What are the possible relationships between intimacy and action?
What do I want the relationship between intimacy, action, and my life to look like?
What can I do to cross the distance between here and there?
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| Three wooden wands rise from the shore. The sea is open beyond the land the wands rise from, and on the sea, two ships sail the water. Three clouds move through a clear sky. It is daytime. The direction and purpose of the ships in the water is indeterminate. |
On March 30, 2024, the Sun entered the second decan of Aries, that which he rules and where he exalts. The Sun–source of all vitality, the energy that empowers life, and the fire by which we shape our daily lives–is an honored guest in Aries, who knows all too well the pain and harm that result from what some will call war.
My keywords for the Three of Wands (Sun in Aries) are: sovereign risk, the actions of expression, gathering courage, and "every day is a chance to begin."
The texts I read and reflected on are: a tweet by Mosab Abu Toha ("An invitation to all people in the world..."), Rasha Abdulhadi's National Poetry Month prompts for Radius of Arab American Writers, and "These Poems", a poem by June Jordan.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Much of this post revolves around the relationship between writing, art, and supporting people in Gaza. While this internal work is important, there is a current overwhelming need for mutual aid to assist families who are raising funds to evacuate Gaza because there are no open borders for them to depart to Egypt. If you are able to contribute to 1 or 2 or 3 fundraisers, you can view this spreadsheet organized by Operation Olive Branch, which notes which families are very close to having raised the full amount necessary to fund their evacuation: Operation Olive Branch Master Spreadsheet
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1 - Mosab Abu Toha's invitation to all people in the world
On December 30, 2023, Mosab Abu Toha wrote the below tweet, which I have not been able to stop thinking about.
To accept this invitation is to change our relationship to intimacy and action. As a person who lives with the privileges of financial stability and Western/US insulation from besiegement and airstrikes, I am perpetually invited, instead, to compartmentalize my lived experience from the lived experiences of our most vulnerable people. Every morning, I rush to witness the news of more airstrikes on refugee camps and playgrounds and hospitals and tents, and my heart becomes a widening chasm of howling. However, that same morning, my Outlook calendar then informs me that it's time to choke down tears in order to meet the first work appointment of the day. To follow this standard operating procedure is to make an unbearable bargain: to live under the assumption that my existence is only sustainable if I consistently deny the suffering of other people.
And every afternoon that I write to my government representatives, I yank on the reins on my voice, afraid that the authentic volume of my rage might compromise the reception of my letter. I have to be in control, hyper-informed, more articulate than one who did not begin the day weeping. To follow this standard operating procedure is to make an unacceptable sacrifice: to live under the assumption that if I am to fulfill my civic responsibilities, that I must first deny grief its rightful place in that world.
These are just two examples of how my mind is conditioned by capitalism, racism, and unjust power to view my suffering as separate from the suffering of other people. When in this frame, my spirit moves to a triangulated point that can be described as “somewhere between my life and the lives of people in Gaza.” Then, amidst ruins that litter the edge of this broken shore, my mind sets to the heartbreaking task of building a wall between myself and others, between intimacy and action, between spirit and world.
Mosab Abu Toha's invitation presents a third option beyond the unbearable bargain or the unacceptable sacrifice. Toha points out that we can become writers by using our languages and voices to reveal how the suffering of Palestine is a part of our lives--and I can do so right here, right now. I can write about what I witnessed in the latest video or message that has been broadcast from behind the walls of Gaza, and write about what it means to witness this from the position of privilege I occupy. I don’t have to have a PhD in Middle Eastern studies to read one new chapter or article or poem and share about what I learned today. I can remember that our children (all children whose lives we are part of regardless of relational status) will be inheriting our actions, archives, and practices.
Toha’s invitation is also a call for dailiness. Toha invites us to write about everything. All parts of our life–waking, Outlook calendar, dinner with family, all of it. To then let Gaza and Palestine be part of it confirms that Palestine, too, is part of everything, and everything is connected to Palestine. All of our struggles are connected. All of our liberations are connected. If I am to fulfill my civic responsibilities, I am to make time and space for grief to take its rightful place in the world.
Toha's message does not have a gate at the entrance, nor a keeper to deny any person entry. His invitation is extended to all people in the world. Anybody, everybody, me, you, your hidden enemy, my lost love, is a writer with the power to join in the great collective work of dismantling a wall.
2 - Radius of Arab American Writers: Rasha Abdulhadi's National Poetry Month prompts
April is National Poetry Month. Rasha Abdulhadi created “prompting us toward resistance & refusal, toward honesty & action”, a text that offers us five weeks of self-guided prompts that any person can write with, through, to Abdulhadi writes:
May any words you write or speak this month, to yourself or others, pull you closer to life–from rubble, from loneliness or desolation–and out of despair. Whatever you might say in your life, do not delay it. Do it now. Say it now.
In “Week one: Writing ourselves into the living archive,” these questions gather us into the writerly effort Toha describes by centering the importance of relationality:
Who do you trust to help you mean what you mean even more and express it more like you want to?
What is trust’s minimum criteria?
Who do you want to nourish?
How would you like to be nourished by this work?
What are you writing towards?
I encourage following through to the RAWI National Poetry Month page, because the entirety of Abdulhadi’s NPM text is nourishing, challenging, and crucial. Their words remind me that education is catalytic towards love, and that we need to create new possibilities of determination and risk. “prompting us toward resistance & refusal, toward honesty & action” is a source alongside which we can challenge ourselves to grow in our personal practices of love/writing, which are necessary practices when fighting for liberation of all people.
3 - June Jordan's "These Poems"
“These Poems” by June Jordan:
These poems
they are things that I do
in the dark
reaching for you
whoever you are
and
are you ready?
These words
they are stones in the water
running away
These skeletal lines
they are desperate arms for my longing and love.
I am a stranger
learning to worship the strangers
around me
whoever you are
whoever I may become.
from Things That I Do in the Dark (1977) and from Directed by Desire. The Collected Poems of June Jordan.
Copyright 2005 by the June M. Jordan Literary Estate Trust
Thank you, June Jordan, thank you 💔
When Jordan says that poems “are things that I do,” I hear an invitation to the reader’s heart: an invitation to open to the world; to open to the incomprehensible task of lessening distance between myself and you / whoever you are. I hear what is possible, and that what is possible can be claimed in the choices of daily life. When I read this poem, I remember why: why read, why write, why try, why hope. This poem is why, and it is how.
What if the three wands in the card are generating images of necessary confidence and courageous possibilities because they are desperate arms for... longing and love? The Sun will never apologize for being a sovereign self. What could be more self-affirming than living a life that treats love and longing as gifts?
Who may we become, reaching for each other in the dark?
Are we ready?
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CLOSING QUESTIONS:
I am the expert of my life, as you are the expert of yours. One idea; two precious unknowns; three questions:
What is one thing you need to acquire to feel more free to write yourself into the world?
What is one thing you need to divest from to feel more free to write the world into your life?
What is one conversation you would love to feel more free to have about the world and your place in it?
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