Our assignment here on earth: each other

Dispatch #26: Leaning into heartbreak

Hi friend,

Yesterday we wished Audre Lorde a happy 90th birthday while simultaneously wishing Toni Morrison a happy 83rd birthday. Can you believe that both of these greats were born on the same day?

It’s so odd – I’ve never met these women, their voices exist in books, on pages, on audio, in video – & yet they have changed my life, the fiber of my being. I’ve turned to their work when I’m afraid. When I don’t know how to proceed. When I need a bite of beauty. Their words have been as filling & dense as sourdough bread. Their words have been balm & instigation, fruit & confrontation. Always both/and, always feverishly selfed & daring. Twenty years ago, when I first heard Lorde identify as a “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” I felt air rush my lungs. She has led the way in my understanding of intersectionality as not just political, but joyful.

Let us not forget that the American government has been on the wrong side of every single social justice movement from civil rights to AIDS activism to queer liberation to this moment in our fight for Palestinian liberation. So many of our artists & writers have been twenty steps ahead, for a long time, when it comes to the just side of history.

Let us not forget that in 2006 Toni Morrison joined 17 other prominent writers in clearly expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people. The other writers included: Noam Chomsky, Eduardo Galeano, Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein, Howard Zinn, Chris Abani, Carolyn Forché, Martín Espada, & more.

Just a week ago, Palestinian Poet Mosab Abutoha shared this photograph on Instagram of books of his beloved library poking out from under the rubble that was once his home. We see, amidst the stones, Audre Lorde’s masterful Collected Poems. As a poet, his library means everything to him. Can you imagine then, how deep his empathy, that he could write, “I wish that I had put instead of books some food on my shelves that kids and their families could eat from.”

I think of that young Palestinian man whose whole family was murdered – & how the very next day he was bringing their medicine to a local pharmacy so that some other family might benefit from them.

Reader, even in my ease & luxury, even on my easiest days, do I have this vastness of generosity?

As we watch ordinary Palestinians face the most excruciating trauma, we must learn not only from the depths of their heartbreak, but also from the depths & possibilities of their generosity.

While many social justice movements – from Black Lives Matter to disability justice to the liberation of Palestine – could appear on the surface separate, divided in issue, that is obviously a farce. Each movement has been a crucial disruption of the status quo. So long as capitalism reigns, this status quo will prioritize capital & exploitation over self-determination & people’s well being.

Reader, is your library intact? Is it covered in stones?

Reader, will you follow Audre Lorde’s invitation?

Reader, do you see the interconnectedness of all struggles for liberation?

Reader, do you think you are safe? Do you think we (who is “we”) are safe? What do you think creates safety?

Reader, who are you & whom do you love? Where did you come from / how did you arrive?

I tore a ligament in my ankle in mid-December during a soccer game & was off my feet for nearly three weeks & all I could think about, between my comforts of Netflix & rest & my sweetheart’s care & the delivered meals, were newly disabled Palestinians. Trying to flee. Told to march. Abandon their homes, medicines, beds. Long disabled Palestinians. Elderly Palestinians. Trapped under rubble, yelling for help. Running on a mangled leg. As I saw in one video: holding a child in one arm, a child in the other, a child wrapped around one’s back, newly widowed, fleeing.

Jew, what kind of Jew are you? What kind of Jew will you be?

What are you willing to face, to force yourself to see, & then – crucially – refuse to unsee?

It feels impossible to try to comprehend where we are globally, to really hold the American & Israeli governments’ nefariousness in one’s heart, to blink & seek a horizon. Impossible, to pour a cup of tea knowing what is happening in Palestine. Impossible to write a vague phrase such as “what is happening in Palestine” when what I meant is genocide. Impossible, to look at the radiant face of my partner of nearly 13 years & feel love surge up hotly inside me & not think of all the beloveds – children mothers fathers grandmothers grandfathers uncles aunts nieces nephews brothers sisters teachers farmers surgeons, it goes on & on, those faces, faces – shot at, caved in by shrapnel, demolished, brutalized, abandoned, unrecognizable. Impossible, to imagine eyes like mine, eyes that land on Angel with such deep love, eyes just like that falling on their dead child mother father…

Impossible, to feel exhausted in America while many Palestinians have been torn from their homes, sleeping in tents, 9 family members per tent, for five months, while no doubt having lost many members of their family & community in front of their eyes. Impossible, for me to claim exhaustion. Impossible, not to dream of them at night. To wake at 4 AM & pull my hoodie over my eyes. Children. My nightmares are filled with children. They are laughing. At me. At America. They do not forgive us.

