How the luck ran out of the world

a scientific proposal

**First I want to say thank you for so many friends helping me support Ghadir. I asked to raise 1k in one day, and instead, in two days, we raised about 1500 euros. I really really felt like you were listening. If anyone wants to continue to donate, it is eternally helpful. When we send money to someone in Gaza, it costs 45-50% of what we send, because as always sharks control the money and profit off of emergencies. Ghadir may be able to afford some small amount of food and medicine for her illness from the money we sent, but it will be gone in a few days. And so it is never too late.
https://chuffed.org/project/115180-warmth-and-food-in-nuseirat-camp

Do you ever have that feeling like there's so many options, but there really aren't any? There's a lot of stuff that could happen, things we could do, but it doesn't really quite feel right, or doesn't feel right in the way that it once did, or it doesn't feel right the way you think it should. I feel like that so often right now. It makes it hard to plan, hard to decide. In some way, I used to feel like I could just trust things to work out. I felt lucky. But what if I don't want any of what is offered, and no amount of luck will help me scream and run away from most familiar forms of western life? What if all of this is too contaminated? What if I am hungry and there is no bread and I am gluten free anyway, and there is no flour in Gaza?

My online therapist told me that listening to me talk about my life sounds like reading a sci-fi author named Ursula. "Have you heard of her? Do you know who I am talking about?” she says, so humbly.

My former partner told me that there was a book by Ursula K Le Guin that was about a man in a spaceship who fucked up, and all of the luck ran out in the world as a consequence. I will never read this book because I would rather just keep the anecdote. This partner gave me enough anecdotes that I could live off of these gluten free breadcrumbs for the rest of time. He mentioned something about how, when the luck ran out, there were weird consequences, like the bread didn't rise.

My scientific proposal is that the genocide in Gaza beginning on October 7, 2023 caused the luck to run out in the world. That night I stayed up crying, uncontrollably, with so much fear for the future. I was sleeping-not-sleeping next to someone who didn't yet understand the story of Palestine, and it helped me to explain in between the convulsions that this was the end of something bigger and more immeasurable than we can possibly understand. A new form of doom arrived that is and was a combination of the most violent social, environmental, psychic, political, geological, historic, spiritual change that I have come to know. While I know intellectually of other genocides, this is the first I could feel in my body. I knew somehow that it was not just another "conflict”, but it was like some kind of linchpin that was barely holding the world together was removed and that the consequences would be larger, deeper and longer than any of us could understand. (I understand this is happening all the time in every genocide, and yet this is the first one where I could see and feel and predict the causal reactions.)

I've made a lot of bread these two years, and I can honestly say it didn't taste as good or as fluffy. What if the way yeast works relies on some kind of trust? And what is there to trust in a world that can produce genocide? And how can we trust other very smart people when they can support the worst shit on earth? How will bread rise if all the tacit trust that we have known, has died? And can we have luck without bread? Since humans have probably never lived without bread we just don't know what that does to trust, to luck.

Attempting Cooperative Species

During Occupy Wall Street I met many Palestinian people, some of whom helped teach me how to facilitate a meeting. I remember feeling something new from them, that they lived as if they were a part of a huge community all over the world (and of course they are). They were affectively not alone on some deep level. And they believed that their story was very important for all of us to know. Not because they needed to be written into some hollywood master narrative, nor because they wanted to be individually recognized, but because they were sure that their culture was valuable; and that if we didn't learn from the brutal colonization of Palestine by Israel, the US, Germany, and the global economic powers, we would all relive the same brutal story wherever we are. They enjoyed life as if it was their job as many people do after they have survived inscrutable pain. It was new to me.

