Embers of Despair

“Happy New Year!,” the lifeguard yelled across the pool at me with chirpy enthusiasm after I’d finished swimming laps—at the precise instant when the endorphins had kicked in to offer me a momentary reprieve from the pain of these times. His optimism shattered that.

If you know me, you know I’m not good at hiding my feelings, with my facial reactions always betraying my inner emotions even if I say nothing.

I looked thoroughly annoyed; he looked bewildered.

The stakes feel starker than ever, and so do the contrasts: between those who see and those who choose not to.

Maybe it’s only us rebels who are having debates as this Gregorian new year approaches like, “Will 2024 be worse than 2023?” “Hasn’t every year of late been worse than the previous one?” “Does 2020 now feel good in comparison?” or asserting predictions for 2024 such as “it’s bad,” even before it starts.

Instead of “happy,” the words I’ve been hearing from friends recently are terms like “rage,” “grief,” “depressed,” or “broken.” These seem perfectly sensible and healthy responses to what’s ailing humanity. Yet most prominently of late, I’ve heard utterances of “despair.” Even the most prefigurative of us anarchists (aka me) find “despair” dogging their heels.

Despair clouded my walk home from the pool, and even though the twilight sky stretched out in magnificent expansiveness, I felt the lack of any horizons. I felt empty.

Each morning for nearly 3 months on waking, I immediately search for all the reports from the Palestinian press on the ground in Gaza. Usually, one or more have been murdered. Always, they show tragedies and horrors—the wanton brutality of colonization, occupation, states and their military complexes. Always, I bear witness; I cry. And maybe like you, I try to do what little I can.

Yet I realized I didn’t cry this morning. And I realized numerous of the press said they want to cry but can’t anymore. Some graffiti noted, “If it were a matter of crying, we would cry, but it’s beyond that.”

Hence despair.

But an hour ago, a friend reminded me that despair is a healthy response—an emotion “filled with embers,” inklings we still have a fire in our hearts. And hearts.

#UntilAllAreFree

(photo: spray-painted tag seen several days ago on a white-painted brick wall in so-called Asheville reading “no genocide” in red and “free Palestine” in black)