Sonia Connolly

rosefox's post on Netzach

I resonate with endurance and tenacity. Stubbornness. One foot in front of the other in front of the other. I don't resonate as much with vision, victory, and eternity. Except the kind of eternity that is an eternal present. I noticed around Tiferet that I feel injured in relation to vision. Flinchy, growly, like an injured cat.

( Week of Netzach )

Regarding mentors, I want to give a shoutout to RaceFail 2009, where I got a lot of my initial anti-racist education as I silently followed the blossoming of posts across the fannish internet. I appreciate all the people who turned their pain into posts and gathered links to move that struggle forward.

I like the idea of sitting with the ungraspable nature of being alive. Here we are, as bizarre as it is!

rosefox's post on Hod

( Week of Hod )

I like the idea, for tomorrow, of supporting something that's already good. I'm finding that kindness is so crucial right now, the small kindnesses of smiling, acknowledging someone's presence, making their life a little easier, appreciating when they do that for me. I have been ordering a bunch of stuff online lately, and while I'm giving the spending a bit of a side-eye, it also fits with supplying my future self, supporting artists and small businesses, and gathering gifts to send out later. I think something in me is trying to batten down for an unpredictable winter. Scared, and grieving, and reaching for comfort.

Thanks, rosefox, for putting this structure together and giving me the opportunity to be with everything it brings up.

I joined Vote Forward and just wrote 5 letters! I heard about it via swan_tower, who said it's proven to make a difference, reaches out to youth and/or minority voters, and has a small initial commitment.

Here's what I added to each letter: I'm voting this year because "I care! I want all of us to have our basic needs met and feel safe and valued. I hope you will vote too!"

I mean it SO HARD. Maybe each recipient will feel how much I want them individually to feel safe and valued, and exercise their right to vote in that direction.

Things I'm not writing, but I also mean: I am so goddamn scared. PLEASE vote. PLEASE. Please let my small effort flow with the larger stream of everyone's efforts and turn the tide.

Maybe I'll do 5 letters each day until they get mailed out on October 17th. I'm using the pretty "American Gardens" stamps that I bought to support the post office earlier this year. (Will need to acquire more business size envelopes and stamps if I'm really going to do it every day!)

9 min animated video "A Message from the Future II: The Years of Repair," art by Molly Crabapple, political storytelling by Naomi Klein, Avi Lewis, and Opal Tometi. via smilingslightly.

I love the art and vision of this video. It is both amazingly hopeful and devastatingly grim. It makes me cry, both with longing, and with fear that we'll go through the grimness into ever more grimness and never come out into the light.

Regarding the latest report of presidential illness and lack of care for others' health, I am so tired of the future being cast into ever more uncertainty. I barely adjust to one earth-shaking twist when the next one shows up. Enough!!

I saw an elegantly hopeful summary of the story thus far from ckd: "In folktales and ballads, if someone were to refuse to fulfill (or worse, actively try to counter) the dying request of a wise old woman I'm pretty sure it would not turn out well for them."

I made my land tax payment to the Chinook Nation, since they're one of the tribes that live in this area. I included a note about land tax and a link to the Shuumi Land Tax page. Don't know what they'll think of all that.

I figured out which tribe to donate to with the Land Reparations & Indigenous Solidarity Toolkit (via cynthia1960) which links to Territory Acknowledgement which has a location search box on the left to find which tribes live there. From there you can get a map and more information about a specific tribe, for example Chinook territory.

I also invited a young Black man with elegant dreadlocks to go ahead of me in line at the post office, because he was there when I got there. He was hesitant, then thanked me profusely and in a low voice complained about being told to go to the end of the line after talking to the postal clerk, instead of "go to the head of the line when you're ready" like everyone else. I heaved a sympathetic sigh.

As he left, he looked me in the eye and thanked me again. I'm glad I could make a difference, and it makes me cry that a small bit of kindness and recognition made that much difference to him. I hope his day improved from there. He looked worn down.

In honor of the victims at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh I donated to HIAS tonight. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society has been helping refugees since the 1880s.

I am feeling so grim. At least I can do this small thing, put some money toward what I want to see in the world.

Thanks to julian and conuly for the donation link.

I've been debating whether I want to continue my commitment of $100/month to make the world a better place this year. I started after the 2016 election with a desperate need to do my part to resist the incoming administration.

I struggled all year with a sense that I'm not doing enough. I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that, enough or not, I'm doing what I can with my articles and bodywork and continually trying to improve my own behavior around oppression and racism. I also repeatedly connected with the knowledge that I'm a healer, not a warrior.

This year, I want to change my focus to supporting the people around me, including supporting projects that make the world a better place.

Last month I supported the Keela Menstrual Cup kickstarter, which funded, yay!

I also donated $20 when I attended RaceTalks.

This month so far, I bought the Black Narratives Story Bundle (via) because it includes Karen Lord's first book Redemption in Indigo, and I loved her second book The Best of All Possible Worlds. Yay for supporting Black authors!

I plan to attend RaceTalks tonight and make a donation.

I also walked up the next block from my house with my broom and dustpan and swept up the glass from two broken car windows, because it had been there for a few days and I ride my bike through there all the time. (First time I've seen broken car windows in my neighborhood. :-( )

I pick up trash when I'm out on walks, too.

I'd love to hear about anything you're doing to make the world a better place, too!

For my December contribution to making the world a better place, I contributed to Shakesville's end of year fundraiser. I've been reading that blog for a long time, and I've learned so much about politics and social justice. Lately I've been veering away from reading some of the grimmer posts, not because I think they're wrong, but because I find I need to keep hope alive in myself, even as we descend deeper into the morass. I like that Liss says that asking for money is one of the most feminist things she does, because, yes, her labor is worth being compensated.

