More Ramadan Dispatches <3
Hey all,
Belated Eid Mubarak!
I hope everyone is doing okay. I know many of you have been privy to the news, but right now there is a war in Sudan and there are many people who are turning into refugees overnight who need help. The borders are really rough, people are being stranded, and people who are fleeing are expected to have visas in order to enter other countries. This is wild, all while people are trying to find safety amid conflict.
Here’s a link to donate to help.
And a link to an email template where you can ask for the immediate evacuation of US citizens.
And here are some news updates if you want to stay updated.
Day Twenty-Seven
Surrender is one of the most beautiful values in Islam to me, the ability to know how much is outside of your control and to actually allow yourself the ability to just surrender to life and what it has to hold for you. So many of us have been made aware of our control issues since COVID, and quite frankly—how much is outside of our control. Surrender is such a beautiful principle, and one that can be a hard balance to strike—the balance between surrendering and also taking charge and ownership in your life.
A project that I’ve been working on is put on hold because of the upcoming writer’s strike. So much of my work energy in the last few months has been this—chasing after a project only to have it dashed at the last minute by forces outside of my control. Everything is so turbulent right now in terms of work—I know it’s the life I chose being an artist, but it’s also hard to feel like there isn’t a lot of stability underneath me.
It’s hard, deeply. Trying to strike this balance. Trying to be okay with things shifting so intensely all the time. But what I can’t control, I can’t control. A lesson I’m continually learning.
Day Twenty-Eight
We’re on a bus ride that takes us a few hours outside of Rio, and the scenery is beautiful. Lush fields and mountains, a greenery that’s maybe some of the greenest I’ve ever seen. As we’re traveling I feel so calm, anchored. I cry thinking about how beautiful nature is, being close to it in this way, being able to witness it.
I think of where I was at maybe five or six years ago, my relationship to nature being one of such distance then. I grew up thinking that nature was for white people or rich people; and that I didn’t have that much exposure to it. And with the way that nature is so heavily policed, it makes sense that I would think that way, or be raised to think of nature as inaccessible. It’s wild that we live in a world where access to nature often requires so much, and is denied to so many.
On my ride, I think about all of the problems that have been clogging up my brain space. They feel far away, distanced in a way that makes them feel manageable. And I feel so deeply the swell of gratitude of the minutia of my life—my friendships, my ability to be on this bus at this time right now, watching the mountains pass and turn to other mountains, the grass turn to more grass, the cycles of what is continue and continue, the unfolding that keeps moving.
Day Twenty-Nine
It’s the eclipse, when the moon masks the sun. There are so many theories about the eclipse and about what it entails—people saying not to do anything, that eclipse energy is intense, that it’s unruly. But online, I read about the idea that the eclipse denotes both a death and a rebirth, a powerful time for transformation.
In our cabin, my partner and I are surrounded by woods. We decide to do a meditation on a whim, a ten minute one where we can clear our minds and our hearts. As soon as the timer goes off I walk outside, and open our door to seven plain-clothed police officers with rifles standing outside our door. The lead one is walking up to us with his hand on his holster, ready to draw.
I try to tell him that we don’t speak Portuguese, and am surprised when he rebukes us by saying that, yes, we do. It feels like time slows down: I’m hyper aware of everything that’s happening, and I can actually understand a lot of what he’s saying because I need to, because it’s critical for both my partner and mines survival. They’re looking for someone who’s connected to drugs, their on an investigation, and they’re wondering if we’re either this person that they are looking for or have seen them. Him and his other officers continue to question us, and then search our cabin and our belongings. They never ask for mine or my partner’s IDs, or our names, or anything that would probably be useful in this moment. Instead, they keep insisting that we somehow know what they are talking about, until eventually the lead police office facetimes someone he knows who speaks English and then she translates between us. Eventually he realizes that we’re traveling and have no idea what he’s talking about and leaves.
My partner and I go on a walk by the lake after to decompress and debrief. The whole interaction is clearly traumatic and wild and full of injustice. It’s wild how calm you have to be in order to keep a situation neutral when someone has the power to end your life, or the life of someone you love, because they don’t know how to control their emotions, or if they project their own insecurities or read something wrong. And how much stress it puts in the body, to have to operate like that so many times, and just the inability to actually be able to be yourself.
I’ve been feeling that a lot this year, with this being one of the most extreme examples, but how much and how difficult it has been for me to maintain calmness, kindness and diplomacy when people around me are projecting a lot of their own shit and biases towards myself or my partner or both of us, together. I’m not trying to sound all woe-is-me, but it’s been a lot, and it takes up a lot of my patience.
At night, we go into ceremony together. And we let the transformation that needs to happen, occur.