Art Parallels Jeremy Lipking, Federico Zandomeneghi, Serge Marshennikov, Allan Douglas Davidson, Svetlana

you forfeit all rights to my  h e a r t you forfeit your place in our  b e d you’ll sleep in your office instead

happy halloween

my mom is very ill - she had to go in for a CT scan this week (and next week she has to have another one, with contrast). she's been struggling with a combination of some severe symptoms, and she put off dealing with this because of what happened first with her arm in october, but she waited longer than she should have. they found that not only does she have kidney stones and a progression of her CKD, but she also has a mass on her liver and another mass, with atrophy, on her left kidney. they're not sure what they are. they could be cysts and they could be cancer. her kidneys have been bad for years, but it's escalated from bad to unbearable pain, so we knew something else had to be going on. she actually did go in for help in august (she was starting to feel really sick in may), but they couldn't even get her into a urologist until november, so that didn't help with the time of it all worsening.

her arm still isn't even healed. at least it's less painful though. if the results of these scans come back with a severe diagnosis, she doesn't want to treat it. we can't afford to regardless. I am trying not to process what that will mean for us yet.

we've also been dealing with the upstairs flooding our hall bathroom (which is where the shower is) regularly for the past three weeks, the HOA sent out a plumber not quite two weeks ago, but whatever he did didn't fix it because it happened again. we have to set up a hose connected to the pipe and a plastic tub to prevent water from going everywhere. everything is just ongoing hell atm.

I also don't think I can ever explain or articulate the sheer level of trauma the past two months have caused emotionally and mentally due to global impact, and for me specifically due to my circumstances, the internet.

I read a piece where the author said, "I’ll be honest. I feel like shattered glass. I don’t know how to collect the pieces of me that have broken in this time...I don’t know how much more I personally can withstand losing and I’m finding these to be the hardest days of my life... I want to go back, but I can’t go back. You can’t go back. You can’t have what once was. You have to accept reality, as unforgiving and as stark as it may be. If only we could all go back. Afraid not...What was warm turns bitterly cold. What was fruitful dries up. What was safe becomes treacherous. What was clear becomes murky. What was love becomes strange. What was true becomes uncertain. And it is in everything and everywhere and everyone, and it is too much to hold at once without losing the one thing none of us can afford to lose - our minds...I’m praying that we can stay sane and somehow find purpose, solace, compassion, dare I say love, in a world that is framing us as crazy while we’re hunted down every second of our lives."

you don't understand. there's a post describing the loss of community as "cataclysmic." it isn't hyperbolic, it's accurate. (there's another post which someone tagged: "#i know the internet has ruined the word gaslighting #but that’s exactly what it is #goyim have gaslit jews on such a massive scale i literally cannot trust my perception of reality #prev>>> #i am constantly anxious and terrified #it’s everywhere from everyone both irl and online #i feel like i’m sleep walking into a gas chamber #and idk what to do about it other than scream into the void #like i honestly cannot describe my level of terror #but also i keep doubting myself thinking i’m being alarmist or overreacting." to put it plainly, our fear is ceaseless, and then we're actively shamed and, yes, gaslit over it. read this one too.) there is not a Jewish person I have seen in existence who is unaffected by this. I've followed so many Jewish creators on IG just to give quiet support because they are barraged daily by the most vile things, and hardly anyone from the outside is checking in on them, asking if they need anything. it can't be our 0.2% against the world, despite how beautiful that solidarity has become. no one is asking if we're okay (we're not). even if we're fortunate enough that our lives are untouched directly. our world has changed.

