What is the value of Damascus? When there are evangelical bombs being dropped on Bethlehem.What is the value of Ninevah? When there are patrotic pistols penetrating pediatric bodies.What is the value of Cairo? When where refuge was sought is reduced to an iteration of capitalism wrapped in meglomaniacal racism.How is it that one is so quick to elevate one’s faith beyond another arguing the validity of all of this majestic creation?
A tile from 16th Century Syria during the Ottoman Occupancy. Below: A tile from late 12th-early 14th Century Iran. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Image taken February 2025.
More and more I do not understand how one can believe that they can come to conclusive opinions on another’s life when they are not living life in and with them?How can one say that they cannot support another human life being lived, but is the same person who can say that they refuse to give a person agency over their own life and body?There are so many profiting from the pain and suffering of others, making a living from the breaking open of bodies.At what point does land theft and misogynoir makes the hatred boil at a fever pitch in the same way people choosing just to exist have to avoid that boil’s present aims? The constant, unrelenting, evolving nature of oppression breaks humanity into pieces of existences. Some existences work to reconcile, others to remove, some to revive, and others to revel. Some existences work to reintegrate broken shards of us back into what broke us.
Traditional Hang-up from The Containment Serice 1969 by John Outterbridge. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Image taken February 2025.
I am not one to function well in community at-large, because I am designated to be the well that is pulled from as if I have no end in this place.I am not one to function well in community at-large, because I am designated to be the well where the sewage of systematic oppression is dumped.I am not one to function well in a community at-large, because the community at-large’s complexities glare back at it in truth. My body has been co-opted for histories for harm. And I never consented.My voice has been silenced for histories for harm. And I never consented.My mind has been subjected to decades of environmental, educational, existence propaganda for harm. And I never consented.
On the remnants of shells and prayers, we met one day. Joined us for pastries and views in the valleys of the Adriatic.
Placed in a silo, while the torrents ping the panels. One way made in, while the grains of complacency won’t let you out.For harm they want to harvest, to empty the storehouse, and drain the well.
I never consented, but community at-large believes my very existence is my consent.The silo is meant to contain my self and my soul. My soul has never been and will never be enough for community at-large.Community at large has never held me with the care I hold it. But I do not hold that isolation as intentional.Community at large has never loved me with the love I give it. But I do not hold myself as not worthy of love.Community at large has never affirmed me without me bloodletting. But I do not hold myself there any longer seeking infusion during diffusion. 
A small frame of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’ “Nonagon”. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Image taken February 2025.
We were never meant to be alone, but so alone we have become that we sludge our connections into 2D. We were never meant to be unloved, but we are unloving and unaware towards our own species versus a whole nother order…Sarah McLachlan easily twinges the hearts strings like sailors towards siren songs, while the wails of the orphaned wax and wane into the night, accepted as white noise of mourning.We were never meant to dominate this place until it cannot bear our existence. From beyond dimensionality reduced to rigid planar surfaces.But here I am writing about being human on a blue ball in the midst of a solar system and a universe…..
Foreground: Yinka Shonibare CBE’s “Refugee Astronaut IV”. Background: Hector Dionicio Mendoza’s “Leaning, Holding, Pushing & Sombra”. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Image taken February 2025.
The pickin & choosin is so easy when you dont value O2 unless someone is using it to save your life. The pickin and choosin is so easy when a whole community at-large validates the pick and choice cause thats what the games are given to do. The pickin and choosin is so easy when the outcome benefits ignorance versus education towards enlightenment.The pickin and choosin is so easy when the narrative has been given to you even before you knew the atomic make up of air on your own. “Pickin’:
Derived from English pickaninny, or perhaps Portuguese pequenino (“boy, child”), which was the ultimate source of pickaninny. Compare Bajan pickney, Bislama pikinini, Pijin pikinini, and Tok Pisin pikinini.
cotton-picking(adj.)
as a deprecatory term first recorded in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, but a similar noun cotton-picker meaning “contemptible person” dates to around 1919, perhaps with racist overtones that have faded over the years. Before mechanization, cotton picking was the most difficult labor on a plantation.”
They swear that black squares and Juneteenth and programs and policies will validate being in a body. They swore that if we aligned they would lay their bodies down beside us, wash us in solidarity, shield us from shame and starvation. The newest interation of their restraints created in the community at large, used on each other in hostage cooperation despite knowing there will be no survivors.Barbara Kruger’s “Surveillance is your busywork”. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Image taken February 2025.
No more seeds. No more sprouts. No new roots.They want to graft us into stocks that do not see us.They want first year harvests, and to douse us in forced growth.I am not available to be picked. I am not available to be chosen.I am not bound to a place, or people on a planet that believe it is the end all be all in a universe full of dead stars. If my being be residence for worms, rain, barely hanging on to a vine, bouncin nervously on the branch…rather be left to gravity, the grave, and the breakdown into new growth.
When art imitates life and overlaps. ABOVE: Nari Ward’s “If We Must Die”. BELOW: “Requiem” by Vincent Valdez. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Image taken February 2025.
In solidarity with our Muslim kindred, I compel you to enter into the fellowship and practice of Ramadan. Especially, if you consider yourself a Christian. Ramadan and Lent are synchronous because God is providential. Pray for the liberation of those in persecution from US Prisons to Palestine to Papau New Guinea. Fast from the imperalist capitalism fueled by plastic eggs and whitewashed sanctuaries.
Boris Aldridge’s Blue Forest. The Fine Arts Museum, Houston. Image taken February 2025.
“Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.”
Kahlil Joseph’s “BLKNWS®”, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Image taken February 2025.
I guess I am tired of apples. Grafted, and gorged out of my humanity.Maybe, it is time for oil, for chairs and tables, for teas, tapenades and tinctures.freebarghouti
landback
nooneisanalien
nooneisaninmate
bodyautonomy
BlackPalestinianJewishJesus
all images taken by the author.