People’s reactions to my trip to Lebanon have been thematically consistent. Most tell me that they’re thinking of me and praying for me; some say that they’ll miss me; even those who don’t know my reasons for travel have responded with a mix of investment and alarm. That’s a product of Lebanon’s place in the headlines since my last trip, I suppose.
It’s been sweet to receive these sentiments, but the cumulative effect of it all is a mild sense of foreboding. Do people know something I don’t? Will I not make it back? What’s going on?
That sense is also a product; an output of my brain configuration. Last night, someone was intense about offering anything and whatever Christine and I might need at any time — just ask — and I couldn’t help but giggle nervously in reply. It was overwhelming. This is all very overwhelming.
The dread rises up most deeply from the depths of uncertainty; I try to think of plans for the next three weeks and they come through out of focus. In fact, the only images that cohere concretely in my mind involve me looking through a camera — images of images. Like a war correspondent, I can’t seem to calm my body without a camera in my hand.
Earlier this morning, I saw this posted on Threads: “Be more Vivian Maier. Carry a camera everywhere. Photograph life as you see it. Don’t do it for praise or a following, do it because you love photography & want to document the world – even if nobody sees it.”
Is that why I do it? Because I love photography and want to document the world? Or do I love the world and need photography to keep reminding myself?
There was a meme I saw a week or so ago with Bernie Sanders holding up a piece of paper in a diner and a caption that said: “me” and “my latest obsession no one cares about.” Suffice it to say, “it me.”
Over the last 5 or 6 years, I’ve been going through several periods of intense deep dives into subject matters I wander into: nuclearism, esoterism, Marianism, and now, Marxist-Leninism, masha’Allah. Disparate interests tied by a thread that probably only makes sense to me and my inner child, but connected, nonetheless. They have to be! I have the stacks and stacks of books to prove it, he says sweating conspiratorially.
My point in bringing up this now isn’t to justify my eBay and Alibris habit or even to make sense of my topical interests; it’s to name two vectors that’ve carried me thus far in my time here on Turtle Island.
One, a deep curiosity about communities I don’t fully understand but somehow opened a door for me and said tfaddal ahlen. Two, an overwhelming urge to busy my brain almost to exhaustion; it’s like doomscrolling if it actually taught you something. And it’s that latter part that I’m wondering about now.
Why do I do it? There’s intrinsic value to all these interests, but what explains the urge? Is it a need to feel important? Is it the child in me that would get palpitations at the Scholastic Book Fair every year? Is it the Holy Spirit urging me onward to truth?
And I’ve got one more thing to say: Free Palestine.
Swipe to see a photo of graffiti I’ve already posted and then see what happened to it the next day; that’s ideology in its purest form.