated,” when complexity is being used to obscure clarity. It is whispered when people who know better say, “I don’t want to alienate anyone,” as if truth were a social faux pas.

The river flows from us.

We are upstream of language. We are upstream of memes. We are upstream of the words our children will learn to use before they learn to think.

Every phrase is a tributary. Every joke is a tributary. Every silence is a tributary.

We have poured sarcasm into the water and wondered why empathy died. We have poured tribalism into the water and wondered why compromise feels impossible. We have poured spectacle into the water and wondered why governance feels like theater.

The river flows from us.

I am not innocent here. None of us are.

I have laughed at things I should have stopped. I have shared things I should have interrogated. I have remained silent when silence was easier than conflict.

We like villains with capes and dictators with speeches. They make guilt understandable. The truth is much harder to digest. Most historical disasters are built by people doing normal things and deciding they are too tired to intervene.

The river flows from us.

There were men once who believed a man’s body could be a bridge. Men who believed their life was something that could be traded for a stranger’s future.

They died in surf, in jungles, in deserts, in cities whose pronunciation they could not know. They died for people who would never know who they were. They died believing that a future existed that justified the sacrifice.

We inherit their bones. We inherit their myths. We inherit their debt.

And what have we done with that inheritance?

We have turned courage into branding. We have turned sacrifice into decals. We have turned brotherhood into a hashtag.

The men who died for this country did not die so that killing could be applauded. They died so that killing would be restrained by law, by conscience, by trembling hands.

And yet here we are, applauding.

The river flows from us.

Christianity taught this country that every person is an icon of God.

Patriotism taught this country that every citizen is an icon of law.

We traded both for tribe.

We traded neighbor for narrative. We traded mercy for memes. We traded conscience for dopamine.

The river did not judge us. It bore what we poured.

I imagine Renee Goode’s children someday standing on a bank, asking what their mother’s death meant. I imagine Alex Pretti’s friends replaying the video, second by second, searching for the moment where history could have been changed.

I imagine a future child asking you what you did when people were killed and laughed about.

You will not be asked how you voted. You will be asked what you allowed to flow.

We are taught that history is downstream, that our influence is microscopic, that power is elsewhere. This is comforting.

This is also false.

Power is downstream of culture. Culture is downstream of speech. Speech is downstream of conscience.

The river flows from us.

There is a terror in realizing that the nation is not a machine but a system of storms, and you are part of the atmosphere. You are not a spectator. You are humidity. You are pressure. You are wind.

And when storms come, you will have helped make them.

We talk about democracy as if it were a thing. It is not a thing. It is a habit. A fragile, exhausting, daily habit.

It requires people who are willing to be awkward. Who are willing to say, That joke is wrong. Who are willing to say, That story is false. Who are willing to say, That death matters.

The river flows from us.

This is not a speech about politics. This is a speech about origin. About source water. About the quiet choices that become brutal currents.

Before the shot, there is a word. Before the policy, there is a meme. Before the regime, there is a joke.

We think tyranny arrives in a torrent. It does not. It seeps.

It seeps through language. It seeps through laughter. It seeps through fatigue. It seeps through silence.

And one day you wake up and the water tastes different, and you do not know when it changed.

The river flows from us.

I want you to feel that burden. Not as guilt. As the force that it is.

Because force is what keeps rivers from floating into the sky. Force is what makes consequences real.

We are force.

Part II — The Dead Speak Forward

There are voices in this country that never learned how to stop speaking. They speak through bones. Through monuments. Through soil that refuses to forget what it swallowed.

We built a nation on graves and then taught ourselves not to listen to them speak.

The river flows from us.

Imagine the dead standing in the current. As witnesses.

Men who never came home from the surf. Women who never came home from the march. Children who never came home from the fields. Immigrants who never came home from the crossing.

They stand in the river and look upstream.

They are not asking who you voted for. They are asking what you added.

I think of the men at Normandy. Not the speeches. Not the black-and-white film that makes it feel tidy.

I think of saltwater in lungs. Of sand between teeth. Of fear so thick it erased speech.

They stepped into a current they did not fully understand. They stepped forward because someone had to step forward.

They believed the future could be bought with their bodies.

They believed a man could become a bridge.

The river flows from us.

I think of Selma.