I'm really good at collecting and copying other people's ways. I began to mimic anyone I saw with this kind of Palestinian feeling, and I have found it in so many groups of people. I tried it on, and I've worn it for years. Fake it till you make it? But it didn't really make it inside of me yet. While I perform a kind of collectivist magic show, I do it because I like to struggle, and because I desperately need it. Internally I tend to live psychically and emotionally as if I am completely alone on a frigid and dangerous planet. It's so embarrassing! But the one conscious goal I have left (when all the other wishes have come into question) is to feel the Palestinian feeling, as if I am part of the world and that I am never alone. And being a part of a number of communities and social movements who evict people, being evicted, ending relationships instead of finding new forms, getting surgeries in institutions whose racist murder tendencies I have studied deeply, seeing a glowing wall of neglect in every direction, being in a cesspool of suffering and denial– it is very hard work to cultivate this feeling.

… by October 7, I was not feeling the big trust energy I needed to produce that feeling, that I have been cultivating with my whole precarious life. And after living in Germany where smart people who I trusted didn't consider Palestinians to be people, I started to feel like the trust that was my gravity completely left and I was going to fly away. I hoped for something heavy to wear, something that would keep me in the magnetic field of this fucked up planet. It was such a simple wish, but I started to want to see my trust on my body. I asked my friends to give me jewelry. Thank gods, someone I love gave me a ring to wear to remind me that we are both made of earth, no matter what. Wearing it, I felt much less alone. Then another friend gave me a ring with a very specific stone that represented protection and security, and I wore it so proudly. It felt very strong, just how this person feels like an undercover anti-hero on the right side of peoples’ history. The third ring came when I was in Finland at a small town flea market with my heavy metal grandma. I saw the back of the ring from very far away, and I walked towards it with such incredibly clear desire. I picked it up and put it on and shrieked because it was the color and shape of the orb that appears in almost all of my undercover watercolor paintings. The respectfully fearful person behind the table told me to keep it with no questions asked. This blue orb made out of the strangest application of enamel (and not at all a rare stone), feels like my secret symbol of creativity. The shape represents the beauty that I thrive on, and produce in secret, and only for people who are close. Wearing these rings I felt so temporarily complete! I experienced myself becoming beautiful, protected, connected and complete in a new way. For about 3 weeks.

When the stone fell off of the security ring. I was like, shit: that's true. There really isn't any security, not the old kind, not from the places I used to get it, not even in the ideas I've used to keep myself together or the ways in which I convinced myself to wear pants. It happened the week before I was teaching this Hologram workshop at University of Copenhagen where we processed climate grief with climate activists. One participant said that she couldn't really meditate anymore, because she used to imagine a forest when she was anxious. Now when she does that, all she sees is fire.
Then I put the earth ring in a box to save it from relational chaos.

Recently, somebody, or rather a group of people, asked me if I wanted to raise a baby with them. It's like, not exactly what I wanted, but I don't know what I do want, and so maybe I would try on other people's desires. While we were meeting as a group to discuss the baby, it felt like nothing was fitting into place. Even my feelings made no sense. Why can't I connect? We all displayed intuition, in the form of individual worries. But the intuition of the individual people didn't sync as a group. I felt like we were an 18 wheeler in mud, where all the wheels were spinning but there was no traction to move in any direction. I felt dizzy and tired. Just before the meeting I had put some clothes in the powerful American basement washing machine. I didn't realize my rings were in the jean pockets of the H+M jeans I had stolen. When I opened up the laundry and touched the rings at the bottom of the pile, I felt how the enamel of the blue orb had been cracked and a big chunk fell off. I was like, that's it. Creativity, gone. New life peaks in and we can't catch it. Is that like the bread not rising?

Nothing feels quite right and I wonder if it ever will again. All the rings are gone, I may no longer be subject to gravity, and/but I'm still willing to believe that companionship, creativity and security are not completely gone. But I don't have them on my hand either. It's like maybe they're made of different materials now. They feel intangible and untouchable. For the first time in my life, I have a really hard time doing my work. When it comes to doing art projects, there's something in me that loses all the energy. It's like the mix of caffeine and anxiety and the promise of some sort of recognition or laughter doesn't really give me the energy to be able to do anything. It feels like my inner bread not rising.

