in care and chaos

Dear kin,

I write to you in the midst of moving and torrential rains, on a powerful new moon shrouded by thunderclouds. The move is sudden and unexpected; I'm trying to pack everything up in a little over a week. It's not my first time moving quickly, but it might be the most difficult yet— these last few months, I've really settled in, buying things like furniture, tools, and rugs.

As I walk anxiously from room to room, scanning for forgotten belongings and trying to figure out the most efficient way to get it all out, over a million people in Rafah, in the far south of Gaza, have been ordered once again to evacuate or face death. As if they weren't already being bombarded every day, as if they hadn't already "evacuated" several times, as if there were anywhere left to go.

I wonder what these parallelisms we make are actually doing. We, safe in the west. I'm moving, it's stressful, my troubles feel overwhelming. Yet in Gaza, people are running with just the clothes on their back, being killed. Since the genocide began, I have thoughts like this all the time. Birdsong makes me think of Gaza, and the drone of the zanana. There is no sensible way to conceive of genocide. My mind makes the strangest efforts to bring the reality of such violence out from the cold screen and into the world, but it will never make sense.

The gesture is somehow similar to praying, remembering my place in the web of interconnectedness, how worries become insignificant in perspective. When I feel powerless, I pray. Grateful, I pray. I think of Palestine, I pray. Small and helpless, I pray, and still small, it is reassuring to remember the vastness of life and death and change. Palestine reorients the scale and purpose of everything, like God. & yet, life continues, relentless and beautiful, everywhere else, too. Praise Palestine, praise the resistance, praise this precarious and gorgeous existence.

&&&

How do we support others, as hurt people struggling to make it through ourselves? How can community care lift us all up, rather than burn us out collectively? What do you say to a friend who is basically homeless when you have the space but not the spoons to take them in? What do you say to yourself? How do you know what you can actually, responsibly give in support of another? How do you measure your spoons when you're only just learning to feel your pain? Is it possible to practice reciprocity with someone who gives but won't help themself? Or let themself be helped? How do we intend to build an anarchist revolution when we can't even keep a single friend from being institutionalized during a mental health crisis? Community care is self care until you find yourself responsible for someone with undiagnosed mental illness(es) who needs professional help— then what do you do? When you need community but don't have it yet/ever?

Se caen las corazas y las máscaras. Every day I see more clearly, more questions. Let this be a spell of intention, a commitment, a conjuring of good faith. I have so much writing I want to share, so many films I've been working on, but I won't let myself finish anything and release. So here I am, writing without thinking about it, praying the moon will help me get to the end. Will you come along with me as I continue to break down my own walls? Can you be gentle with my misshapen and unpolished? Can I?

Love,

Nico

Some things that accompanied me through today:

• Loneliness & Cycle Breaking — Four Queens
• New Moon in Taurus — Ariana Reines
• un poco disocia3 - playlist by ojoajoman | Spotify
• The audiobook of Care Work — Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
• Hadestown: Original Cast & - playlist by ojoajoman | Spotify
• On Care Work and Columbia and the Life-Long Project of Recovery — Neema Githere Siphone
• The Plant Consciousness Revolution Is Here — Zoë Schlanger
• make a version 0.1 to say "hello, world" — kening zhu