Oct 27th, 2023: The last few weeks in ten moments

A few months ago, a friend introduced me to this writing prompt from Suleika Jaouad:

“Recall the last twenty-four hours, and observe the moments, mental pictures, scenes, or objects that pop up. Choose ten, and write them down.”

It’s now my go-to prompt whenever I’m overwhelmed, and these last few weeks, it has been the only way I could get myself to write about what’s happening. So here’s just a snapshot of the last few weeks, in ten moments:

1. A loved one invites me to work on an art project collecting audio clips from Palestinian voices. I spend the morning watching dozens of youtube videos of poems, speeches, interviews. I am struck by how specifically timely they all feel, so much so that I keep double-checking the date of when they were posted, and then my stomach drops when realizing it was nearly a decade ago. The same relevant poems and the same relevant speeches, for years and years and years. This has been going on for so long.
2. Writer Endria Richardson posts this on her blog: “As a citizen of the U.S., no matter my political views, no matter my intellectual understanding, my body has been conditioned to take refuge in the safety that violence affords. Even as a black woman, even as a queer black woman, even as a queer black and malaysian woman. I am still a citizen of a great settler colonial power.” This is what makes this moment feel so different than others: my positionality as a U.S. citizen, as the person in this situation with the utmost privilege. It is my country doing this, my tax money funding it. It is me who has lived a life protected by U.S. empire, experiencing a kind of safety we have only gained through the violence we commit against others.
3. On October 14th, I read the New York Times reporting that the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza was delayed in part due to cloudy conditions that would have made it tougher for pilots supporting the invasion to see. Hend Amry tweets “Water vapor suspended above the smoking ruins of Gaza has done more to stop a genocide than every western leader.” I love this image, the idea of Earth as a Palestinian ally, as doing its own part to protect her. 
4. On October 18th, I have a great day; writing, reading, working, drinking delicious espresso and eating fresh salad under the warm shade of gorgeous trees at a Berkeley cafe. All day I cannot stop thinking about Ilya Kaminsky’s poem: “We lived happily during the war.”
5. The girl on Instagram that everyone else keeps sharing, Bisan, who starts all of her videos by saying: 

“Hey everyone, this is Bisan from Gaza. I am still alive.” 

Now I wake up each morning so invested in her. I check instagram and brace myself for this being the day her posts go silent.

6. By now, it has become clear which friends just have no interest in talking about this, and which friends I’m becoming closer to by the shared imperative between us to talk about it.

Even though I feel stressed and activated every day, I do not feel like I can “self-care” my way out of this situation. It feels more important to keep witnessing, like witnessing is also changing something inside of me. Bianca Mabute-Louie posts about a chant she heard at a march: “We’re not freeing Palestine, Palestine is freeing us.”

7. On Twitter, I find out that an author I admire, Javier Zamora, was uninvited from a speaking event for signing a letter in solidarity with Palestine. I notice my body getting scared; I’ve signed the same letter. Zamora’s response:  “If after reading my book, you think I would not support Palestinian liberation, I don’t know what to tell you. I support the liberation of all oppressed people, all over the world.”

This perhaps summarizes my stance more than anything. I think of that quote from Audre Lorde, about the U.S.: “a country that stands upon the wrong side of every liberation struggle on earth.”

8. After calling and emailing my congress members again, I check the photos of those currently supporting a ceasefire. Almost every single one is a person of color, and I realize that says everything about this time, how this is always what it feels like: just us, always looking out for each other, no one else. 
9. Those eyes, those petrified eyes of that child in Gaza, the image that continues to sneak through my newsfeed, even after days of trying to scroll past the graphic images. But those eyes, his shaking body, I can’t get out of my head.  
10. October 26th, a favorite writer of mine, melissa lozada-oliva, tweets about despair in the exact way I need to hear right now: “Despair is part of life, and you love with it, and you act with it, and you write with it, and you fight with it. This world is too beautiful and hilarious for me to give up on it. Not yet, not yet, not yet.”