I went to the protest yesterday, waking up early, sandwiches and extra socks packed, protest sign freshly dried. It was a feeling of readiness; I jokingly said I made myself warrior food. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, apples, and dark chocolate: the food of champions. My father always said so. To put everything I want to into words is impossible with the millions of connections I make in a day, in fact I believe it is so for everyone.
The morning was damp and cold, my friends and I rolling cigarettes and pouring frothing breath from our mouths into the air, followed by the deep encompassing blue of tobacco smoke. With my fingers tingling, and the adrenaline of the possibility of action I bounced onto the bus. My friend Marte was on the top floor in the back, her heavy blonde dreadlocks were mounded on top of her head like a strange translation of a beehive, Emily the exquisite Italian-Scottish halfbreed was as usual a smile surrounded by dark curling hair, and glad yet astute eyes. There were so many people I didn't know on the bus, a glance around and I noticed the number of green eyes and blue, and I gladly saw Gabriel passing around leaflets on the bus. I sat next to Marte where she taught me songs and chants from the time before. She was at Millbank last year, as were quite a few others on the bus. Marte said jokingly that she had never seen me so awake in the morning. I laughed and replied that political involvement was bad for me because it was the biggest high I ever got- better than an orgasm, better than they say the best London MDMA. The bus was a grown up field trip with some kids, like Marte, having to pee almost as soon as we set off, others falling asleep with their heads rolling to their shoulders, outside cars and vans passed without a bat of an eyelash 'don't you know? we're on our way to London to protest!' I wanted to shout at them 'come join us!' but I often feel this way. Screaming at the top of your lungs to a myopic and apathetic public, Jesus will save us, Jesus will save us, I stopped believing in imaginary friends a long time ago, though to be honest not that long ago. It seems like another lifetime.
I let my mind retrace old steps, old protests, I listened to stories about Millbank, about plans for other demonstrations. November 30th. I remembered 2007, anti-Iraq war protests, I hadn't seen anything like it, I was just curious. I remember canvassing for Obama when I still believed we could fix the system, how proud I was voting, the Jefferson memorial sit down for UN involvement in Darfur, Quantico for the mistreatment of Bradley Manning, working for Greenpeace and NORML, "hello sir, do you care? do you care?"... "Jesus will save us""Someone will save us". I'm not waiting.
I looked out the window, the city gliding past, people outside not looking in, and me looking out on the world from inside this glass bubble, it's nice sometimes to have a physical barrier as well as a mental one to the external world, it is surreal and perfect, being able to spy on people who don't ever look in or up. "When I look down I miss all the good stuff, but when I look up I just trip over things..." I never feel more alone then before a protest. I am not one of the group, of this I am certain, though acquaintances and experience would say that all of these people would hypothetically be my type of people. However attaching myself to groups has never ended well, arrests, squats, anarchists, enemy of the state, poisoner of minds, and I myself get lost in it. A group is a funny thing, especially when humans lend their emotions and minds to causes. The passion and the community infests your thought processes, you cease to think for yourself, and so I am wary, and these people who would hypothetically be my type of people are just distant stars that I have sometimes gazed at. I prefer singularity I think sometimes, I prefer autonomy, except that isn't true- it's my own selfishness that wins out sometimes, selfish in my loneliness refusing to share myself, refusing to care. I am too frightened to form attachments, too terrified to admit that I am indeed running, and I will not lie in that I am running from myself, or am I running to myself? With each step am I not stronger? Each time that I touch fire is not that euphoric warmth worth the burns? The memory of that warmth? The sensation?
