Mike and I are watching The Three-Body Problem, I finished reading The Hundred Years War on Palestine, and now, I’m reading The Sweetness of Water. In each of them, there are characters I relate to, Will Downing, who’s sent into space alive but not quite alive to travel for hundreds of years, the people of Palestine who have had their land, ways of life, and lives stolen from them by a people who want to deny their millennial hold on their homes and eradicate them, and Isabelle who realizes that she is on her own, completely alone and free, despite being surrounded by people who love her. Will Downing gave up on the love of his life and spending his last weeks with her. The people of Palestine barely continue to exist without land, money, food, and even a water supply of their own. And Isabelle gives up knitting and tending her roses as being productive suddenly seems futile.
I wonder what I would think about travelling thousands of miles over a few hundred years being disconnected from everyone? Would I focus on futility or beauty? I wonder why I water and feed my plants and the hummingbirds. They would live and die on their own. Don’t worry. I’ll care for anyone who’s dependent on me. I just get sad when I think I’m helping someone, and yet it doesn’t work or it’s not enough. The vet technician lectured me on how fat Blitz was and how long his claws had grown. I was so ashamed. And I wonder about people who exist despite all their suffering. Am I comparing my life to the genocide of millions of people? Maybe I am. I know that’s selfish but no matter how much pain I am in, no matter how deep the fatigue, and despite the daily temporary loss of my faculties, people don’t seem to see me or hear me. People ignored the plight of the Palestinians until just now when they’ve become the most recent sympathy-fad. Where will they be in a year or two when we forget them again, still struggling to survive? And Isabelle, out in the wilderness, losing her son and finding him again, but different, not connecting with her free-range husband. The forest will reclaim it all after she’s gone. Why should she fight it?
I used to write every day, sometimes six or seven pages a day. I felt an urge to write, almost a panic that I might not finish in time. I thought that people wanted to know my stories. Now, I wonder who would ever read any of it anyway. If they do read it, would my stories matter? Am I like Will, whose thoughts go into the void forever and ever without ever connecting? Why bother putting in on paper if no one wants to hear? Why not cry out to empty space?
Mike listens. Nick listens. My cats and my hummingbirds listen. They love when I tell them how amazing they are. I live for them. If I continue to write, it’s for them too, even if they never read it. Pain is exhausting, but there’s a beauty to the life around me as I lie in place and watch it spin. The children I see are tender and spirited and unique. My friends are wrapped up in the cycle of their lovely lives, their families, and their interests. Do people see the intricacies and magic in this world, in the tiny organisms, in the delicate balance of our orbit in space, in the love that keeps each of them breathing?
But what makes me think they need me to show them? The progression of life and death, life and death, new indifferent life and imminent death, will reclaim me and all my words too. Why should I fight it?