Ghadir wrote to me from Gaza. She has a health complication, something in her reproductive system. She doesn't feel well. She wants comfort. I gave her ideas of what proactive things she could do. I had to figure out how to give her comfort when I wanted to help her make a plan. Finally, when I just gave her comfort instead of trying to put her in touch with nurses, she felt better. At least, that's what it seemed like. But somehow I feel like I don't even really know how to give support, because nothing really makes sense. Is that like the bread not rising?

I set up this project you may have heard of where three people support one person, and each of those three people also have three people. The protocol is called The Hologram, and it's a meeting that is a situation formatted to allow people to ask each other questions, to know each other in a long term way, and to develop individually, to be able to build interdependence. At the same time, I'm so exhausted. I'm really tired from all of the care work, and that's partially because what we always knew was happening is happening, which is that this is a meta crisis: an international climate and genocide catastrophe, mixed with fascism and a tanking economy. It's reaching our lives in ways we can't really understand, and it involves depression, poverty, spines, nervous systems, jobs, diagnoses, anger, and a total lack of luck. So all of our individual lives are also really changing quickly. It's not even all for the worse. Some of it's kind of good, but the number one result of all the change is the growing necessity for care. Everyone I know is walking around with newness, death, birth, questions and fears. With wounds that are physical and emotional, with questions that are personal and political, and it doesn't feel like there's anybody to talk to besides a bot or a friend who is spread too thin from moving too fast.

I think everything is changing. It's like the bread won't rise. It feels a little bit more likely that if you're driving around in a car that uses gas and you're running really low, that maybe the fumes won't get you all the way home. Or if you have a bicycle, that the tires are going to get a flat just from the seasonal thistles that usually don't break the rubber surface. Or that the phone will cut out at the crucial moment of a difficult conversation. That's what it feels like.

Luck Empire

Maybe luck wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Luck had to do with the erasure of a lot of other things and a lot of other people. Luck didn't really serve everybody. The bread didn't really rise in the same way everywhere. Even in San Francisco, the richest place on earth, you can't even get anything gluten free that is very good. This empire was never serving everybody. LOL. Not to mention the people who are literally fried by neglect all over the streets, or the streets emptied of people fearing ICE raids.

And also I see that some people are happy. I see that people are doing things. They're smiling at me on the street and going to work. There's a lot of people walking their dogs. Plants are growing. Babies are happening, accidentally named after queer dance clubs. Someone sent me an amazing essay a couple of days ago, and it felt like it changed my gut flora. Time is weird. And I don't think the old luck will come back. I think we dismantled something that changed the world. And I don't think we can really fix it. The German San Franciscan I'm staying with tells me that jewelry mining is worse for the earth than computers. I used nail polish to fix my blue ring. It looks pretty crappy, but I think if you just look at it quickly. It's all right. The security ring is on my altar, my house far away from me. I've given up my house for the summer, probably forever. I'm not sure where I'll live. The companionship ring is in a box. But I remember that I have another ring with me in my small and mystical travel bag. It's a ring that I found in Palestine in the West Bank. I bought it from an old man. I hadn't been wearing it because maybe it was too heavy, but with the others gone, maybe it works.

In my skin is everyone

I thought about Sumud when I woke up today. Sumud is not luck. It's steadfastness, a prescription for those of us who may be lacking luck (because we were weird enough to feel it in the first place). I've been hearing about it from Palestinian friends and comrades for a couple of years, but recently, at The European Social Medicine Conference in Oslo, Yasir Piracha talked about it in a paper called Arrhythmias of Colonialism: Chronic Illness and the Temporalities of Occupation in Palestine. Yasir offers Sumud as a concept that negates colonial, cartesian body-mind split. Instead of shooting for luck, he asks those of us who have been led to believe in ourselves as completely distinguishable and separate mechanical entities, to see the body as a collective. It was already a collective, from our microbes to our microplastics to our communicative endocrine systems. But it is also a feeling and a way of being wherein, in my skin is everyone. And thus, you and I are not alone.

