Thoughts

2023

2023 was a challenge to push through before October, and then all hell broke loose. It is not unfathomable. Zionists are doing exactly what zionism was designed for, and what they've been doing since the late 19th century: purge the indigenous population, rewrite history after evidence has been eradicated, and create an identity that the world might believe is authentic. The world is not upside down; zionists have seized an opportunity fortified by technologically advanced weaponry funded by our tax dollars - they have been waiting for the perfect opportunity for another big push. They believe their ultimate goal of complete genocide followed by expansion is being realized.

This Nakba, however, is happening with the perverse fanatical support of the west, and my tax dollars are annihilating my own people.

Any sane person, whatever that means to you or to me, will recognize it as insane, but it is happening. Anyone who takes ten minutes to step outside the facade of tightly-controlled and scripted mainstream media can see what's happening, like a dimly lit room suddenly illuminating with full clarity.

But here's the enduring truth. Resistance is the blood pumping through the arteries of suppression and circulating life, renewing determination despite the oppressor's efforts to apply a death grip like a tourniquet around a neck. 

Palestinians cannot be disappeared.

______________________________

I'm no longer active in the collective. I have become very  "busy" and not in a way I could share outside the family and a few friends.

A week after the slaughter began, I was starting a new rotation at work, so I was in training; my beloved Dania (species: canine) died the morning I started training (her ailment was a complete mystery, but she was so sensitive, and there was so much "activity" all around us, I don't doubt the intense collective mourning was too much for her spirit to bear).

I was suspended between two worlds in the physical realm, and two worlds in the more active realm. I worked, I mourned, I worked, I received and experienced what was needed, I feared sleep, I feared waking, then I got over it and was available for whatever needed to be seen or heard or felt.

I'm not ready to describe the sheer overwhelming beauty of how people are shepherded out of the rubble and chaos and unbearable pain by countless guides. At first, all hurriedly and desperately trying to deliver messages in Arabic and the comical tragedy of me not speaking enough to really understand, let alone share. 

I was able to get a message to N. E. and took the risk; it was not an option to not do it. It was needed. And it was received. She understood. She embraced. 

Now, nearly a year later, I am more grounded. I can "feel" what I see and experience, and my beautiful niece opened her heart to my eye and will likely paint/draw what she interpreted, felt, "saw." I want it to be seen as much as it can be done.

Right now, I'm unable to get it onto paper or canvas.

Right now.

2024

Back injury. Fighting my way back (pun unintentional, but I'm keeping it).

Work continues to be a bit surreal. So much seems insignificant. That's not really different, though. I spent a lifetime in service to the voiceless. Nothing I've done since could compare to what I was called to do. I haven't grown new synapses from my burnout's destruction, so now I work in tech and dream of a goat sanctuary. 

I have finally moved to a place of practicing gratitude that is not mired in guilt. Every single thing I do, from using running water, to having a/c, to food in my fridge and a vehicle to drive on a road that's drivable and a roof over my head and clothes and toiletries and a bathroom and kitchen and electricity and living without daily threats is a meditation of thanks, of gratitude, of understanding my place in the global spectrum. 

I am mentally holding children in my arms as they die and holding parents and siblings in my arms as they mourn as nothing makes sense and chaos is a constant din and is anyone listening does anyone give a damn does no one see humans when they see the faces of Palestinians my beautiful beautiful people beautiful souls and spirits and hearts so so so beautiful...

I watch a video of one of the Gaza Sunbirds and this is Gaza this is Palestine these are Palestinians this spirit this love this steadfastness and unfathomable resilience look at this face listen to this voice this son of Filastine whose wife has recently given birth in a tent that will be another tent and another and another as they are pushed and pushed and pushed away from home from land from roots.

What I have left of the Gaza sand brought back in 1987, right before the first intifada, rests in a glass container; the shells rest in my grandmother's sweetgrass basket. Most of what was brought back was lovingly given away. I give my sister a shell and she holds it to her heart in prayer. I feel the sand and shells still alive still connected now vibrating with the assault.

From the river to the sea...

Well, that was a mistake

9 October 2024

There is this cross-cultural (supposedly) multi-ethnic and multi-national non-violence group I hadn't heard of before, and white israelis and Palestinians were going to come together in this three-day healing kumbayah series or whatever, and I decided I'd attend the October 7 one.

I didn't stay long.

The Zoom session had over 800 attendees. There were two white israeli women on the panel and one Palestinian man.

This was intended as a healing, a coming-together of those who'd lost loved ones.

The first speaker was a white israeli woman who lost her brother 51 years ago, also on October 7. He was killed by... I don't know. A Palestinian? Unclear.

She's interviewed about the pain she must be feeling, about this shared trauma. This israeli trauma. Having to relive the trauma of her brother dying 51 years ago to the day.

She starts to talk about how she'd lived in israel most of her adult life and didn't even realize there was a "Palestinian situation."

Let me say that again. She didn't even realize there was a "Palestinian situation."

Okay. I get it. You live in an apartheid state with finely tuned rhetoric, and Palestinians are akin to the bogey man or chupacabra. They are invisible, after all. They clean your houses and buildings and provide the bulk of your manual labor, so you wouldn't even notice them. Like ghosts.

This privileged, "first world" white woman couldn't have Illustrated the dichotomy more clearly with her blissful ignorance, and indulgence of her fragility that October 7 with the 51st anniversary of her brother's death.

... but I stayed for a little longer. My bad.

I waited for my Palestinian brother to speak, and it was painful. Good lapdog. Don't offend the white people. Be a good boy, now. And he was. Such a good token.

I looked through all 800+ attendees and realized the token Palestinian and I were the only ones there.

I felt a little sick to my stomach. I owed no allegiance to my token brother, so I skedaddled.

...And then there was one.

What the hell was I thinking?