Is this real?

Hello friends,

May 9 2025: The gibbous moon is aglow against my window as I sit down to write this. I have been catching up on the goings on in Kashmir and the recent escalation in the region between India and Pakistan. Last night, I was in a cab ride coming back home from reading poetry at an open mic. The person driving me had left india a long time back and wanted my take on the situation. When I talked about the colonial occupation of Kashmir by india, they said, "Are you making up something or is this real?"

"It is real," I told them, and gave them 30 seconds of context which seemed to shift things for them, before I had to leave the car. I kept rolling over in my brain — how much these truths are obfuscated intentionally, the false narratives I've been fed all my life about Kashmir, and how much the events and pattern unfolding in Kashmir and Gaza are alike and interconnected.

A few days ago I was listening to an episode of "How to Survive the End of the World", a podcast hosted by sisters Autumn Brown and adrienne maree brown. adrienne interviewed founder of SlowFactory and author of "A Woman is a School", Céline Semaan. Céline shared the story of how SlowFactory got started as collections of images, and their second collection was images of Palestine taken by astronaut Alexander Gerst from space in 2014. From the space station, in the darkness, all he saw of Gaza were explosions. He tweeted a photo saying it was the saddest picture he had ever taken from space.

This collection made it so public that we, we are talking about Palestine. This was in 2014... And honestly I was surprised to see that it was well received. I had a couple of comments that were negative, but that were from people being like, you don't understand anything. you don't know, it's complicated. You know, we appreciated the first collection, but this one is too political.. And welcome to my life where everything is so political and that, you know, I decided not to be ashamed from it, like to really empower myself to use it.

-- Céline Semaan, https://endoftheworldshow.org/episodes/messiness-is-where-the-creativity-exists-with-celine-semaan

"Everything is Political", which is also now the name of a magazine that SlowFactory publishes, is a phrase that I have found myself returning to with a renewed sense of ease this week.

Although I have known that everything was indeed political, by inclusion or omission, it has taken me a long time to learn how to show up for my politics and values, while holding on to my path. I see that while I can occasionally take on or feel the pull of the activist, organizer or journalist, I don't do well in these roles. When I try to keep up with information coming in at the pace of news cycles and respond to them urgently for long periods of time, I burn out and cannot access parts of me that are creative and collaborative as well.

In my body, creative work is slow, takes observation, living, immersing myself in my interests, reflection and dreaming. I'm slowly swapping out the endless social media feed scrolling (okay okay I still scroll, but I would like to get my news in slower, more immersive ways too!) with physical periodicals and magazine subscriptions from politicized anti-colonial media organizations I trust. In doing so, I am feeling how important it is to continue to fund and support media that isn't feeding us propaganda, in these fascist times. I am also so grateful for the artists, movement organizers, journalists, designers, editors and all the people who teach me what it means to survive, resist, and be connected to each other through it all 💟🌈

I leave you with links to resources I refer to in my post:

1. If you would like to learn about the history of indian occupied Kashmir, I found this conversation on Brown History podcast with Hafsa Kanjwal really helpful
2. End of the world podcast episode "Messiness is where the creativity is" with Céline Semaan and adrienne maree brown
3. "A Woman is a School" book by Céline Semaan, founder of SlowFactory
4. Everything is Political, magazine by SlowFactory
5. Identifying my role(s): * Roles for Collective Liberation by Slow Factory |
   * Recognizing your role by artist and astrologer Ariana Katherine Felix/The Dream Mami (this substack post is partly behind a paywall, if you'd like a gift subscription invite for a month send me a note I will be happy to share a link!)

Thank you for being here, see you next week 🌷🌕 🦂🫂