Great piece, Sahana! This is a super helpful framing: "Colonialism (and neo-colonialism) rests on the three pillars of genocide, ecocide, and epistemicide". I've also felt the paralysation and the despair, the feeling that it's worthless to focus on anything but Gaza's destruction and the world's collective grief. Thank you for putting this into words.
My only criticism of the post is when you write that the Jews are a "once-persecuted people" -- anti-semitism has never disappeared, and anti-semitic attacks are on the rise since 7th October (and even before, I believe, given the rise of global fascism in recent years). I hold this truth at the same time as holding the truth of Israel's brutal occupation of Palestine.
I have made the edits. Is this more correct? "The tragedy is that the horrific actions of a nation-state are imperiling those they profess to protect, leaving them vulnerable to rising antisemitism. Violence can only beget violence. Peace cannot arise from blood-soaked soil."
I am sitting here within the confluence of Tagore as I knew him and the new stirrings towards him, the metacrisis you often talk about (the separation of self from nature and each other and it's cascading consequences), the many points of crises all around, the entwining entanglings of worlds-histories-geographies-ideologies-needs-desires, of a people stirring-a-zeitgiest and this -- danger of a single story, so v important.
Sitting within, attempting to sense the Pluriverse.
All this while drinking a cappuccino that I had yearned for, in a nice cafe...and reflecting on "my" actions in the world and rambling thoughts wander on.
I remember reading Md. Darwish. How the word "exile" softly fell from his verses and my heart caught it. A thousand tendrils and octopus feet reached towards as I remembered my own experiences of it in other forms. A siblingry formed across contexts.
That these losses and connects, like love, is not found easily on social media images. That livestream monocultures a particular grief, erasing the many other forms in which devastation spreads...that the loss and found in any war is many many stories. Most of which cannot spelt out loud except to strangers-of-one-meeting somewhere.
Cultivating listening into the Pluriverse...this is what lingers here for now.
Thank you for your deep, heartfelt reflection and comment. I'm sitting with your words. They resonate so deeply. Tagore dreamed of a world of harmony, a federation of nations meeting to collaborate, connect, share, learn. A hundred years later, I call this the Pluriverse. A confluence of entanglements that is thriving with the abundance of life. The monomyth seeks to suppress all that is vibrantly different, squeezing life into narrow boxes, labels, structures of linearity. A monochrome. Pluriverse is the opposite. A palette of colours.
Maybe, if we collectively imagine, with all our might, we can sow the seeds.
Great piece, Sahana! This is a super helpful framing: "Colonialism (and neo-colonialism) rests on the three pillars of genocide, ecocide, and epistemicide". I've also felt the paralysation and the despair, the feeling that it's worthless to focus on anything but Gaza's destruction and the world's collective grief. Thank you for putting this into words.
My only criticism of the post is when you write that the Jews are a "once-persecuted people" -- anti-semitism has never disappeared, and anti-semitic attacks are on the rise since 7th October (and even before, I believe, given the rise of global fascism in recent years). I hold this truth at the same time as holding the truth of Israel's brutal occupation of Palestine.
I have made the edits. Is this more correct? "The tragedy is that the horrific actions of a nation-state are imperiling those they profess to protect, leaving them vulnerable to rising antisemitism. Violence can only beget violence. Peace cannot arise from blood-soaked soil."
Yes, that's correct from my (inexpert) point of view!
I hear you, Emily. Thanks for your honest sharing. I will make the correction.
Thanks for your openess to feedback, Sahana! I love this newsletter -- one of the few I always read all the way through.
Such a beautiful thread. Sending love here.
Me too. Deep appreciation here.
Thank you! I so appreciate you, and your work.
I am sitting here within the confluence of Tagore as I knew him and the new stirrings towards him, the metacrisis you often talk about (the separation of self from nature and each other and it's cascading consequences), the many points of crises all around, the entwining entanglings of worlds-histories-geographies-ideologies-needs-desires, of a people stirring-a-zeitgiest and this -- danger of a single story, so v important.
Sitting within, attempting to sense the Pluriverse.
All this while drinking a cappuccino that I had yearned for, in a nice cafe...and reflecting on "my" actions in the world and rambling thoughts wander on.
I remember reading Md. Darwish. How the word "exile" softly fell from his verses and my heart caught it. A thousand tendrils and octopus feet reached towards as I remembered my own experiences of it in other forms. A siblingry formed across contexts.
That these losses and connects, like love, is not found easily on social media images. That livestream monocultures a particular grief, erasing the many other forms in which devastation spreads...that the loss and found in any war is many many stories. Most of which cannot spelt out loud except to strangers-of-one-meeting somewhere.
Cultivating listening into the Pluriverse...this is what lingers here for now.
Thank you for your deep, heartfelt reflection and comment. I'm sitting with your words. They resonate so deeply. Tagore dreamed of a world of harmony, a federation of nations meeting to collaborate, connect, share, learn. A hundred years later, I call this the Pluriverse. A confluence of entanglements that is thriving with the abundance of life. The monomyth seeks to suppress all that is vibrantly different, squeezing life into narrow boxes, labels, structures of linearity. A monochrome. Pluriverse is the opposite. A palette of colours.
Maybe, if we collectively imagine, with all our might, we can sow the seeds.