I cannot come onto this website without feeling a sense of panic, I've lost count of how many mutuals I blocked on my former main, and there are more still I need to clear out that I haven't had the ability to deal with. a couple of weeks ago - and honestly, this was...the last straw and a real breaking point for me - this website saw fit to desecrate the shema. I already wrote about its presence in my life, and then I had to see this website frequented by people who would DARE to violate its meaning. we are not only being inundated with hatred and vitriol, we are not only being gaslit, we are not only being accused and shamed because of our ethnicity, culture, and religion, we are watching people lie and try to rewrite foundational, real history and truths and core tenets. you dirty and twist our terms, our meanings, our sacred things without hesitation. I'd BEG for everyone to fucking learn something, but I know learning would make absolutely zero difference because education doesn't matter ("it depends on the context," after all, even if you're calling for our deaths and destruction), understanding doesn't matter, this is driven by hatred, feeding off of it, finding any way to cause harm. the level of evil being perpetuated is beyond comprehension. this website will never be the safe or happy place it was for me again. perhaps that's my own fault, that I was naive enough to believe it was that to begin with. (edit: this is very apt and timely and unsettling.)

I don't think you can understand the feeling of losing faith in the very fabric of things you believed in societally and socially, the institutions, the organizations, the ideals, the politics, the spaces, the human beings. it goes from a macro level of principles to the micro of "friends" you personally interacted with. I have not known how to withstand this level of soul shattering heartache, of the trust being decimated this wholly. in the midst of this, to bear witness, I have read accounts of abhorrent atrocities that shouldn't even be fathomable in the mind, meanwhile keeping tabs on the violent incidents and rhetoric happening daily. I don't know how to disengage from it because awareness feels like a shield. I don't know how to tell you the way it's changed me as a person. I am not who I was mere months ago.

the only solace I find is that this has given me a stronger sense of identity and pride, a strength in responding to things that would doubtless have driven me to tears before, and a newfound centered self-respect.

this particular blog was created out of an anxiety response, a need to flee. and it's not been comforting like I needed it to be. so, back at the end of november, I decided to take my url - which I loved very, very dearly and wanted to keep safe - and save it elsewhere, for a time after I'd rested, when I wasn't as traumatized, as angry and grief-stricken, as panicked. it didn't seem fair to have it here, I wanted it guarded. I took my icon, my header, my pretty pink color scheme, and copied it all over. it was all fine. I logged out. and for some unknown reason, some glitch, some mean little twist of fate, tumblr terminated the account. absolutely no idea why, maybe there was a problem with the e-mail address I'd just set up for it? I contacted support, but of course this site is running on fumes, thus I have heard nothing. my url got evaporated along with it, and I can't reclaim it because it says it's "taken" even though it doesn't exist. I don't know. I don't know if this was a sign from the universe telling me not to bother. that it isn't worth it. there's no real fandom engagement I want to participate in anymore (I'll be honest, I currently can't stomach certain people/artists/things that once were favorites, for various reasons, in ways which may not be recoverable, and there were aspects of fandom already difficult to navigate, but there's an added horror now: I can't engage with anyone, can't reblog a post or follow someone, without feeling the need to comb through their blog to see if they're safe or not. if they'd cheer or ignore or deny harm done to me or not. it's a continual buzz of anxiety, no one is okay to interact with at face value). I was going to lean into pretty aesthetics, classic films and music, my vintage loves (as those never let me down) in a new place, for peace of mind, serenity, escape. alas. if I can't get my url restored, trying again probably won't happen.

so anyway. that's it. I am tired. spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically, to the bone and heart, after my entire adult life spent in the throes of chronic fatigue and life-destroying illness, small stresses and strange catastrophes and sorrowful losses, times when I thought I'd die from it all, I never knew I could be quite this exhausted.

we're nearing the end of Chanukah. do you know what Chanukah actually celebrates? do you know about the battle, about the desecration and rededication of the temple? it's about survival and defiance. it's about light that should not exist still miraculously persisting to burn. it was always considered a "minor" holiday, only made more prominent by assimilation and its winter date. someone I've come to admire greatly said in a live, as he lit the candles, that we can't think of it as minor anymore, that is, in fact, essential. because the miracle that happened there, in Jerusalem, 2000 years ago, now is the miracle of the fact that we still exist and live and illuminate such depths of darkness with our ever-present light. viktor frankl wrote: what is to give light must endure burning. I've thought of that often lately. we will outlive them. maybe I won't, but we, as a people, will. "the miracle, of course, was not that the oil for the sacred light - in a little cruse - lasted as long as they say, but that the courage...lasted to this day: let that nourish my flickering spirit."