We finally made it to London, and my mind was no longer encased in reflection. It was time for action. As usual with protests and demonstrations I didn't know what to expect. The sheer number of people was like an amphetamine jump to the brain, the crowd of thousands all my age. I walked wide-eye-drinking while the various groups and representatives gave me papers and posters, fliers and smiles, I wrote the number of a lawyer on my arm, and made sure my passport was hidden deep in the bowels of my bag in case I got arrested. I wore my kefiyah from Hebron around my neck, and my eyes unfocused I heard my name called out. It was April, I screamed and gave her a huge hug. The woman interviewing her was a bit taken aback and I apologized and then said "I'm sorry m'am. I haven't seen this girl since Palestine" her shocked face looked at us a moment and mouthed the words "Palestine?" before April and I got integrated into the mass of people again. I asked her how she was doing, what she was up to, we chatted a bit, but as I have noticed with us Palestine 'folk', we can't really form proper conversation about our experiences, and this wasn't the place for it regardless. All of the people I knew were either still there, or associated with the ISM, which I had broken with halfway through my trip to pursue my own ways of solving things.
I can't get away from Palestine. I can't get away from it, and I don't want to. But I also can't live in this limbo. I also can't live with this lack of stimulus, the bone chilling lack of sensation. Get drunk, get stoned, fuck, maybe study, repeat, the endless cycle of mindless that others pursue, and I just want to anaesthetize my feelings, to anaesthetize my thoughts. They only lead me back to the desert, to kisses, working on the farm, the tear gas, the powerlessness.
The crowd snapped me out of reverie again, and I was once again feeding off of the flow of energy, I broke from University of Essex, and wound my way to the front with my friend Wael, the first Palestinian I ever met. We made it to a speaker set up on a generator, playing reggae, dubstep, grime, it was attached to a small bicycle trailer and followed the crowd. We were stopped by traffic in the city, the police hemmed the streets on either side, fluorescent coats glistening maliciously. I stopped and smiled at one and asked him how he was. 'Humanisation' I thought to myself 'individualisation'. Then the music hit a peak, where me and a red-haired dubstepper in trip pants and doc martins started to dance, this turned into a fairly large group of people, then they played a song about Palestine. Me and Wael screamed, we pumped our fists "FREE FREE PALESTINE, FREE FREE PALESTINE" My Kefir handmade by Leila's shop in Hebron, bounced on my chest, covering me, shielding me, making me strong. These fibers were wound in the desert, these threads woven by women, this bought with a cup of Myrrmia tea, sweetened to near tastelessness. "why are there so many Kefiyahs in the crowd?" asked Wael "I don't get it", I replied simply "It's become a symbol of resistance, just like Che Guevara" The chants came easily to my lips, the songs of love and hate, when you chant them in a crowd you don't notice the hate in them sometimes. I notice now. I don't want to burn anyone. I want mutual respect and understanding. Next time I will bring flowers for the police, as they won't let me tell them jokes (why I don't know). I told a really bad joke to an Israeli soldier once, he laughed and got in trouble with his superior. "So there were these two cows in a field...", a friend wrestled to the ground in D.C. once said "Shouldn't you buy me dinner first?". Fear, as they say, is the mind killer, but for me it's the impetus. At a certain point some people were arrested in the crowd, perhaps set up to disperse the crowd, something about kettling, they're allowed to use rubber bullets, "you can shove your rubber bullets up your ass..." We chant and sing. The police force was not surprising considering what happened this summer and last year at Millbank. They should be scared of us. Not of me, though, because I'm not really part of the crowd of people. I'm external. I am floating. They just borrowed me for five hours to lend my voice. I saw more people from Palestine in the crowd, at first it didn't register, I didn't recognize them, what were they doing here? These almost strangers.
On Tuesday I went into town to get some money out of the bank, and stopped short thinking I had seen Pete, the guitar player and juggler I met in Palestine. I stopped this boy, I almost didn't, but it looked just like Pete. "Are you Pete?"
"No"
"What are you DOING here?" as if I couldn't understand that he wasn't Pete. He said my name and I was confused, then he explained how we met, he had vomited last time, and it was almost a year ago. I felt foolish, but not that foolish. Palestine is a traveller that walks next to me in my thoughts, no matter the thought. I wish I could escape for a day from Palestine, but I can't. My friend is in Aida Refugee camp while going to the only Art school in Palestine. I won't see him until March. Bahabeck Habiby. Ehna Halouen Ma Bad. Enshala Enshala. "Doesn't that guy look like Jawdat?" Asked Wael "No" I said.
