resources & recommendations
i guess, in a way, it’s heartening that every global tragedy—no matter how many have flashed across our feeds this month, this year, this lifetime—is tragic in its own specific way. it would be darkly disingenuous to pretend there is a right way, or any way, to manage global grief from the other side of a phone screen.
to talk about genocide as if i have any expertise or authority feels a little like tossing water into the sea of social media sorrow—a little self-serving, a little like i’m adding to a culture of desensitization via infographic. to not talk about genocide is to quietly condone visceral and devastating violence. as an american taxpayer, i am already quietly condoning violence in ways that should and do keep me up at night; it feels very important that i take any opportunity to condone that violence a little less. i will try to thread the needle here, with four suggestions for actionable resistance or aid initiatives that do not involve infographics or doomscrolling:
if you live in LA, the independent art space non plus ultra is hosting a comedy fundraiser for gaza next thursday, 11/02/23. tickets can be found here.
if you live in NYC, the poetry project is hosting a poets for a free palestine reading this thursday, 10/26/23. admission is free but registration is encouraged, more info can be found here.
if you live in chicago, hooligan magazine is hosting a halloween party/concert with becca mancari, featuring a raffle to support the palestinian children’s relief fund, this friday 10/27/23. more info can be found here and tickets can be found here.
if you live anywhere, jewish voice for peace offers a one-page Google Doc that links to several other organizations and provides instructions for calling one’s reps, palestinian-led protest info, and more.
and now for some unrelated recommendations. i have been:
reading: i just finished social creature by tara isabella burton and absolutely loved it. clever and gripping, a darkly funny victorian thriller/social indictment but set in the manhattan literary world in 2015.
i’m currently reading like 8 books at once because i’m on “book leave” and trying to research and write at the same time, but one i keep coming back to is to photograph is to learn how to die, a book-length essay by tim carpenter that interrogates the metaphysics of photography. it’s heady and (i personally found) easiest to absorb in small doses, but carpenter presents a staggering collection of insights from different artists and philosophers on creation, existence, decreation, etc. and veers into these smart, strange narrative tributaries that i’m finding useful as a writer. how this relates to social media/creation of content/creation of self/etc. hasn’t gelled yet in my head but there’s something there, i think.
watching: the golden bachelor, which so far is…shockingly good? a beautiful show about grief? i kind of want to do a whole substack on the golden bachelor but maybe britney spears’ memoir comes first, and i haven’t started that yet, so.
eating: all i want to eat right now for some reason is toast with goat cheese, olive oil, tinned tuna or salmon (decent quality but not like $16 a tin…in my unpopular opinion, fish wife is overrated, sorry! costco has some lovely sustainably caught packed-in-oil canned tuna!), herbs, salt & pepper. caveat: i looked it up and you’re only supposed to eat 1-2 tins of tuna a week, so i guess don’t go crazy :(
honestly even if you don’t want my dolphin-safe mental illness lunch, i generally recommend fresh herbs. i think a lot of people don’t buy them bc they seem fussy and extraneous, but they make easy, boring food taste and look fancy and delicious in seconds! also if you put a lot of them on something, that’s a side salad. put soft ones like parsley and dill in a jar of water, as you would flowers, cover with a plastic bag (don’t tie it, just shroud them), and they’ll last in the fridge for like 2 weeks. pull out sprigs and snip them with kitchen shears and let all your meals serve cunt. you can keep basil the same way (jar/bag) but on the counter instead of in the fridge, and it’ll last about a week if you check the water regularly. i’m at a loss with chives, which get slimy no matter what.
okay that’s it i hope we’re all doing our best x