Zombie Fungus

aka the united states

A. and I took a ferry to an island. We are looking for places to live. We are looking for answers.  There is a farm there who wants to primarily feed their community, but they need to generate other income to do so. The island is expensive. I bought a small bag of nuts and a pound of grapes for $18. [Yes, it rains today, yes I am coming down with the rain.] The people, though, they were lovely. We met the owner’s ewes. One was named Dicey, another Baby Girl or Baby Cakes, I can’t recall. After our visit, we pulled the car back into the ferry terminal. We sat and waited to load. My mother called to say her horse is dying. [It passed this morning.] I joined a zoom meeting for Poets for Palestine in the car. There are not many words, the poets said. Here are a few, they said. They read June Jordan, Fady Joudah; they read their own plees. There are not many words. [I wrote this the other day: I believe that a poet’s work is of being alive and of hearing the dead. It is our job to listen. My attention is there. Free Palestine.] In other words, it is not always a writer’s job to write. 

We drove onto the ferry and left the island internet reception behind. The poets’ voices cracked, becoming one until there was silence. The call dropped. A. and I left the car, headed to the top deck. There, the sun shown marvelously on everything: the ocean, the mountains. It was all pink and beautiful. 

As more news comes in, specifically about the american response to genocide, I feel like ants who have been poisoned by parasitic cordyceps. Have you ever seen those videos? The ant or spider or beetle or snail goes all haywire and colorful bulges of who-knows-what take over the insect’s body. It is fascinating. The mind-controlling cordycep is ophiocordyceps unilateralis—or zombie fungus—and what I am saying here is that we (news reporters, ‘journalists’, celebrities, social media) are the ants to the zionist apartheid wealthy colonizer nations and I know little of what to do about it. [There are so many things; free Palestine.] One’s liberation is everyone’s liberation.

Last week I was going to write about a homophobic island woman or my mother coming to visit me. For now I bring you this, a small thing: last night, after the pink was gone, A. and I watched an episode from season two of Our Flag Means Death (a gay pirate dark comedy). It was one of the last shows Anna watched; I had recommended it to her a few weeks before her death. During the first few minutes they played about 20 seconds of William Onyeabor's "Fantastic Man", a song she so loved. There she was, in a small way, after the pink was gone. Time is not linear.

The dead will come to speak. We must listen.

…

Some things to do/read:

1. Poets for Palestine Resource Sheet — there are resources here to donate, learn, and take action

2. Fariha Róisín’s heartbreaking, beautifully written substack on some historical clarification

3. Chen Chen’s message, “poets, it is not enough to say that it is a broken world. to lament the fact. no, name who has broken it--who is, right now, breaking it. and imagine another world. sing of that. and fight for it.”

4. https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/resource/call-congress-support-ceasefire/

5. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/poets-for-palestine-raising-funds-for-medical-aid-for-palestinians-tickets-741913783097

6. The View from My Window in Gaza by Mosab Abu Toha.

7. Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying by Noor Hindi

8. If you live in Whatcom county, there will be a rally on October 21st at 1pm at Maritime Heritage Park. I know many of you are far away—peace to you wherever you are.