Impossible, to pull warm socks on & not think of that wide-eyed, beautiful (no more than four years old) Palestinian child standing in the freezing rain because it was “warmer than inside the building.” Her tiny tiny body, trembling. The voice of the person taking the video asking in Arabic, “Can I take your hand?” She looks up, soulful eyes, a smile still available inside her, & smiles. Impossible, to pull warm socks on & not think of her.

Impossible, to step into a cab without thinking of the child tied to the back of a bike by a scarf as his father - no, on second glance, not his father - an older brother perhaps, pulls. They flee from Khan Younis city in the rain. Impossible, to walk past a row of shiny blue Citi Bikes in my neighborhood & not think of the father who wrapped his son’s murdered body in a thick blanket, small body small enough to fit in a crate on the back of the bike, & rode off to bury him alone.

Reader. Alone.

Reader, where did he bury him?

All of these videos are in my Instagram’s “Saved” tab. I don’t want to look at them. I hate looking at them. I must look at them. Impossible, to erase them. To choose looking away.

As a Jew, am I supposed to think of anything but the Holocaust right now?

To feel anything but heartbroken? Not only at what is occurring, not only at the global (non)response, but at the distorted response from so many Jews? At the response of so many witnesses that fumble their tongues over the word genocide? Look. This is not complicated. It is apocalyptic.

Here is a tangible way to help: a rotating list of targeted urgent fundraisers for Gazans. Please consider donating what you can.

To feel heartbroken, this remains. The snow falls in New York. I walk beside Angel & ask her what the snow on the trees looks like to her. She says, “cotton.” Later by the heater the dog whimpers in his sleep, dreaming. We cook, literally back-to-back, in our small kitchen. I shred basil. She roasts pecans. I work on my novel in my studio. In hers, Angel softly counts on her fingers: syllables for her sonnet. Amidst heartbreak what we make is real. Creativity is resistance to apathy, to desensitization, to having one’s inner-world sealed up forever. Beauty moves inside & outside us, despite terror. The leaves grow. The seeds will unfurl. But we need to create conditions for the unfurling, for the growing, for wholeness to emerge. Please keep speaking out about Palestine. Say what you see. Call your representatives, of course. Protest from home & in the streets. Make art. Feel your feelings. Don’t turn away from yourself, or each other. They are one & the same.

My studio on a snowy February morning, 2024

Some winter gleanings from the last few months:

• This episode of HOME featuring Theaster Gates absolutely blew my mind & made me (literally) cry at his ingenuity, creativity, & generosity

• The art of Jean Nagai

• The stunning visual meditation that is All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

• One of the most incredible things I’ve seen: Wealth shown to scale (A terrifying work of art) via Jocelyn K. Glei

• Sun Gets Enemy, a vital poem by Ladan Osman

• Gaza Besieged, Jews Divided, & a World in Pain: Gabor, Aaron, & Daniel Maté in Conversation via Lisa Oliver

• What I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Starting a Meditation Practice also via Jocelyn K. Glei. I can testify that I wish someone had told me such things!

• I watched the brilliant Anatomy of a Fall twice. This acting is bonkers. This screenplay is bonkers. The whole thing is bonkers.

• Ursula K. Le Guin on Between the Covers

• And today, as a treat for all my readers, whether paid or free, here are two instructive pages from my notebook from when I went on residency to Virginia Center for the Arts. For almost a decade I’ve used Essentialism to guide my time management & prioritization. While I highly recommend getting the book in its detailed glory, these are some broad summarizations to start you off. I often share these pages with writing students looking for practical systems of organization & clarification. Here they are just for you!

May intimacy invite us into vastness.

May vastness teach us about intimacy.

May we each, individually, understand our assignment here on earth: each other.

May we hold close Wislawa Szymborska’s lines:

“I couldn't be more shocked or / speechless. / Listen, / how your heart pounds inside me.”

With amply maple syrup,