October: Hand on my stupid heart

Consumption Diaries No. 13

Consumption Diaries is a monthly series on what I’ve consumed and been consumed by. 

If you missed last month’s newsletter you can find it here, and the full archive of these posts lives here.

October was a month weighed down by a heavy and bleak reality despite many moments of joy in my personal life. The discordance of humanity’s ability for destruction with my privilege to find bright spots and feel joy, to briefly step outside the news cycle simply by putting my phone down — it feels like a spiderweb I’ve stepped through and can’t shake off. The ick lingers, a phantom popping up just as I’ve let my mind drift. 

I’m writing this month’s newsletter from my parents’ house in North Carolina, where I’m spending the last full week of October. I lived here for the majority of my childhood. The house is set back from the road and surrounded by trees, which have thinned out enough over time to shatter my adolescent illusion that we lived in a forest but still awe me now that I live in a city with only a few sidewalk trees to mark the passing of time.

The leaves have all started changing colors, and I’m trying to remember which trees yield which colors. When the wind blows, no matter how gently, a few bright yellow leaves float to the ground. Maybe it’s the oaks, far older than I am. Their branches creaking in the breeze is the only noise I hear for hours sometimes. It’s been so quiet that I’ve had trouble waking up each morning, unable to rub the sleep from my eyes before I log on for another day of remote work. I have been so tired.

my childhood home’s front yard vs. backyard !!!

As I sit here in my parents’ kitchen, marveling at how at peace I feel, how long it’s been since I’ve felt this kind of stillness, Israel has dropped the equivalent of the Hiroshima atomic bomb on Gaza. More than 7,000 Palestinians have been killed, and the Western world would rather call that figure — which will be even higher by the time I post this — a lie because to show compassion is to admit our guilt and complicity. Another lesson that we stubbornly refuse to learn because we are so devoted to power by means of oppression.

It’s difficult to reconcile your privilege on such a grand scale sometimes. It’s difficult to look at how different daily realities can be — and how much of a privilege it is to be able to manipulate yours. I can choose to find moments of joy, to laugh, to post a selfie to my stories in between reshared posts calling for awareness and activism while we witness genocide. I am bowled over by the insignificance I’ve taken for granted. It’s not fair.

The sunset was beautiful last night, an unseasonably warm day, perfect for cocktails outside. As I watched the clouds slowly turn pink into red into nothing, full of gratitude and relief, all communication was cut off to, from, and within Gaza. Over 2 million people in the dark.

It doesn’t feel right to talk about anything else, to share my silly little newsletter, because nothing reveals the triviality of a privileged life like crisis. Any joy feels excavated from the depths of the earth. Every day I tell myself what a privilege it is to be here in this life, in this body.

This body, which booked plane tickets to North Carolina for a whole week sometime last month in something close to the precipice of a mental health crisis, feeling like I’d die if I didn’t do something.

And still, what a privilege it is. What a privilege it is to go to work and live a life that I sometimes feel trapped in only because it’s too comfortable, to meet friends for happy hour and bemoan hangovers I deserved, to watch movies and books and share memes as a way to humor myself. To write this newsletter about appreciating the beauty in mundanity and the safety in routine and call all of this my excavated joy.

But also, moments of joy are the best part of being human. Finding them might be the only thing that sustains us. Hopefully, we are all telling people we love them, spending time with them, and listening to them while we can and because we can.

Capitalism wants us to remain individualistic and concerned with the self above all else. The system relies on us remaining quiet and unbothered. Without a personal connection to someone else’s suffering, we turn away, and if we do find a tenuous thread, it’s one that allows us to believe suffering is a distant tragedy beyond our grasp. We aren’t ever as helpless as they’d have us believe. We’re just unwilling to step outside of our own small lives in favor of witnessing a larger one that demands an audience.

My flight back to DC was delayed by 2.5 hours. I waited for boarding updates at one of the Greensboro airport’s gates, and a woman sat next to me and made phone call after phone call to make her complaints heard by seemingly everyone in her life. I tried not to listen; it was 10 pm on a Sunday, I was tired, I wanted to run back through security and follow my parents home. But then, one call, to her son: “The worst thing that can happen in this life is losing a child. The absolute worst.”

Something like 40% of the Palestinian death toll is children. If those children’s parents survive, they will have to live in a world not only without their children, but a world that watched while they were dehumanized in both life and death. For decades, Palestinians have had to find new realities in which their children and parents and siblings and loved ones no longer exist. I can’t imagine a worse fate either.

There will always be clarity in hindsight, but sometimes that clarity creates such an idealistic framework for our understanding of humanity that we forget change has never been easy or popular. It isn’t a miracle that we’ve carved out some good amongst the rot; it is hard-fought and hard-earned by those who have to prove their right to existence, “to audition for empathy and compassion.”

Neutrality here isn’t neutral. If I’m not willing to speak against extremism now, would I ever have, had I existed through colonial America or slavery or Nazism? Or will I ever, as the horrors continue to unfold throughout my lifetime? Do I recognize how much freedom I possess to have never been forced to choose?

I don’t always do the right thing even when I know what the right thing is. I certainly don’t always say the right thing or say it loud enough. I don’t say any of this to center myself in a narrative that isn’t about me or to seek validation, but I think most of us who live comfortably draped in privilege need to acknowledge our desire to hold onto it by separating us from them. And we need to acknowledge our ability to do so without consequence; we can ignore oppression if we can’t ever see ourselves facing the threat of it.

To avoid conversations, to call Israel and Palestine’s history too complex to understand or to turn away from pictures of dead babies and destroyed cities is to be complicit in the systems of injustice that rely on our indifference.