I've enjoyed my year-long commitment to give $100 each month toward making the world a better place. I will probably continue. I need to evaluate where my money is going and see how this fits into my budget. This has been a year of feeling financially insecure, even though my practice is doing better than ever before.

I think partly I'm not used to trusting myself to my practice, after so many years of it not being enough, and also the insecurity is political as well as financial. I feel like I'm living under threat, after so many years of working hard to build a life that works for me. Even though I know life isn't fair for so many people in so many ways, I still thought I could figure out how to build security for myself.

Maybe things will still turn around somehow, or maybe we can take the ride down the drain with grace. I don't know what else to do but keep doing what I'm doing, making choices as best I can as things continue to unravel.

Lauren Rusk has created a poetry chapbook, "What Remains to be Seen." The collection centers around her poems that respond to children’s artwork from the WWII ghetto/prison camp at Terezín near Prague. The ghetto was filled to overflowing with especially accomplished Jews, who were then secretly transported to extermination camps. Meanwhile the inmates wrote, composed, drew, performed, and taught each other whatever they knew, in an act of creative resistance that outlives them.

Lauren’s collection also includes modern-day poems with related concerns and love for the people they portray.

I'm finding that part of my resistance is contributing to the resistant, creative efforts of others. And then I get the occasional surprise in the mail when projects are complete!

Preorder at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/what-remains-to-be-seen-by-lauren-rusk/ . More orders this month result in a bigger print run.

Art saves lives, we say. Yes and no: nothing rescued the children of Terezín, though the drawings they left behind preserve something of their inventive play, their hopes, terror and questions. Lauren Rusk is an extraordinary observer; she brings to these artifacts a profound ability to discern in marks on a page the human complexity of the ones who made them. The great majority of these children went up in smoke in the absolute moral zero of the chimney stacks. But we can bear witness to them, still, in the precise, empathic and beautiful interventions of a poet who knows that what she can save is sometimes all we have, and never enough.

–Mark Doty, author of Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems (National Book Award winner), Deep Lane, and other collections



Lauren Rusk resurrects the imaginations of children whose inner lives shine through contraband paper and color in artworks found when the labor camp Theresienstadt was liberated. She manages to re-create the works themselves, which often reflect a Chagall-like combination of lyricism and dissociation, and also to bring the children to life in their moments of vision and their persistent, subversive reach for beauty. Rusk serves as their transparent medium, selective and convincing, in this gem of a collection.

–Leslie Ullman, author of Progress on the Subject of Immensity (poems), Library of Small Happiness (essays), and other collections

For September, I donated to Shift Stigma Relief Fund, which is helping to fund abortions for people affected by Hurricane Harvey in Texas. This includes travel and lodging assistance, since Texas has a 24 hour waiting period and few clinics for its huge area.

Here's more about the program. Women's Health Clinic Provides Free Abortion Care to Texas-based Hurricane Survivors

I've been continuing to pull back from engaging with daily news. I read whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com, as well as skimming the Shakesville news summaries, but don't delve into a lot of articles.

A friend's grandparents were bystanders to the Holocaust in Austria. Her parents taught her a strong anti-bystander ethic. My grandparents fled the Holocaust in Germany, and my parents taught me to stay alert to similar patterns. I don't want to be a bystander as others are harmed either.

I'm sitting with my limitations and privileges, my fragilities and strengths. I feel like my awareness, my donations, my support to others are not nearly enough. And, they are what I can do, what I am doing right now. As I reassure others, doing our own healing work reduces the harm in the world. Keeping our eyes open to the truth, and speaking it with others, reduces the effect of gaslighting in the world. It's going to have to be enough.

Right after the US House of Representatives passed their horrific "health" "care" tax cut act, I donated $100 to opponents of swing district Republicans who voted for the act. No idea if the money will make any difference or will even end up where it's supposed to, but I had to do something.

Yesterday I went to the vigil for Taliesin Meche and Ricky Best, the two men stabbed and killed by a white supremacist on the MAX train Friday afternoon. They stepped in to defend two young Muslim women from the white supremacist's harassment. Micah Fletcher, who also intervened and was stabbed, is expected to survive his injuries. The armed, violent white supremacist was taken into police custody alive.

The organizers didn't have sound amplification at the vigil, so we couldn't hear any of the speeches. We stood quietly with the candles someone kindly gave us, shielding them from the breeze. The people in the crowd looked kind, authentic, like people I would want to know. There were a lot (for Portland) of people of color, Middle-Eastern faces, Jewish faces. I felt like I belonged there.

There was a brief chant of "Not in our town!" Nice thought, but yes, this is happening in our town. Fascism and racism go way back in Portland. At the same time, it's good to know there are a couple of thousand people willing to stand in the heat on short notice to say "We're here. We stand for peace, and inclusion."

And then we biked home and sat on my front steps to enjoy the evening coolness and clear light. As we collectively spiral down into disaster, life also goes on more or less as usual. For those of us who didn't get directly affected this time.

The murders happened a couple of miles from where I live, at a MAX station I use sometimes. I went to the Farmer's Market right near there as usual the morning after, and people were chatting and buying vegetables in the bright sun, but with a jangling tension in the background. Too close to home. That could have been me. I keep reminding myself that people of color have been living in this dystopic world for a long time.

This spiraling descent like a bird pinwheeling out of the sky is not what I wanted to live through. And yet here I am, here the world is. We each contribute as we can, some by fighting disconnection, some by fostering connection. I don't know what doing enough looks like. I don't know if any amount would be enough to make a difference, to change our course.

I do think every little bit helps in the long run, making people's lives a little better where I can. And, the long run might be long. Things might keep getting worse for quite a while.