I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

I'm not sure anymore what counts as bravery in everyday life.

To sum, waking every morning and settling into one's routine has the veneer of valor.

But bravery is often involuntary and situational, like the men who stepped in to protect

two women on a city bus in Oregon from harassment by a white supremacist.

For others, bravery is a mindset of fearlessness in all aspects of one's life, with the backdrop

being conventionality, where one proceeds to crush expected outcomes.

I live in that between space of play at safe and go for it.

I mostly proceed with caution, but then again, foolishly, I brave activities that put life

and limb at risk, like jumping off a cliff into an unknown depth of water, literally

and figuratively.

I've never jumped out of an airplane, and I probably would be that guy who would need

to be pushed into a skydive.

But I see writing poetry as equally not for the faint of heart.

On occasion, writing poetry requires a level of courage to say what most people might

think, but are afraid to say out loud.

Some call this truth-telling.

The pursuit of the unsaible has given us memorable lines in poetry and released us from

debilitating silence around topics which we fear, an outcome of shame, exposure, and isolation.

When I wrote about my mother's addiction, I was cautioned by a friend not to play into

stereotypes.

It was my first brush with respectability politics as if I needed that.

...