In the very earliest time,

when both people and animals lived on earth,

a person could become an animal if he wanted to

and an animal could become a human being.

Sometimes they were people

and sometimes animals

and there was no difference.

All spoke the same language.

That was the time when words were like magic.

The human mind had mysterious powers.

A word spoken by chance

might have strange consequences.

It would suddenly come alive

and what people wanted to happen could happen—

all you had to do was say it.

Nobody could explain this:

That's the way it was.

Magic Words (after Nalungiac)

English version by Jerome Rothenberg & Richard Johnny John

 Israel has killed 232 Palestinian journalists since October 2023, more than in both world wars, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia, and the United States war in Afghanistan combined. 

Carole Cadwalladr

 everything seemed normal but nothing was normal. 

 Song of the day, Bringing Up The Nakba, by Alabaster De Plume. 

 we been normalized.

 Dogs against genocide. Dogs against empire. Dogs for love. Dogs for community. Dogs for peace.

 and you have boasted of your acts of piracy and murder and declared yourself a genocidal zionist, outlaw regime.

 and you will pay for it.

 Dual use. 

 We know we don't know all the stuff the empire managers do, but we know there is no honest broker among them.

 People may become unencumbered by the habit of thinking.

 Cope and change.

 Witness if You Will the Apotheosis of the American Project. 

 Don't stop talking about Gaza, and the Empire in the Park.

 The word of the day, from R., is contrive. Some will contrive, and some will strive.

 When I wake up I have specific memories that seem to be random and unrelated to the present circumstances whatever they may be but then everything relates even that we can't articulate and some memories may be related to forgotten dreams. 

Sweetheart in the graveyard. I forgot what I was going to write. I had something in my head a minute ago. I get distracted easily. I think of easement. There are surely a lot of sweethearts in the graveyard, alongside babies who would be sweethearts. People live beside people in graveyards in their afterlife who never met in life. 

 

 There are a lot of babies in the graveyard. Most of them without names. It rained hard last night, coming in the bathroom window. At the same time it was raining hard in the film we were watching, The Shepherd and the Bear. I thought about coexistence. I guess I am an existentialist. I thought about what if you had a Zionist in the family. I thought about it but what to do but think about it if it were true. Nobody in the graveyard is a Zionist.

 i guess i didn't have any worldly ambition.

 

 Another place for mom. We thought we wouldn't want a flat stone, but why not? It looks so open and inviting, and the neighbors humble and unassuming. 

 The tourists are already coming, gulp, and they're leaving with bags of swag.

You are America, gnome sane. Hmm, We Shall Overcome, yeah. Very profitable progress, let's talk good trouble, gnome sane, heh heh. 

Pirate politicians talk about freedom and justice while they kill with impunity.

 We do not want ICE. We do not want Fascism. We do not want Zionism. We do not want The Israel Lobby. We do not want The Blob. We do not want The Terror State. We do not want Endless Genocide. 

 Calling Dr. Hipp.

 a genocidal state. getting mugged by reality. in desperate need of a systemic rethink.

The following day, which is today, I see they removed the Bring Change Home banners. They may have realized it was laying it on a little thick, overselling the dream, rubbing in the done deal, gaslighting the community.

 manifold loss. so much is being lost now, you can't even grieve a single thing.

 still looking for a place for mom.

 What if consciousness is like water, and has always been here. What if consciousness is feeling, and everything is feeling, everything, everything that ever was, forever. 

 You're a speculator in the land of dreams.

You take the land. You sell it back as a dream. You have to keep selling the dream. You're a self-made man in the land of your own making, the resettled familiar land of The Dream. You're an entrepreneur in the uncanny land of familiar dreams. 

But at the same time, the past is very important, their relationship to land. But it’s not really the past. It’s something more complex. Because in these communities there isn’t a desire to return to the past—there’s a desire for the future. For their children to be better off, not to be displaced from their land. It’s more about the future than the past.

Lucrecia Martel

What is your relationship to the land? 

I can't tell you that, it's private.

Why is it private?

Because it's not our land.