I think about this poem often but especially so these days:

Because this whole newsletter is supposed to be about books and reading, two books I’ve read and would recommend: 

• Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, which I’m happy to see has become popular on bookstagram this month. It is a very short novel that devastates and endears quickly. I reviewed it a couple of years ago.

• White Tears, Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color by Ruby Hamad, which I also posted about on Instagram. Hamad’s perspective was eye-opening for me because I have regrettably focused more on feminist texts from white, Black, and Asian writers. 

I know reading can only do so much, and white people proved how performative it can be in 2020 (I am guilty of buying books I never read), but I do think it’s an easy way to learn and expand our empathy. In November, I am planning to read the poetry collection Rifqa by Mohammed El-Kurd and Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis.

what I read

books

The Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forest — A middle-of-the-road romance for me with some elements I didn’t love, but at least they weren’t 25-year-old white people.

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell — This is an excellent book. As hard as it was to read, I picked it up at every chance I got. I wouldn’t offer a blanket recommendation without warning, similar to how I love A Little Life but I’ll never tell anyone to read it just because the content is unspeakably dismal.

Back in a Spell and In Charm’s Way by Lana Harper — These are the third and fourth books in the Thistle Grove series, which are witchy romance novels that set a scene like no other. I want it to be a TV show so much! There’s so much material! That being said, these two felt lackluster to me.

The Rise and Reign of Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us by Stephen Brusatte — Sorry to everyone I’ve recited mammal facts to so quickly after I read Brusatte’s first book, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, and forced them to listen to dinosaur facts too. If you’re at all interested in the evolution of life on Earth, both of these books are incredibly accessible and informative.

This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno — My Goodreads review of this melancholic, dark cosmic horror novel is really all my brain can come up with: I can’t say I got all of this book, but it felt like 2001: A Space Odyssey if the movie had been about grief and trauma, and as a millennial (the grief and trauma generation) I have no choice but to endorse.

articles

Have We Learned Nothing? (David Klion, n+1)

Teaching Poetry in the Palestinian Apocalypse (George Abraham, Guernica)

“We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other” (Arielle Angel, Jewish Currents)

what I watched

shows

Destined With You — I loved this show and no it’s not just because Rowoon is in it.

Doom At Your Service — There’s a lot of breaking up and getting back together in this one, which made it lag in the middle for me before picking back up again toward the end. It’s also pretty sad, considering the premise: She is diagnosed with brain cancer and is given three months to live, and thanks to semi-deity Doom, she gets to choose if, at the end, the person she loves most dies or doom is brought upon the entire world! Fun.

Doona! — This one is Normal People meets K-drama, which was jarring considering the usually cute, silly storylines I expect from this genre. I was so thrown off by the very realistic representation of young, naive love that I’m still trying to figure out how I felt about it, but I think I’m impressed?

Next up on the Netflix Rowoon K-drama front for me is Tomorrow, which I started with my parents + sister this week. I also started Castaway Diva, which only has two episodes out so far but is about a girl who survives on a deserted island for fifteen years and reenters society as a 31-year-old woman harboring teenage dreams of becoming a K-pop idol. As one does. I love an unrealistic, ridiculous premise, which is why Crash Landing On You remains a favorite of mine.

I also watched Bodies on Netflix. It made my head spin and I wanted to scream “go to therapy” at the men more often than that damn body kept showing up, but also, I don’t think we’re going to solve for quantum gravity by the 2050s.

movies

Addams Family (1991) — I love this movie. It’s my first watch every spooky season. I named one of my cats Gomez, though it ended up being an unfortunate choice because the cat is a menace. And I hope I have the Addams Family motto — We Gladly Feast on Those Who Would Subdue Us, or Sic Gorgiamus Allos Subjectatos Nunc, in what is surely poorly translated Latin but what do I care — tattooed on my body before they burn my corpse some day.

Addams Family Values (1993) — I watched this twice this month. It’s one of those rare duologies where the sequel holds up to the first, and dare I say, is better in some ways? And relevant to my recent science interests, Wednesday’s summer camp crush is reading A Brief History of Time! 

No One is Coming to Save You (2023) — A decent enough alien invasion horror movie, but the whole time I just kept thinking 1. I would never live alone in that house and 2. Kaitlyn Dever wants to stay alive so much more than I do. So if any alien-emoji-looking-ass aliens come to Earth, don’t knock on my door because I will be already taken.

I also watched Practical Magic and Hotel Transylvania, both rewatches, to pathetically round out spooky season, or whatever.

what I bought

Birkenstock Boston clogs — lol. I don’t know why I bought these considering we called them potato shoes in middle school and have made fun of them since, but I do love them. I sized up because I had fantasies of wearing plush cozy socks with them, but it turns out socks are not that thick, so now I just have an expensive pair of CLOGS that are slightly too big. It’s hard to be so financially responsible!

misc.

Best thing I drank: All of the cocktails at Lapis, where the food is good too, but the best espresso martini I had (because there are always several) was at Le Mont Royal.

Best thing I ate: I devoured everything my parents cooked for me during my weeklong visit, but my favorite was maybe sweet potatoes with tahini butter. So simple, and yet!

An honorable mention goes to the nachos at El Presidente because they engineered the perfect ratio of chips to toppings by laying all the chips flat.

I hope November comes with a little more hope or at least a little more willpower to push through. November and December have historically been some of my least favorite months, but now that I’ve decided I like winter, I remain hopeful for the aforementioned excavated joy.

Share what you’re reading, watching, and generally consuming, if you feel so inclined. I love to be nosy and I love to hear people talk about things they care about.

Before you go: Find me on instagram, goodreads, storygraph, or letterboxd to keep up with my obsessive tracking habits in real-time.