In the shower or making coffee, standing around in the yard with the dog, painting BIN over the knots of very knotty pine, in the car, brushing my teeth, I am hallucinating. I am muttering to myself; words and phrases and thoughts are echoing, bouncing around. And then, as if I myself am just some portal, some conduit, the words and phrases and thoughts ask to be let out. They reach their mysterious boiling point and I have to take the lid off the pot (in this case, I guess the pot is my head?)—and let the steam out.
Not all, but most of the things I write at least start this way. Something is roiling, something wants to be said, I do my best, mostly, to get out of the way.
The past weeks, 17 days, eternity, it’s been very quiet in there. I think I have been stunned; speechless, as it were. Perhaps you noticed (perhaps you didn’t!) the temporary pause. It feels brazen and disingenuous to yammer on about light switches and napkin rings and the minutiae that exist in a safe and stable home. I also am—despite having somewhat of tie to this particular issue1—ill-equipped to add anything particularly meaningful or helpful to the conversation.
It’s a strange thing to be a writer when something ought to be said. It’s really the one time people might genuinely turn towards us chattering class to ask for things to make sense. I tried to contract the task out, reached out to another writer whose style is not so conversational and slap-dash as mine; who writes in a sonorous and poignant way; who both shares my politics and is Jewish. I tried to hot-potato this particular moment because I didn’t know how to do it myself. Honestly, about 300 words in now, I still don’t.
How to hold so many different and true things at once. How to not look away, but acknowledge and hold pain and terror and trauma and fear and brutality and revulsion and disappointment. How to do all of this as just me, a person half a world away.
How to do all that, within the context of this newsletter, where we talk about living with creativity, we talk about themes of home. We talk about building a life of meaning, knowing all the while that the autonomy to do so is an immense privilege enjoyed by very few. I knew all of this going into this project—I even put it in the About page—but to see it laid bare everyday for 17 days and counting is different.
Despite my immense professional failure and shame for not knowing what to write and not doing it in a helpful and timely manner, I’ve been appreciative of some writers I admire for bumbling through as well. Claire Zulkey and Katelyn Jetelina both revealed having written multiple terrible and ultimately discarded drafts; the true elder statesman of newsletter-land Ann Friedman went straight to links, no commentary last week.
Instead of adding my voice, I’ve been absorbing, witnessing, watching. And then getting off the internet and doing what I do in times of helplessness: Something with my hands. My stepdad and I have been demo-ing and rebuilding the mud room for the past couple weeks (we are not very good, it is taking a long time). He is sick, and while it looks like it may be OK, it feels important to be together, choking on sawdust and chuckling at all the whoops-a-daisies we seem to be rapidly accumulating. The only thing that feels better is connection. Hugging your family, building stuff with your family.
Ultimately, you are here to hear me yammer about light switches and napkin rings… and cement pigment and floor mats and communist chairs (newest subscribers, I do promise this is not what normal posts or posting cadence is like!!) and inevitably, I will have to return back to the scheduled program, as it were. For now, let me just divert your attention to a few places that have had mine.
5 Calls: An app that makes calling your representative as frictionless as possible.
Now that some aid is being delivered, you can donate here: PCRF, Anera, MECA. And aid trauma support for Israeli children from the Gazan border: One Family Fund, Bayit Cham.
For straightforward, true, visual updates: The Financial Times map. (Thanks Max Read for pointing this one out.)
I liked this letter from the editor of Jewish Currents. “And now, when we need it most, we find ourselves struggling with a lack of emotional and political vocabulary.”
Two years young, but some helpful historical context from NPR. “If you don’t talk about Hitler, if you don’t talk about Lord Balfour and the British and the crushing of the Arab revolt, and you don’t talk about the Americans and the Soviets, you’re talking about a fraction of reality.”
» By no means an exhaustive list. Feel free to leave a comment with additional links and resources for the rest of the group.
Take care out there.
☮️
That is: My partner (and children) are Jewish. My college roommate for 3 of 4 years is Palestinian. We three have been talking, together, for nearly two decades now.