The Piece I Wasn’t Sure I’d Write…

Posted originally on https://artactivismadventure.wordpress.com/.

Our bus was headed toward Gaza when I found out my uncle had passed away. Just a few weeks earlier I had panicked at the thought of being far from family when anything serious occurred, and then here I was, literally on the other side of the globe. I definitely passed most of the day in shock. I spoke to a few people on our trip about it, but generally struggled to wrap my head around my present reality…a feeling that had grown all too familiar over the course of the previous week. Feelings of helplessness and hopelessness occasionally dominate my mind, but does that make them true? Is there really nothing I am capable of that could help reduce other people’s pain as well as my own? The person I have been and the person I continue to become doesn’t think so.

Concerning my trip to Israel and the West Bank, here are a few things I can do: I can be as candid as possible about my personal experience and continue the research and work I’ve begun as an activist and a human being. During this trip, I was on the verge of tears on and off for entire days. There was a time I was so angry I felt like vomiting. In certain moments, I connected with more spirituality than I have ever experienced in my entire life. My breath was absolutely taken away in awe of so many different forms of beauty. We reached places of joy that I’ve terribly missed. Overall, my head spun so consistently that part of me gave up on processing and tried simply to record, to remember. The people. Jewish Israelis. Arab Israelis. Palestinians in and all around the West Bank. Palestinians in Israel. Druze community members. Soldiers of countless backgrounds. Tourists and pilgrims. Students and state officials and merchants and bartenders. Artists. During and beyond my travels, my mind cycled and still cycles through countless buzzwords: power structures, accountability, refugees, leadership, occupation, cultural movements, genocide, autonomy, justice, peace, history, future.

The day I touched ground in the US, I found myself sitting on a beach in San Diego, surrounded by family. I took in the healing experience of beach, and considered how powerful this physical place was for me, even without any personal religious significance. I thought of the extremely limited movement of Palestinians in the West Bank and — even more so — in Gaza, where nearly 2 million people live in an area the size of Washington DC. I thought of Jewish Israelis’ limited or illegal access to holy sites in the West Bank. I tried but couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be Palestinian in the West Bank, where territory gets as close as about 9 miles from the Mediterranean Sea, and not to be able to feel the waves lap at my feet.

There are some forms of fear and pain that I will never fully understand, not because I won’t continue to educate myself in pursuit of comprehending ways to challenge the unjust order of our world, but because there is simply no substitute for lived experience. I hope you will take the time to follow mine. My cousin processes her pain and other feelings with art. The featured image on this post is one she drew shortly after my uncle’s passing. I process my feelings most often by writing and this blog is my primary opportunity to share.

For my pieces regarding this trip, I’m aiming for at least one post per week. All will be categorized under “Israel/West Bank 2016”, anything written by me will be under “Sherlock” and pieces featuring others’ writings under “Words with Friends.” I plan to share pieces by people I met, people I traveled with there, and people I’ve organized with here and abroad. There will be creative pieces as well as research and pseudo-journaling. My mind hops about in subject and style, so my blog may as well too.