The demonstration done, we had a pint waiting for the bus to pick us up, at the white Lion. It's Marte's pub we joked, as she had drunkenly once declared 'I AM A LION!!'. When her dreadlocks are down they remind me of a Lion's mane, so it is quite appropriate, not to mention that she is feline, playful, and passionate. some people were asleep already their heads falling on the table, I was still full of energy, and full of problems and issues, and wanting to pick them over with my friends. Ignoring the fact that anyone else was around. I needed to talk to them. I didn't care if it was overheard. I needed Oda, Marte and Emily, my steady strong women. On the bus, Marte was again the kid who needed to pee as soon as we left. She made the bus stop at some point and a bunch of other people who had more than one pint got off as well. I tried to connect with some of the people on the bus, but at the same time they seemed to regard me as quite foolish, and I am not sure they like me at all. Perhaps I am a fool. I just need to laugh in my life. People frighten me with their judgements, they frighten me with all of their integral hate and superiority. I am no better than you, but this is what I have done, and this is what I love, it seems to be all I ever say, I scream it, but it's just as good as trying to get people to talk about global warming on a street in Washington D.C. during December.
Utterly useless garbage, silly hippie, go get a job. I would, but I just feel things too much. It isn’t bragging when I say I sold a few paintings, maybe I survived the summer by busking in Jerusalem, staying on a farm for free, and a group of crazed anarchists graffiti'd a wall one night with the images of mutual enlightenment, and there's a squat in Baltimore behind the docks, where the walls drip with fumes of spray cans, and the mattresses are old pieces of couch and blankets of old t-shirts, and it's the most glorious place I have ever lived. Somewhere there's a homeless man named Damien I love who hears and sees God and the Devil. Somewhere there is a man who killed the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. And the mother of Chris, who put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. And my first girlfriend Kaytee is now clean and studying to be a nurse. Then there's Darren, sitting with his stacks of paperbacks, unable to leave his house, and Christina and J.T., trying to overcome themselves still. Mark just got out of rehab, and Eddie just got out of jail. My father is in Kuwait after being in Afghanistan for a few weeks. My grandmother is recovering from quadruple bypass surgery, my mother by her side, both my sisters living with their husbands and their perspective jobs. Somewhere all of these people are living, having had effects on my life, but it is still just my life, nothing more. La vida es dura, la vida es dura, soy como soy yi nada mas, la vida es dura. Life is hard, life is hard, I am what I am and nothing more, life is hard.
That's the thing about my life, and how I feel about myself. I feel the need to express myself, and what I have lived, but what I have lived is merely life. It is no harder, better or worse, than another person's existence. My way is not a right way or a wrong way, in fact it's quite messy, but life I find often is. I don’t know why but last night, after the protest, when the exhaustion and violence to my knees had gotten to me, I sat alone on my bed thinking. I decided to write this blog afterwards, I don’t know why, but sometimes I guess you need something more than a piece of paper, a wall, or a canvas to express something to. I feel the need for direct response.
I am lost. I am drowning. Palestine is my ghost, and my shadow, and the dark thought. It is in my inspiration to be better, and the crippling pain of hopelessness. It is my crutch and my fucked up knees. It is my back that now doesn’t stop hurting. Palestine is in the analysis of my own hypocrisies, in my desire to help, and inability to change anything. It is the guilt and the action, the pain and the relief. I lay in bed, not wanting to move myself. This day will offer me nothing. Nothing but selfishness, and I cannot move myself to action for myself. I cannot will myself towards betterment, because I am not helping anyone, and the guilt is corroding, I cannot conquer my demons of self-destruction, not when I am not really here. I am not really here. I want to be, but I am not.
La vida es dura
La vida es dura
Soy como soy yi nada mas
La vida es dura.
Tom sings that song every morning on the farm. I wonder if he sung it this morning. I wonder if the roof is on the house, or if the new aquaponics system is working. I wonder what my love is doing right now, Jawdat, whose name is like a prayer, the only thing giving me hope for myself. And in the end I keep on asking myself.
What am I doing here?
What am I doing here?
NOTHING
NOTHING
NOTHING
NOTHING
NOTHING
