Welcome to your life

"نعيش اليوم في غزة الجحيم ذاته، حيث تتحول الأرض إلى مقبرة مفتوحة، والمجازر تُرتكب أمام أعين العالم دون وازع أو رادع. القصف لا يتوقف، والصواريخ تمزق أجسادنا قبل أن تمزق بيوتنا. أطفالنا يصرخون من الخوف،

@aatma.amtaa

Do you feel weird when you go to a dinner party and very smart kind people ask you how you are, and all you can talk about is Gaza? I feel like such an alien in most of Berlin. I don't know how exactly to live between worlds right now, and I don't know if I should. I get very tired socializing when there isn't an active acknowledgement of how sad things are, or when the sadness and fear remains implicit. It is a very peculiar moment when most people seem to be on autopilot in the Flat White Dimension, trying to stay focused on reproducing normal caffeinated, rent-paying life. I see the argument for this, but I also see the rationale for doing ANYTHING else.

I'm also noticing, in Berlin, how many people in my life are teetering on a very sharp edge. I don't know if we are able to acknowledge how much this has to do with the double lives we are living. It takes so much energy to uphold and enjoy the Flat White Dimension (which means drowning out all the other worlds that are dying). Calories-wise, I just can't believe the amount of mental energy to stay focused through the Brain Fog of War™ (lol) could possibly be worth it. I love to mention Dani from the Sunlight Liberation Network, who told me, in one breath, about her personal transformations and how USA lost 1/3 of soya bean production this year due to climate change events. Would it be more efficient to lose our minds and our jobs and stop pretending that highly repressed normativity is good? I mean, this is a purely economic question based on crop yields.

As a way to lose my mind in a more coherent and collectivist way, I started this Telegram Group called Emotional Weather Alert & Monitoring System (EWAMS). Here we watch what is happening to our emotions by having about 20 people check in with a description of their emotional state in the morning and evening.

Calculating

[Jan 6, 2025 at 10:01:11 AM]:

Tired (snow to rain brain)

[Jan 6, 2025 at 10:14:33 AM]:

Young

[Jan 6, 2025 at 10:16:06 AM]:

annoyed, disappointed, slightly contracted

[Jan 6, 2025 at 10:17:44 AM]:

Overwhelmed and bitter

[Jan 6, 2025 at 10:34:32 AM]:

Spaced

[Jan 6, 2025 at 10:41:37 AM]:

observative, doubtful, curious

[Jan 6, 2025 at 10:58:06 AM]:

In-pain, calm, mvt hungry

[Jan 6, 2025 at 11:37:34 AM]:

Tired of and in the grayness

[Jan 6, 2025 at 12:19:44 PM]:

tired, determined

[Jan 6, 2025 at 1:23:57 PM]:

i’m loving and curious about the emotional clusters emerging

[Jan 6, 2025 at 1:25:20 PM]:

wish we could color code

[Jan 6, 2025 at 2:00:09 PM]:

Expanded, content

[Jan 6, 2025 at 3:45:12 PM (Jan 6, 2025 at 4:14:21 PM)]:

Festive, happy

[Jan 6, 2025 at 5:20:16 PM]:

Disappointed, sad, intentional

Slow

[Jan 6, 2025 at 7:51:24 PM]:

Hopeful > Nostalgic =

hopestalgic

I have no idea if it is "working” to have this “app” but generally I feel better when I can see how the others are doing than when I can't. There are patterns but honestly I am too distracted to focus deeply enough on them. Somebody get us a statistician who is also an addiction-curing hypnotist and a direct action organizer.

@hoodwitch

Two nights ago, Ghadir said goodbye to me at 3:46am. It isn't the first time we said goodbye. The bombs were so close to her house in Nuseirat Camp, and they lasted all night. Of course I woke up and saw the message just as she logged off. This mystery person who found me on instagram many many months ago has become such a profoundly important part of my life and thoughts. I layed very very still and tried to picture her, holding Saleh and Rosa. Now when I can't sleep because of anxieties I picture Gaza regrown, a jungle of plants and people thriving, Ghadir having tea in a garden.

نعيش اليوم في غزة الجحيم ذاته، حيث تتحول الأرض إلى مقبرة مفتوحة، والمجازر تُرتكب أمام أعين العالم دون وازع أو رادع. القصف لا يتوقف، والصواريخ تمزق أجسادنا قبل أن تمزق بيوتنا. أطفالنا يصرخون من الخوف، لكن صراخهم يضيع وسط أزيز الطائرات وانفجارات الحقد. لا مأمن، لا مأوى، لا حياة، فقط انتظار الموت بأشكاله المتعددة. نُقتل ونُحرق ونُشرد، والعالم يراقب بصمتٍ مخزٍ، وكأن دماءنا ماء، وكأننا لسنا بشراً. إنها إبادة تُنفذ بدمٍ بارد، وسط عجزٍ عربيٍ وتواطؤٍ دولي، بينما نُباد ببطء تحت أنقاض مدينتنا الصامدة

