"memory-keeping"

Ten days ago, photographer Danish Siddiqui was killed by the Taliban. I know people who don't know his name, but would recognize his images right away. What images! Siddiqui's image of the Rohingya woman keeps showing up in my dreams a lot lately (I've been rereading Sea of Poppies and I think my brain's conflating things). 

SV, who's quoted in this New Yorker article, calls his work "memory-keeping, at a time when we have lost our capacity to think or remember." Here are some other galleries of his work in remembrance. 

an ordinary happy

why not stay awake           

watch                                

today's felt blog post         

become                              

just yesterday's ghost        

to a moment, wonderful

right now

becoming extraordinary 

as memory

as witness, totem, story

-----------------------

Pic: Nu and At playing Super Smash Brothers, a game they acquired the weekend Big A and I were away in Seattle. They had so much fun pretending they were going to invite someone called "Smash" over to the house while I was gone, and I had so much fun pretending to be horrified by the idea. It was only later that I discovered that they didn't know I was pretending. "How did you even know it was a game?"--they asked. I don't know.

"How to Live in a Burning World Without Losing Your Mind"

Today I'm really feeling Liza Featherstone's essay in The New Republic: "How to Live in a Burning World Without Losing Your Mind."

"I’m in no condition to receive this news. I can’t tolerate more worry, death, sickness, sadness, or pain—more mothers and grandmothers dying, and maybe even less bearably, children.

I’m not alone.

We are in the middle of another wave of horrific climate news, but many of us are too traumatized to pay attention. The more loss and horror we’re facing in the rest of our lives—whether from the coronavirus and opioid pandemics, economic upheaval, or the ordinary awfulness of cancer and death—the less equipped we are to take it in."

holiness

can we begin with how 

reduced to sweetness

lists run through

an abecedary 

of wonder

a longing 

to recite how

we return tender

to summer's thirsts

hearts giant with shining

buddies

 

Spotlight on Huckleberry Amulya

(a.k.a Toyface and "mallalam" expert)

beyond

 

Family trip to Detroit today for the Beyond Van Gogh exhibition. It was trippy and magical.

The kids shared a Dr. Who episode featuring VVG, and perhaps that's why I found myself squeezing Big A's hand and tearing up in the immersive hall as all the beautiful brushstrokes began to swirl around me. 

like an old-fashioned riddle

I tally ego on the rosary of my body
count the worry beads of desire
sum my abacus of need

my small silence inside your eternity

my sky inside your horizon

is watching us recede

as I exchange thoughts for doubts

I wonder if you can hear them;

I think you'd concede 

that you pull me along, in undertow--

not caring for my suffering--

until you have me freed