a reflection

I wrote this this morning when my internet wasn't working, so I'm posting it now.


I’m one page into Gloria Anzaldua’s “Borderlands,” and I already had to put down the book to write down a thought. I think that’s the sign of a good writer. No, of an amazing writer. A good writer entertains, and even provokes thought, but an amazing writer inspires. A good book, you can’t put down, and an amazing book, you have to put down, because you can’t possibly absorb it all at once, nevermind allow it to do with you what it will and what it must, generate thoughts and responses and emotions. I think a good book is more like an experience than just something to read.


I’m thinking about land and nature and spirituality. What does it mean for me to feel spiritual in a nature which is not mine? In Palestine, it was very clear that to feel this way was wrong. I felt intensely uncomfortable when I was in Jenin and Kameel and Salem were showing me their beautiful city. The trees there were beautiful symbols and sources of growth and the rolling hills felt incredibly soothing, despite the occasional checkpoints scattered across them. I felt so good breathing in the land there, and that felt wrong. It wasn’t mine. Like did I really have a right to love it and absorb it and let it make me feel healthy and alive? I rarely think about that when I love being in nature here in the U.S., but I should. Earlier this week I went to the park and wrote poetry on my lunch break. The trees made me feel invigorated and as the words flowed out of my pen and into my journal I felt like I was finally awake and encountering the world again, like I used to be. But is that okay? I mean, this land is stolen just as much as Palestine is, and the idea that “that’s all in the past,” is obviously absurd and offensive. And when I feel at home in Brooklyn, because my family has been in New York for generations, and I live only one neighborhood(ish) over from where my grandmother grew up, is that any more “right” or “okay” or “not-fucked-up” than it would be for me to feel “at home” and happy in Palestine?

On another note, I'm currently listening to Suheir Hammad. Can I tell you my favorite line ever in a poem. From her poem "critical resistance," "A woman will tell you/ every home she has ever inhabited has been broken into/ starting with her body." Maybe that's why I love poetry. What takes most people essays or books to say, a good poet can say in one line.