I don't know what the next step is. can all the words in all the books help me to face what lies ahead?

#i keep thinking about the essay i read by ilan benjamin. daniel pearl's cousin #who has lived so much more life and seen so much more and experienced so much more than i have (but who hasn't?) #(my isolation and frozen state at a much younger age is assuredly part of what has added to this shock and naivete for me) #anyway he listed the allyship he's worked for and believed in and the heartbreak he has willingly forgiven #and the humanity and rights for which he stands. and then he said #“when you killed my idealism i had no forgiveness left” #it's silly but it's lived like a splinter in my head and keeps (bizarrely) making me think of that scene from moulin rouge #when he says: thank you for curing me of my ridiculous obsession with love. #the thing that makes that tragic isn't his misplaced anger at her but rather the shattering of his idealism. he is in many ways an innocent #an artist who believes in truth and beauty and freedom and above all things love. who suddenly understands that's not how the world works#love can't save you. you can work so hard and try and be so compassionate and forgiving #eventually you have to see how the world is built and your idealism is not real and is not enough #that's what the past weeks taught me. because of the jubilation and justification and hatred and reveling in the pain everywhere #and disguising that as righteous. and pretending it's helping people who deserve help (it isn't. it won't) #and knifing people who have done absolutely nothing in the heart simply for being who and what they are#spreading screeds from another era as if we've been transported through time. and not caring what it does to friends or anyone suffering#and not caring that it's making things more dangerous and volatile because you don't really love the side you claim to support#as much as you hate the other. that's unforgivable. thank you for curing me of my ridiculous obsession with love#i don't know what to do. there's nothing i can do

the referenced essay:

https://www.thefp.com/

Once, I Was a Peace Advocate. Now, I Have No Idealism Left.

After terrorists killed my cousin Daniel Pearl, my family called for peace. But after the worldwide celebration of our people’s slaughter, m

via

🥺❤️

A locket Humphrey Bogart gave Lauren Bacall has a new owner.

The gold locket, which is heart-shaped and inscribed with the words “Baby/heres my heart/Bogie,” is set with a simulated garnet and has openings for two pictures inside. A buyer paid $57,150 for the locket at a Julien’s Auctions sale of Hollywood memorabilia, nearly three times its highest pre-sale estimate of $20,000. There was a total of 23 bids for the piece. (sept.2023)

fellow westerners, particularly gentiles, if you think, “this is only about (insert infographic reason) (the land) (fighting oppression) (the war)” or “this is the Middle East and Russia, not here,” you’re wrong. if you think, “I’m not causing this simply by using incendiary language on the internet,” you’re wrong. if you think, “well, I don’t have a problem with (((Jews))), but…,” you’re wrong. if you think, “tbh (((they))) deserve this,” you’re helping it spread. do you see why this is terrifying? do you see how this is not helping liberation or a plan for a ceasefire or humanitarian interests? the blood libel and the dual loyalty and the Holocaust inversion and the atrocity denial and the accusations of greed and the dehumanization and the misuse of terms and the misinformation, this is the direct consequence. this has always been the exact consequence. if you think, “it can’t happen here,” look at the college campuses having to tell their Jewish students to hide and the people assaulted verbally and physically on the streets and the graffiti and the break-ins and the chants to eradicate the Jews and the waved swastikas, and the number of people online saying that this is justice, and then attacking any Jewish person they can find, or anyone who expresses sympathy. the ones who say that this is what fighting for freedom looks like. it can’t happen here? it already is. this is the most recent incident to instill fear. it probably won’t be the last. this is not aiding liberation, this is not championing human rights or peace. call it what it is.

A pro Palestine mob has just taken over a Russian Airport because a plane landed from Tel Aviv. They are stopping every car and checking passports to tell who is Jewish. They are going door to door in nearby hotels to look for Jews. They burned down a Jewish community center. They are surrounding random people on the street who look jewish and stealing their belongings to see if they can tell if they're jewish and therefore whether they should beat them. This is happening right now.

Open your fucking eyes. This was never about Palestine. This was about killing Jews. Quit being so fucking daft.

Betty Grable