Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

and no one lives where they should      they roam the roads
sleepless paperless      sleeping in bus stations
fleeing in the middle of the night      writing without the peace to write 
thinking without the time to think      eating while standing
sleeping while sitting      washing in rainwater and
living in cars 

— Gunnar Wærness / “29. (planet of the apes / december 10 2014)”

My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.

— Omer Bartov / “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.” / The New York Times

Reading is resistance – through literature we educate ourselves against ignorance and the dumbing down of our society; we engage with the world beyond our own lives, therefore expanding our knowledge base beyond the typically dominant narratives and our personal stories; we deepen our understanding of what it means to be human and learn from different perspectives; and we develop the linguistic skills with which we can express ourselves. We cannot underestimate the power and privilege of being articulate. In today’s society, when our brains are being rewired to substitute scrolling for reading – both involve the eyes – the reader of books has the advantage.

— Bernardine Evaristo / “Reading Is Resistance” / Substack

But the loss of Mother Earth is not a single event like the death of a loved one—it is a continual and unrelenting and torrential stream of deaths, in pieces, in acres, in species. Its scope is gargantuan and ungraspable, and as such, the appropriate level of grief does not seem human in scale.

— Dheepa R. Maturi / “A Planet’s Pain: On Healing Climate Grief Through Ritual and Reverence” / Lithub

Five months into its unprecedented dismantling of foreign-aid programs, the Trump administration has given the order to incinerate food instead of sending it to people abroad who need it. Nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food—enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week—are set to expire tomorrow, according to current and former government employees with direct knowledge of the rations. Within weeks, two of those sources told me, the food, meant for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, will be ash.

— Hana Kiros / “The Trump Administration Is About to Incinerate 500 Tons of Emergency Food” / The Atlantic

Still, none of this means that Trump is invincible, even when his administration uses violence to achieve its aims and terrify its critics. First – simplest and most difficult –the resistance must show up. Get bodies into the streets. The second nationwide anti-Trump rallies were bigger than the first; the third, fourth and 10th can be bigger still.

— Judith Levine / “The polls look bad for Trump – but tyrants don’t depend on approval ratings” / The Guardian

when you hear that my country is disappearing      you don’t get terrified
when i have translated this      so you can understand that my country
is disappearing      you don’t get terrified       no
instead you grow furious      because i am terrified
now that’s empire

— Gunnar Wærness / “36. (empire / february 13 2015)”

What I’m Listening To:

There’s a flavor to the sound of walking
No one ever noticed before

— Julia Holter / “In the Green Wild”