A day of catching up

Spent the morning posting backblips. 

Spent the afternoon at the dentist. I need a crown replaced. I can't right now. In January I switch to a new Medicare provider; maybe I can get help from them. I hope.

It takes an hour and ten minutes to get to the dentist by bus, so on the bus I read (on my phone)  a brilliant article in The Nation by Mohammed El-Kurd, a Palestinian poet. This part is resonant for me: 

"When I go onstage, I usually joke a lot. I joke on purpose, first of all because I want to believe I’m funny. But there’s another reason: Any Palestinians operating in the public eye, especially Palestinians who have suffered Israeli violence, are expected to behave a certain way. You are supposed to be miserable—head bowed, wailing and weak and asking for mercy. You’re supposed to be polite in your suffering. And I completely refuse this. I refuse these politics of appeal. I don’t want to appeal to anyone. I can experience travesty and tragedy, and profound loss, and I can still make a joke about it. And that is the full spectrum of Palestinian humanity—or human humanity at large. We are human not just because we cry when we lose our mothers, or when we lose our homes, or because we have pets or hobbies. We are humans because we feel rage and we feel disdain—because we resist. And I am honestly grateful for my disdain, because it reminds me that I am human. I am grateful for my rage, because it reminds me of my ability to react naturally to injustice."

Now I want to read his book of poetry, named for his grandmother, Rifqa.