I think of feet on pavement. Of broken bones. Of tear gas blooming like poisonous flowers. Of a nation watching itself on television and deciding whether it would recognize what it saw.

Those marchers knew the river would not change unless they stepped into it. They knew silence was a dam. They knew speech was a flood.

The river flows from us.

I think of the unnamed. The factory workers whose lungs filled with dust. The farmworkers whose hands bled into soil that did not remember them. The railroad builders buried where they fell. The coal miners swallowed by hell.

They did not write speeches.

They became sediment.

And still, the river remembers them.

Renee Goode and Alex Pretti are not anomalies. They are tributaries joining an old current.

You can see the pattern if you stand far enough back. Power pushes. People resist. People kneel. People say they are not angry. People die.

Then the words comes to sand their identities smooth.

The river flows from us.

The dead are never silent. But they are terribly inconvenient.

They ask questions no administration wants to answer. They ask questions no party wants to bear. They ask questions that fracture the illusion that everything is under control.

So we drown them again with words.

Terrorist. Insurrectionist. Assassin. Collateral. Unfortunate. Necessary.

We build a second grave in language.

The river flows from us.

There is a line of American dead that stretches backward before the eye can see. You can trace it though if you know how to look.

You can trace it from the bodies in the Atlantic surf to the bodies in the Mississippi fields to the bodies under the freeway overpasses to the bodies on grainy body cam footage.

Different uniforms. Different excuses. Same current.

If the dead could speak, they would not argue policy. They would not debate tariffs or infrastructure or tax codes.

They would ask simpler questions.

Why were you so quiet? Why did you laugh? Why did you scroll past? Why did you think someone else would fix it?

The river flows from us.

I imagine a chorus.

A soldier with sand in unseeing eyes, We died so killing would not be easy.

A marcher with a fractured skull saying, We bled so law would be blind.

A farmworker with hands like bark saying, We labored so dignity would be more than a word.

A nurse on her knees saying, I believed the story. Why didn’t the story believe in me?

A woman in a car saying, I wasn’t mad at you.

They stand in the current and look upstream.

They look at you.

We like to believe history is progress. That the river moves inevitably toward justice. This is a myth we tell children and ourselves.

Rivers flood. Rivers dry up. Rivers are dammed. Rivers are poisoned.

Justice is not downstream. Justice is upstream work.

The river flows from us.

There is something obscene about how we sanitize the dead. We turn them into bullet points. Into curriculum. They are inspirational quotes on posters.

We erase the blood and the confusion and the normal day that preceded the obituary.

Renee Goode did not wake up planning to be history. Alex Pretti did not wake up planning to kneel in a national conversation.

They woke up as people. They became currents.

I keep returning to that kneeling.

Kneeling is a religious posture. A submissive posture. A pleading posture. A posture of prayer.

Alex Pretti knelt before the state.

Renee Goode spoke with the language of peace.

These are not threatening gestures. They are human gestures. They are the gestures of people who believe in rules, who believe in stories, who believe that civility matters.

And yet the river did not pause.

America is a nation that worships action movies and distrusts stillness. We are trained to see motion as threat. To see resistance as attack. To see presence as aggression.

A kneeling man is a suspect. A filming citizen is a target. A woman turning a steering wheel is a weapon.

We have turned fear into policy and policy into reflex.

The river flows from us.

The dead learn a brutal lesson we refuse. Systems do not need intent to kill. They need momentum.

Momentum is built by language, habit, doctrine, training, repetition, reward.

A system can kill while everyone inside it insists they are simply doing their job.

The river flows from us.

The soldiers at Normandy were trained to run forward. The marchers at Selma were trained to keep walking. The farmworkers were trained to keep bowing. The nurses are trained to keep caring.

Training is upstream.

We train each other with memes and talk radio and sermons and comments sections.

We train ourselves into cruelty.

Imagine if the dead could vote on your words. Imagine if they could annotate your timeline. Imagine if they could sit beside you while you scroll and ask,

Is this what we died for?

The river flows from us.

I do not want to make saints of the dead. The dead were human. They were wrong. They were petty. They were loving. They were tired.

And that, precisely, is what makes their deaths unbearable.

