Gentle readers, I hope you'll forgive a few Americentric words. I realize this is the World Wide Web, and thus a worldwide journal. I realize the English language is global, that it comes from a lovely little island with a bunch of Roman-hating hicks, and that the most exciting developments in it might be happening in the U.S., but not by U.S. citizens. Unlikely is not about my experiences, nor "the American experience," and I do not wish to make it such.
It's just that today is a very, very good day.
When we began Unlikely Stories: Episode IV (the continuation from Unlikely Stories, Unlikely 2.0, and Unlikely Stories of the Third Kind) the Occupy movement was at full steam, the Arab Spring was fresh, and the world seemed hopeful enough to turn the site's name into a Star Wars joke. Now, just under five years later, my optimism is completely shattered. Today, I tend to think of Occupy as the First World's last stand against the approaching extinction-level event. We stood, and were discounted.
So today, we publish the last issue of Unlikely Stories: Episode IV. Unlikely will continue—there will be a fifth version, with myself as Editor-in-Chief, Michelle Greenblatt as Editor, and Justin Herrmann as Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction Editor. We will be continuing to adapt to the technological changes of the Web—one must simply redesign one's sites more often than was required in 1998, when Unlikely Stories first appeared—and ignoring, to a large degree, the social changes of the Web: we will continue to publish longer and more complex works, neglecting those with 30-second attention spans. (We do plan to focus on smaller, more frequent issues, but our aesthetic will not change.)
This should be bittersweet, but all my dark and frightful reason can't be bitter today. I drank worked drrked all night last night, and woke in the early afternoon to find that same-sex marriage is now legal throughout the United States. Marriage is a legal institution with legal and economic ramifications, and while I might be even happier if all marriage was outlawed, a legal right that exists must be available to all. This is not a two-sided issue or valid debate, nor is it somehow separate from literature, nor is it separated from this site, its contributors, and the Unlikely family.
Shortly after reading this news, I watched President Obama deliver a eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinckney, recently murdered by a white supremacist in Charleston, South Carolina. The President sang "Amazing Grace." He sang it badly, which momentarily amused me before finding my tears.
I'm an atheist, and a proud one. I am aware of the arguments against atheists using religious symbolism in art. I respectfully disagree with those arguments. God might not be an omnipotent being—either within us or separate from us—but God, "Amazing Grace," and that eulogy were/are heartbreakingly beautiful. Hell, I don't believe in marriage, either, but weddings are pretty rad.
Any sweetness found in Reverend Pinckney's funeral is bitter indeed. But U.S. history is, by and large, the history of random violence against citizens, residents, and slaves of African descent. In many ways, the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church is business as usual, here in the States. As of this writing, four black churches have been torched in the nine days since the massacre.
But Reverend Pinckney's funeral was in many ways beautifully, incredibly, new.
We can admit that this is a very, very good day in a very, very bad century. When we talk about the United States becoming a more inclusive place, we might well be talking about a species-wide suicide forced by a more inclusive empire. That is the world we live in. Let us celebrate our human victories in that context, and without reservation.