silence & stasis

notes on language

The last few months, I have been unable to find the words to write anything. Some of it is fatigue because of the hours I work, and some is just the sheer weight of our current political reality. I feel suffocated, that whatever I have said or done to protect others has not made even a ripple. Or maybe it has, but just that, a small ripple, and not yet a wave.

Some days I wonder if this is just my baseline depression and the lull of winter, but in my heart, it feels so much heavier. I don’t even think I can write beautifully about anything at all right now. For awhile, I thought I might never write again.

But here I am, writing to you, admitting some sort of defeat in the face of language—English, brutish and stark, fits my mood, but says nothing about sadness in the way that Arabic can… and Arabic, in its fluidness, dances away with a thousand different words for the feelings I have every day, unexplainable to those unfamiliar with its idiosyncrasies.

I miss a lot of things that used to bring me joy—art, home renovation, fashion and interior design. Yet, beauty for the sake of beauty feels frivolous right now. In my faith, god is beautiful and loves beauty… but can we justify focusing on what is beautiful when there is so much of our world collapsing? There are only so many atrocities we can witness without carrying them with us.

I have been doing my best to bear witness, as so many of us are doing. There is a moment though where witnessing feels inadequate and simultaneously unbearable. There is a term for this: moral injury, where a person is forced to watch or participate in something that stands against their conscience and principles. How many of us are experiencing moral injury? Hundreds, thousands, millions? So many of us are watching, eyes open, unable to look away.

A friend reached out to me recently to ask about what we can do now… I don’t know anymore, except to reach for faith— certitude in the justice and peace of our creator. Outside of that, I have been exercising myself to exhaustion, hoping to rid myself of both grief and anger.

The month of Ramadan is approaching. I see this and use this as a time to reset, both physically and spiritually. I hope that during this time we are all able to find solace in our creator and in community.

I might write again soon. I might not. But I will be thinking and reading and reflecting. In the meantime, I leave you with these excerpts from Victoria Chang’s poems.

Perhaps this is proof that language can still encompass what is beautiful and haunting and painfully true.

-M

P.S.

I should mention I got married(!), and this has been the brightest light in my life in what has been a heavy moment in time. It is precious and mine (all the original Mitski lovers please raise your hands :).