love \|/ under the solidarity moon

Aug 23, 2024

Dear Friends,

I want to tell you two stories about mutual aid. One takes place between Texas and the pocked streets of Gaza, Palestine, and one takes place right here on the 107- degree-sidewalk in Austin.

I share these stories in the hope of making space together where justice and compassion can knit into a strong, dense web. A web we can walk across to get to each other from anywhere. A web where we can bring those who are pushed to the margins, into the center. Where we don’t always get it right but can always try again. Let’s bounce on the balls of our feet a little bit; strum the web together to hear its music.

1

This first story is about a street encounter. Each time I leave the house, one intention is to share resources with people living outside. Late at night in Austin this week, I spoke to a white man in a black jacket laying on the ground with his head on a trash bag of belongings. East 6th and I-35. Curled up like a fern, he called out as I paused near him: “Go see my mother. I want to go see my mother. See my mother.”

I also love my mother and also want to go see her. I knelt by him and asked, “You want to see your mother,” “Yeah,” he said. “Where is your mother?” I asked. “She died,” he said, “She’s in San Antonio. I want to go see her.” “You want to go to her funeral?” I asked. He nodded. “When is it?” “Now, today or yesterday,” he said. “My mother. I want to go see my mother.”

This request touched my heart. Each person has the right to see their mother before her burial, do they not? I considered whether I could assist him in getting to San Antonio. It is only 89 miles down the highway. I looked at the moon. My mother had texted me earlier: “Don’t forget to see the super moon - it’s beautiful!” she wrote. My heart filled with a wish to be infinite enough to assist him. A special mission.

I deeply wanted to fulfill it. But I considered the state of my car: full of building materials; sinks, tile, flooring. I considered the state of my heart: expended, too much aware of suffering, at the edge, filled with Gaza. I considered the risks: unknown but not inconsiderable.

I have previously driven those in rough shape, and would not have changed it, but it has brought vehicular difficulties, from infestation to intentional urination. I considered myself being tired, and considered self protection. I remembered deciding only to bring women into my car or home; a general rule. I don’t like making these decisions. I wish the capacity to assist were infinite. And maybe it is, when all of us are taken into consideration. When everyone assists, and everyone speaks their needs, may the circle be unbroken?

The bus,” I said. “The bus.” So I gave him the cash in my wallet for the bus— I only had six dollars. “I need forty,” he whispered, “forty for the bus.” I only had six. But probably his mother’s spirit heard his wish to be by her body’s side. I believe she was most likely already by his side. I hope she can help him. I gave him the small folded dollars and said, “Your mother loves you.” He nodded and put it in his pocket and closed his eyes, still curled in fetal position on the pavement. May he see her soon. May she visit.

May interactions be a kind of transportation.

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I’m thinking every hour of my friends in Gaza, Amer and Nour; their sister Amani; her boys, Aziz, Zain and Mohammed. With the help of friends and strangers giving donations, I was able to deliver $9200 to this gentle family trapped in their beloved, beseiged Gaza this month. The money made four stops before reaching them. It was translated into two currencies. And it made it home, finally.

The money sent is small freight of connection that went around the world, bearing love and sorrow, an ardent wish for an end to violence, imagining holding this one family in our arms. With the money, they’ve been able to buy a tent, food, fruit, clothing, fuel, and pay for other survival expenses.

(letterpress print by TenderHeart Press)

It is inadequate; money and love are not enough without safety and freedom. It will never be enough. I am sad that money and protest are all we can give to materially make changes in this unjust situation, and that the changes are so insufficient. Yet it is something. For me, it means the difference between going mad watching the ceaseless suffering of innocent people, or having a focus I can attend to. A purpose, a point in the pain. An anchor to constellate conversations around.

Thank you to all who helped provide this sustenance, both material and moral. If you wish to join in and assist, I am continuing to raise funds for the family’s survival at bit.ly/help-amer. They need food, fuel, internet access, medicines, all of which are marked up by exponential costs.

Talking with Amer and his wife Nour on the Signal app in the middle of the night is a gift. It’s sobering and sacred to be able to text with people surviving genocide. I try to keep my grief about the seeing the scenario from afar from spilling through the messages, so I don’t add to their burden. I’m grateful to learn their thoughts, feelings, grief, ideas, and most of all to simply be connected to their humanness, sense of humor, strength. We are under the same moon.

By sharing their story and intimacy, they offer me (us) a chance not to lose our humanity. I can tell them we see them, we hate what is happening, we are protesting, pressuring leaders, refusing to leave or be quiet. I can tell them they are loved and most of the free world is in horror at the carnage.

I can tell them that this one Jew, and so many Jews, refuse the narrative. The largest donations to Amer’s family were from a Rabbi and a Jewish mystic. Both wrote him letters of solidarity and apology. He wrote back with words of graceful friendship, thanking them for their humanity and care.

Rebecca Solnit writes,

“The word emergency comes from emerge, to rise out of, the opposite of merge, which comes from mergere: to be within or under a liquid, immersed, submerged. An emergency is a separation from the familiar, a sudden emergence into a new atmosphere, one that often demands we ourselves rise to the occasion.
—A Paradise in Hell

Amazingly, Amer published an essay last month in a French newspaper. He writes,

“I believe that if I were a painter who started working on a piece since October 7, featuring a sea, sky, and a bird flying in the middle, it would not be completed to this day. At every moment, you are at risk of bombardment, evacuation, and leaving everything you own behind, moving to another area or a school for refuge, searching anew for a source of energy to light a room with a simple bulb, and looking for a jerrycan to fill with water, needing to wait in a queue that barely reaches you after three hours…
Everything has disappeared. Or almost. It is this "almost" that I cling to viscerally. I try to explore these places in search of it. Each image bears witness to the efforts to (sur)vive, to continue one's path, to invent other ways to escape death. Each image becomes an act of resistance.
Navigating between life and death, in a context where everyday life lacks everything, I send my images by placing my phone on a long iron stick that I raise as high as possible to find a connection signal and share these images as signals of life with the outside world. I hope that one day, someone will be able to decipher the mystery of this “almost life” and capture the spirit of (sur)life that inhabits it.

If you wish to support or befriend Amer, visit our fundraising campaign or say hello to him at his Instagram profile. Thank god for esim networks keeping people online and in communication: despite starvation, he, and so many others, are rising to the occasion to communicate with the rest of the world.

How have you been gifted opportunities lately? How have you tried to rise to the occasion lately? How have you reached past borders, boundaries, bounds?

I would love to hear, if you would be so kind/brave/real as to share.

Yours,

Abriel

The Breathing Field

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