I may have slept for only 3-4 hours tonight and then headed to work and from work went to physical therapy, but oh, let me tell you how alive I feel after I've been out and not next to safe spaces for about an hour today AND DIDN'T DIE. Cannot recommend it for obvious reasons, but it's exhilarating.

I also got the permission to work from home, which I will use to a. stay safe, and b. not to be next to colleagues in the bomb shelter who are talking about how there's no chance of survival if it's a direct hit.

This really needs to end.

I can't even imagine how challenging this is for you and yours, Shir. I am so grateful you take the time to connect with us. I'm not sure I see a quick path for this ending, and I have zero confidence in the decision-making process on your side or ours.

I am home, despite having been anticipating being on a cruise for a few days. My cousin's girlfriend was supposed to bring their birth certificates with them because their passports had expired. Ooops, she grabbed her late husband's birth certificate by mistake, not actually reading it because of the fine print and not bothering to grab her readers. Needless to say, she felt horrible, but he could not go, so the rest of us were not going without him. Granted, he is a grown ass adult and should have checked it himself, and I could have asked her to send me pictures of them to verify stuff was in order. But money down the drain on the cruise.

We did go to Key West yesterday and had a lovely time, and are generally doing all kinds of beachy stuff here.

Jesus, Laura! What a waste.

I can't even imagine how challenging this is for you and yours, Shir. I am so grateful you take the time to connect with us.

Same here.

I can't even imagine how challenging this is for you and yours, Shir. I am so grateful you take the time to connect with us.

War is pretty much hell all around, yes, but I'm actually having it a bit easier than others here. There are of course the Palestinians, Muslims during Ramadan having to put up with this mess as well, and many people who are discovering that having even mild emergencies during a war (breaking a leg, or your car breaking down) is happening in less than ideal timing. Parents or a carers for someone with severe disability? You're on another stress level, in a different galaxy. Or if your house where you thought it was safe is being bombarded (the north, where I grew up. I know what they're going through).

But the above isn't the point. My general war anxiety isn't the point. It's the intro to my point. I love this place exactly because you can imagine to some extant, and b.org showed me so many different types of imagination by so many different people. A few weeks ago I quoted someone I knew who wrote (my translation):

"Long long time ago we had a project here, “how literature ruined my life”, that I can’t remember a single text from it but I’ll never forget its title. I’m guessing I’m not alone in it. But I do remember that many wrote that literature saved them, and it must be true. Me too, more than once. And every time it ruined, I imagine, it was because I read things like ‘love’ and ‘adventure’ without having the slightest idea of their actual weight in the world. And every time it saved, I imagine, it was because I read things like ‘love’ and ‘adventure’ and managed to guess somehow their contours in the world. I know no other way to cross this distance other than empathy. Even if it’s too much to bear right now, even if it’s all that there is. It is so easy to be a stranger to yourself and others, drowning in the sea that you are. This is, too, a possible fate. And maybe it’s bearable at the moment, many things are more bearable at the moment, but." (Itamar Shealtiel, “We Are Children of Our Age, Fucking Hell”, 18/01/25)

I keep thinking about this paragraph and the post [link] in general (alas, it's in Hebrew, and Google Translate does some interesting things to 10% of it in a way which spoils the reading altogether). It's about words and position in the world and movement and relationships and how do we tell others about our inner worlds and how we pass down this kind of knowledge and how we can understand other people's strange experiences. How do we and how we can connect to completely strange experiences (that part also made me think about actors, and what a strange and vital profession they have).

What I'm trying to say - I know that 'can't even imagine' is a phrase, and that we're not in the same boat, but you can imagine mine and I can imagine yours. I feel like I've been living in a world that's been doing everything that it can so that we'll stop to imagine other people's lives and having empathy for them. This place is wonderful in doing so.

I'm not sure I see a quick path for this ending, and I have zero confidence in the decision-making process on your side or ours.

I don't know for how much longer we can continue living like this. It's not day 9 of war, it's day 883 since Oct. 7th. If I'm hoping for something, is that your President will be distracted by a new shiny thing to collapse the world order with and decide what he got was good enough, or that my PM will get on his nerves and he'll decide to wrap things up. And then, maybe, elections here and we'll see how things go.

If I'm hoping for something, is that your President will be distracted by a new shiny thing to collapse the world order with and decide what he got was good enough, or that my PM will get on his nerves and he'll decide to wrap things up.

From your keyboard to g_d’s ears.

how do we tell others about our inner worlds and how we pass down this kind of knowledge and how we can understand other people's strange experiences

I honestly think that’s what poetry is for, to the extent that it’s “for” anything. Not to be pretty or get another person to fall in love or into bed with you (although sometimes it is and occasionally it does). But to attempt to convey as sense of what our inner worlds are like and how they can intersect.

Anyway, I continue to be glad to see your pixels and read your thinky thoughts, Shir. All possible safety ~ma to you and yours.

Always good to see your pixels, Shir, but especially nice to get some true insights with them! Good stuff.

Has anyone seen/heard from Monty (gc) lately? I realized I haven’t, a friend was talking about Gentleman Jack and I was thinking of her

Poking my head for just a minute (I've just ended a zoom meeting, and the semester starts on zoom tomorrow, so there's stuff to prepare, but I had a minute on the computer with my Oh-I'm-So-Late-With-Them grading breathing down my neck but not literally on my lap), because I feel the need to report that we're fine, as fine as possible under the circumstances.

We've had non-stop alarms during the last twenty-four hours, but we're still in generally better shape regarding that than most other places. We're still hurrying to the local shelter each time, we're still losing sleep (I don't think I've had six hours total in the past two nights combined together), we're all cranky and tired and stressed.

But it could be so so much worse. We're as fine as possible in a reality that still seems like something out of the history books rather than what could be an actual everyday life.

Take care, y'all.

Thank you so much for checking in, Nilly. My words are inadequate in all of this, but I'm keeping you, Shir, and your families and loved ones close in my heart.