A day where I am
Notes
Watching late-night TV with my kid: In the last few years I have drawn my kid (and taken pictures of him) much less often, by his wish. This was a rare moment when he spontaneously gave me permission, not just to draw this moment but to use it in a cartoon. Watching original Star Trek with him, I realized how little I had appreciated the show’s groundbreaking qualities when I watched it as a teenager myself – the complexity of ideas it embraced, its cultural and racial pluralism, its depiction of a more positive future. Then again, Klingons and Romulans…
Elderwood: It’s a strange elision to me that there isn’t a common term for the medical facilities that provide acute care when a patient is not well enough to go home, but not sick enough to stay in the hospital. “Nursing home” or “assisted living” seems to imply a longer, residential stay. “Rehab” is the shorthand our family uses, but that word has other meanings, too; it’s not precise, and it doesn’t seem to fully capture the function. Elderwood, then, maybe.
I’d read the book: In September 2001, I was still recovering from having been hit by a car a couple months before. In December, I needed more surgery (nerves, tendons) on my right arm. I decided to read the Lord of the Rings because I knew it was long and I didn’t think I would have much energy for a while afterwards. I remember being struck, then, by how unsubtle the racism in the books was, as I read them. Looking into it now, I found that Tolkien’s views around race have been a topic of some debate (Wikipedia has a summary).
But it’s undeniable that his world has been hugely influential across science fiction, fantasy, video games, etc. Watching the Peter Jackson movies (still technically impressive 20 years later) what stood out to me most was the absolute binary of good and evil the story presents, and the way that imaginary races (orcs, wizards) allow that. How much do such narratives affect how we perceive the real world, in which binary good/evil thinking can cause so much unnecessary suffering? Looking into this question I found some Pew research from 2021 on how religion and politics affect whether one believes things in society can be divided into good and evil. I hadn’t realized that so many people do. I want to argue for empathy and complexity, and the relevance of suffering. If you have written or thought about this I’d love to hear from you.
Greenmarket protesters: As it happens, I was also at the greenmarket on the sunny, crowded Saturday in November 2020 when the race was finally called for Biden after recounts in several closely contested states, and a spontaneous cheer went up; strangers smiled at each other and started talking.
Since then, antisemitism and Islamophobia have both dramatically risen in the US, as has anti-migrant rhetoric. Hate makes hate; violence begets violence. The scale of suffering in Gaza, in Darfur, in Ukraine, and elsewhere – violence, starvation, disease – contrasts with life going on as usual in the news daily, and there is a feeling of powerlessness to stop it.
That wasn’t Arabic: As I’ve written about before, the neighborhood I live in has a large Arabic-speaking community, and a large Muslim community (not all of the Muslim community is Arabic-speaking; there are Bosniak, Bengali and Indonesian mosques, too). But this interaction felt like an encapsulation of the fact that these communities are synonymous with American communities.
In my own micro-community, we have outdoor decorations for Ramadan for the first time this year, and this has been welcomed by Muslim and non-Muslim residents alike. Ramadan Mubarak to all who celebrate. May the world see more peace.
Thank you for being here with me.