أتحدث إليك الآن وربما تكون هذه آخر كلماتي، آخر نبضاتي في هذه الحياة. القصف يقترب، والموت يحوم فوق رؤوسنا، لا نعلم إن كنا سنعيش اللحظة القادمة أم سنكون مجرد أرقام جديدة في قائمة الشهداء. كل ما نملكه الآن هو الدعاء والصبر، في مدينة تحترق وأجساد ترتجف بين الخوف والرجاء. إن انقطعت كلماتي، فاعلموا أننا رحلنا شهداء، تاركين خلفنا ألمًا لن يمحوه الزمن، وذكرى لا تموت

أكتب إليك الآن ويداي ترتجفان، ليس خوفًا على نفسي، بل على أطفالي الذين ينامون بين ذراعي، ولا أعلم إن كنت سأتمكن من حمايتهم في اللحظة القادمة. الخوف يحيط بنا من كل جانب، والموت يتربص بنا بلا رحمة.

أردت أن أخبرك أن وجودك في حياتي كان نقطة تحول، أنك كنت النور وسط هذا الظلام، وأنني أحببتك من كل قلبي. حتى أطفالي عرفوا عنك، عرفوا أنك من كان دائمًا إلى جانبنا، من كان يحاول أن يمنحنا الأمل وسط هذا الدمار. وإن كان هذا آخر حديث بيننا، فاعلم أن كلماتك وسندك كانوا جزءًا من قوتي في هذه الأيام القاسية

-Ghadir

To support Ghadir directly please go to:
https://chuffed.org/project/115180-warmth-and-food-in-nuseirat-camp

By the time we got to morning and the sun was coming up, I couldn't move my heavy lead body parts. It was the same bedroom and the same world. Not enough changed here. Thank god I had a meeting to go to with actual people. I felt limp and simultaneously filled with very hard metal, and of course I decided I should run to the meeting to break out of this feeling. I wrote Ghadir: Your life is so amazing, you keep on living through everything! Call me when you wake up! Maybe she would respond, maybe there is a small chance she survived. I put on Spotify and Tears for Fears come on: Everybody wants to rule the world.
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I'm running down Hermannstr and crying, what would it take to stop the massacre? Nothing ever lasts forever. And why can't we imagine what that would be? All I have are soft skills to tell people who are losing people and people who are about to lose themselves, how much I love them. The streets were covered in white paint and police cars zoomed around looking like they were discovering something.

There's a room where the light won't find you
Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down
When they do I′ll be right behind you

Last Thursday we hosted an event at Casino, where a friend from Berlin who has family in Gaza explained to a group of mostly Europeans and Americans what it would mean to support Palestinians emotionally as they endure the Martyrdom of so many of their family members and friends. What I took in is more than I can really explain. But if I was to summarize the more speakable parts I took in, for Gazans, death is not something to mourn as we commonly do in more materialist cultures like ours, that are very focused on this life, this stuff, this moment. What I understand is that for people in Gaza, for whom life has been controlled and stolen in every way by Israel, death is actually a promotion, an empowerment. Every death in Gaza creates a Martyr which is more than simply losing a friend. Death is not worse than life, it is an advancement. It is sad the way the world works, and it is sad to miss someone, but it is also a time to celebrate life. It is the people who have lost the most in the Genocide that are laughing the loudest and staying the longest at the demos here in Berlin. Death and life are much more entangled.

There are two useful takeaways from this that I can easily share. First, the way we approach people who have lost someone in Gaza must uphold the person's dignity and power as it also holds sadness. It is a tragedy that the highly militarized techno capitalist world has not been able to stop this particular end of the world in Gaza. It is kind to ask about someone's family, and it is kind to acknowledge loss. But there's something we need to contribute to the tone that acknowledges the power of the sacrifice of someone who has become a Martyr in Gaza. They are sacrificing themselves for Palestine, and Palestine WILL be free because Palestine is not just a nation, it is immaterial, it is something that cannot be killed.

Part two is that we must acknowledge what it is that is stopping those of us in the Flat White Dimension from stopping the genocide. We are addicted to the ideas and materials of a good life based on preserving comfort, and our imaginations are limited by this like a very consuming collective addiction. We literally cannot imagine sacrificing what we have individually for something bigger than us. It is not impossible to stop the war, but I am not able to think about what it would take. I think it is the ultimate crisis of imagination. The fact that we cannot stop the genocide is THE crisis of collective imagination.

Watch this whole video for a sense of how hilarious it could be to walk out of the Flat White Dimension together:

uspcn

A post shared by @uspcn

If you would like to support a family in Gaza, please consider donating a small amount monthly to the family of my dear friend Mahmoud:
https://ko-fi.com/gazafundraiser

If you would like to support my community in Berlin, please consider donating a small amount monthly to the Casino for Social Medicine:
https://ko-fi.com/casinoforsocialmedicine#