They were like you. And me

When you dehumanize the dead, you are dehumanizing the living. When you mock the kneeling, you practice for mocking the vulnerable. When you celebrate killing, you practice for tolerating more killing.

Practice is upstream.

There is a theology in the American river that predates Christianity. It was born far before the Constitution. It is ancient beyond any sermon.

It is the theology of conquest. Of manifest destiny. Of movement as morality.

We moved west. We moved bodies. We moved borders. We moved goalposts.

Movement became virtue.

And anyone who stood still was an obstacle.

In this theology, resistance is sin. Observation is interference. Kneeling is defiance. Peace is provocation.

The river flows from us.

The men who died for this country believed in a different theology. They believed in restraint. In discipline. In rules of engagement that mattered.

They believed power was sacred precisely because power could destroy.

They believed a nation worth dying for was one that made killing hard.

What have we done with that belief?

We have made killing easy. We have made killing viral. We have made killing content.

The river flows from us.

Christianity, too, bore a theology of reversal. The last shall be first. The meek shall inherit. Blessed are the peacemakers.

We have inverted it again. They celebrate the loudest. They crown the cruelest. And their platform the most incendiary.

The river flows from us.

I want you to imagine the dead standing shoulder to shoulder in the current. Not accusing. Not forgiving. Simply watching.

They see your posts. They hear your jokes. And most clearly, they hear your silence.

They do not care about your excuses.

If history is a river, then you are not a passenger on a ferry. You too are tributary.

You are the creek that joins the current. You are the rainfall that swells it. You are the drought that weakens it.

You are not small.

The river flows from us.

We have been taught to think of legacy as inheritance. Money. Property. Stories.

Legacy is water.

Your children will drink from what you pour. They will swim in what you believe. They will inherit what you dissolve into the stream.

The dead are upstream too. They are upstream in memory. In law. In precedent. In cautionary tale.

They pour warnings into the current.

We pour noise.

Renee Goode said she was not mad. That sentence deserves to be carved into stone.

It is a confession of faith in the story of civility. It is an act of grace in a moment that did not deserve grace. It is a reminder that humanity often meets power with gentleness.

Power rarely returns the favor.

Alex Pretti knelt. That kneel is a mirror held up to a nation that claims to value humility and restraint and law.

What does it mean when humility is met with bullets?

What does it mean when kneeling is met with applause?

The river flows from us.

The dead are upstream of your conscience. They ask what you are pouring.

Are you pouring contempt? Are you pouring cynicism? Are you pouring despair? Are you pouring humor as your anesthesia?

Or are you pouring resistance, clarity, love that refuses to be quiet?

We are a nation that loves origin stories. Pilgrims. Founders. Frontier.

The origin story never ends. Every generation is a source.

You are a source.

I want you to feel the force of that. Not as guilt. As awe.

You are water.

Part III — The Sediment of Silence

There is silence in a river, yet it is not empty.

It is the stillness after an identity is not spoken. It is the quiet after a trauma is witnessed and left alone. It is the thickness that settles when a question is met with turned faces, with eyes finding the ground.

The river flows from us.

There are stones on the bottom, sharp with what was swallowed, heavy with what was left unsaid. A father’s warning that never became a word. A mother’s grief that vanished. A brother who heard the door and let it close. A neighbor who saw and chose not to remember.

The river flows from us.

This is burial. Not in earth, yet in water, each omission dropping, each refusal sinking, each secret sifting down into the coldest of silt.

The river flows from us.

Generations stand on these beds. They plant crops and dig wells and drink from currents clouded by what their ancestors could not bear, would not speak.

The river flows from us.

Somewhere a child stands at the bank, searches the shallows for what glints, and finds only water thick with silt and old silence—the truth buried beneath layers, pushed down by the force of centuries.

The river flows from us.

There are no innocent hands at the water’s edge. Only those willing to wade in, to disturb the sediment, to bring up what others let rest.

The river flows from us.

There is a heaviness that cannot be washed away. Old lies made into stones, old identities lost among the pebbles, old prayers lost in the dark channel.

The river flows from us.

We inherit the silence of those who stood before us. We add to it with every unspoken word, every glance away, every breath held until the moment passes.

The river flows from us.

And what is buried is not lost. It directs the current, it claims the bottom, it waits for a season of flood, when the river will turn and reveal what no one wanted to remember.

