Writing

Stream of consciousness, I did not edit, or proofread. Read at your own risk.

I am writing at this point to write, to document, to put words to paper…well not paper to screen. I am writing to remember, to witness and engrave thoughts into the ether somewhere so I can come back and understand what the hell was going on; what was I thinking; who was I then? But also write so that I do not forgot real writing, unedited, polished, or intelligent writing. I want to write just to write, because the words must come out and the thoughts need space. Sometimes we must just go through a purge.

Writing has been really hard the past couple of years, every time I write words fail me they feel so faint, they feel too brittle to encompass the feelings and weight of the catastrophic realities we are bearing witness to. Everything feels fake, it all feels like a facade and good… that is how it should feel it means my eyes are clearing and I am seeing this world for what it is. The only real thing it seems is love. Love for my people, love for our lands, love for the rivers, love for the sea, love for the camaraderie I have been so graciously gifted. That love can be grief, it can be heartache, it can be rageful but most importantly it is real and it is shared.

I am but a 20 something year old trying to make sense of it all grasping at the edges of hope with all my might that another world is possible. We are told these are the cards we have been dealt and we must make due with what we have. But, who dealt us these cards and decided that was it? A world existed before all this, no actually, worldssss existed before all this. Multiple. Still, it had its own mess but different realities were possible, they were not copy paste of one another. Capitalism is not a necessity, nor is it inevitable or a big T- Truth, it is fake like everything else these oligarchs create. It is as real as the AI slop cramming our minds with rubbish.

I come back again to why I started writing… to write. But, also because I am scared, I am terrified that all that will be out there is this mess this gross mess that is AI BS that will be regurgitating misinformation, wiping away critical thinking and creating terrible art. We need to write, write terribly, write entirely imperfectly, write incomplete sentences, and speak to the ether that is binding us all to each other. Write and fill the feeds with real words, words pouring out of love for the spoken word, out of love for our stories, for each other and out of care for our collective memory and shared consciousness.

I want to read the writing of the people, the children, the elders telling their stories of lessons learned and their mischievous youth, the journalists, the angry students and passionate lovers, a mother’s mundane day to day afterthoughts. I want the stories of tired working hands. I want the writing from the cradle of resistance, I want us to preserve the fight on paper so we remember, so it cannot be taken away so we can come back and learn and read and go out and apply and learn and write and remember and share and build this world and engrave this resistance in our collective memory.

We must write. Those whose words failed them, who fell absolutely speechless at the bloodshed of thousands by the hands of the murdereous zioamerican killing machine, need to write. Need to sit and unpack and dismantle and question and hold our own selves accountable through our writing. Rage, guilt and fear… but write. We offer that space up for who to take? When we retreat, when we stop writing, questioning, being wrong, being confused and allowing ourselves to go through this process together.. who do we leave the space for?

I must admit I could not bring myself to write. Everything I wrote felt stupid and unserious, it also felt like betrayal. What do I have to say? What is there to be said? When I wrote I wrote about disgust. Let the world know that I felt disgust at myself at this world at this manufactured consent for genocide that I am implicated in. That wanting to sanitize myself by not documenting the process, the feelings and fuckery is so audacious and full of ego. What is there to protect? What if I am absloutely wrong must i not be corrected through putting that writing out there, to allow the dialectical process to take place in real time? to let there be people who will read this and pause and maybe they will share the feeling or they will absolutely disagree and have the love to tell me I am wrong?

It felt disgusting to write, to do anything so I retreated. How cowardly to not want to dirty my hands so bad that I just let them be frozen… How else to we build this world if not to entirely immerse our hands together in the mud and dig out all the sickness and turn over the soil to plant hope.

There was another problem and that one I have not entirely resolved… language. Writing in English felt removed, and Arabic forced me to feel too big and honest of feelings. Every time I would write I freeze, to write from a distance or to let the big feelings consume me. I must say English you will always fail me, but it is easier to hide behind you… Arabic names my feelings and thoughts as they are, no need to look for the write words the words were created for feelings like mine. I feel too naked writing in Arabic, but I must continue and i must let it force my hand to bring out the words stuck in my throat.

This article was a rollercoaster of thoughts and emotions and I have no particular take away or conclusion, I just wanted to write. Not about anything in specific, without a real prompt or any goal in mind. I wanted to sit down and write to write, to let the words enter the ether onto your screen and maybe, just maybe you too will be compelled to gift us your words.