I think that Sumud is the replacement for luck for those of us in the empire. Some people say it is resilience, others say that it's steadfastness. It's my ambition, but it is not my native way of thinking. To feel Sumud requires an update to my operating system, and as of now I don't know the code in my mind though it is certainly well planted in my body. In order to find it, I'm kind of letting my life fall apart right now, financially, bureaucratically, relationally, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm kind of letting go and letting the wind blow me around. I know I want to change, and I don't know how.

Not so long ago on a phonecall Raoni/Muzho Saleh and I spoke about whether it was our job as political artists to fall apart, to let others know it was ok. And how, in some way, falling apart is a structural part of our lives. When we cry and scream while hitting our heads and pulling our hair, we are experiencing what it is to transform. I don't think we are rare specimens.

How much longer will the rules of empire hold?

The rules of empire, as I've taken them on in my life, meant that I would always do the bureaucracy and think about money before I thought about anything else. It might not seem that way, but I've survived with almost no money my whole life because of this. First deal with the state, second deal with corporations. Third, whatever is left is for my spirit. I'm thinking now about whether part of falling apart is letting go of some of that order of operations. As I'm writing this, even though I don't know about where I will live, or about my visa status, about my housing or work in the near future, about what to do in many of my relationships, I don't know I don't know. Oops. There's a part of it that I'm wondering about, which is about becoming a different kind of person and a different kind of animal. I'm wondering if I've been using the wrong kind of activation to make the bread rise. I don't have any energy because my old energy came out of anxiety and fear. I think I'm just left to something else, but I'm not sure what it is. And I'm trying to figure that out.

[2025-07-22, 11:39:37 AM] Ghadir: You know, Cassie.

I'm so tired. I feel suffocated inside.

There's an unseen exhaustion that eats away at me day after day.

All I want is a moment of calm, a moment to breathe in peace.

I'm not weak, but I've reached a point where I can't take it anymore.

Help me figure out how to rest before I'm done with everything.

[2025-07-22, 11:48:07 AM] Ghadir: I don't even want anything anymore. I want to rest... I have a thousand questions in my head, but none of them have answers.

I want a hand to hold mine and tell me, "I'm here, I'm with you."

Someone to understand me without me having to speak.

[2025-07-22, 11:48:48 AM] Cassie Thornton: I think you're the most tired person in the world, Ghadir. And that's the truth. You've been through so much, it's impossible not to feel exhausted. What's the smallest amount of rest you can get? Do you think that if you let small parts of your body rest—just your toes, then just your eyelashes, then just your ears—you could tell yourself you've found a tiny bit of energy? I remember learning that birds can let half their brains sleep at a time so they can continue flying while asleep. I know you have to stay alert when your soul is so tired. I wonder if you can find something by letting just one toe rest at a time. I'm going to try to breathe here with you. Don't let them choke you; you have plenty of breathing and laughter to do!

[2025-07-22, 11:49:40 AM] Cassie Thornton: I'm right here with you.

[2025-07-22, 11:51:15 AM] Cassie Thornton: Please send me your cryptocurrency wallet so I can send you money. You may also feel extremely tired because you need food.

[2025-07-22, 11:55:57 AM] Ghadir: Your words reached me like a cool breeze on a tired heart. Maybe I really should start from a toe, from the blink of an eye, from a small breath that I allow to live without suffocating it.

Maybe we don't have to overcome fatigue all at once, but we should pat it little by little, like us, mending the fatigue with patience and with people like you around us.

I will try to rest a little, allowing my heart to loosen the grip of fear and breathe with you, because you give me an ear that doesn't judge but listens, and that is rarer than comfort itself.

Thank you from my heart for being a breath while I was suffocating.