The river flows from us.

Part IV — The Machinery of Current

There are men who build gates along the river. Stone driven into mud. Iron hammered into place. Water forced aside, channeled, narrowed. They inscribe their intentions into the bank. They leave scars that will never wash away.

The river flows from us.

Hands set wheels in motion. Hands lower iron bars. Hands close heavy doors. Laws fixed in the ground like stakes. Verdicts lowered like stones. Edicts written and left to harden.

The river flows from us.

Weapons lined along the bank. Steel raised, bodies ordered, uniforms arranged into lines. Badges, rifles, records, identities. Men stand watch, eyes forward. Some disappear into cells. More disappear into the current.

The river flows from us.

The machinery is built piece by piece. Every wall, every cage, every checkpoint, set in place by someone who chose where the river would turn, someone who chose who would pass and who would not.

The river flows from us.

Mechanisms grind behind locked doors. Cells fill, ledgers grow, bodies are counted and lost. The water thickens, slowed by all that is built to control it, gates, fences, checkpoints, rules.

The river flows from us.

Nothing here moves by accident. No gate rises un-commanded. No door locks itself. No order given without a voice behind it.

The river flows from us.

In the machinery there is no innocence. Only the force of what is built. Only the cost, the residue, the ceaseless movement of power through stone, wire, and flesh.

The river flows from us.

You can trace every drowned identity to a hand that pulled a lever. Every vanished voice to a signature on a line. Every broken body to the sound of a door closing.

The river flows from us.

What is built will be borne. What is borne will not be forgotten.

The river flows from us.

Part V — What Returns

There is a day when the river does not move. There is a day when the river breaks everything loose.

The river flows from us.

There are years when the water lies low, slow, choked by what we have buried. Men forget the bottom exists. Men pretend the surface is enough. Children drink and taste nothing beyond silt, and nobody remembers what clear water was.

The river flows from us.

There are days when nothing stirs. Old bones rest, old stones are still, old identities are quiet. No one remembers what was hidden. No one speaks the truth, and so nothing moves.

The river flows from us.

Then there is a day when the current breaks. A body rises. A stone rolls. Identities return, sharp and full of hunger.

The river flows from us.

The quiet does not last. Everything buried is waiting. What you refused to speak will find your voice. What you refused to see will find your door.

The river flows from us.

There are shouts. There is running. There is blood on the bank, blood in the water, blood remembered by the children who were never told the story.

The river flows from us.

No one is innocent in this flood. No one is untouched when the silence is broken. The past returns as a hand on the throat. The dead do not forgive. The water does not forget.

The river flows from us.

You can hide the bones only so long. You can pass the burden for a while. Yet when the river rises, when the identities come back, when the water surges, everything you buried is returned.

The river flows from us.

Some will say it is fate. Some will say it is nature. Some will say it is vengeance, justice, a reckoning.

The river does not care what you term it. It only bears what you gave it. It only returns what you tried to lose.

The river flows from us.

When the quiet ends, when the identities surface, when the river takes back what was hidden—remember who set it moving, remember who built the bottom, remember whose hands fed the water.

The river flows from us.

Part VI — The Return to Source

You have been taught to believe the river runs on its own. You have been told the current is destiny, that the direction is set. Yet there is no source beyond the hands that touch the water.

The river flows from us.

You want to blame the flood, blame the drought, blame the brutality that comes without warning, yet the warning has always been spoken. The warning is bone in the silt, the warning is identity in the stone, the warning is silence turned to acid in your own throat.

The river flows from us.

You stand at the bank and wait for something to change. You pray for rain or for mercy or for a power that is not yours. Yet the water in your hand is the water in the river. The voice you use is the current they will remember. The silence you keep is the silt they will inherit.

The river flows from us.

There are no watchers. There are only those who pour and those who drink, only those who choose and those who endure.

The river flows from us.

You will be asked what you poured. You will be asked what you buried, what you bore, what you released. You will be asked what you called normal. You will be asked who you stood beside and who you fed to the current.

The river flows from us.

There is no distance. There is only source. There is only the force in your own hands. There is only the memory you leave in the water.

The river flows from us.

You are the origin. You are the silt. You are the water and the trauma. You are the story borne forward. You are the consequence, and you are the beginning.

The river flows from us.