‘Children of Shatila’ (Lebanon, 1998) film by Mai Masri. In this scene the youth of the Palestinian refugee camp interview an elder with a video camera.

ignoring the pain won’t make it hurt less, and neither will pretending it isn’t there. acknowledge it. confront it. listen to it then tell someone what it has to say. sing about it, scream about it, whisper into your pillow about it - whatever you do as long as give life to these words, as long as you release them from inside your head; your voice will be your medicine.

dusk, dark-robed god, 

no angel I come to the sea and find a thing familiar I bring nothing worth keeping, bundled wheat, witchweed time is silent, not empty

the poised forewing of a distant thought, never quite reached or known from me, a world has been taken, or, it has been left

all is filled with lilies that grow            far from the sea                             and hang in wilted silence

everything, and nothing

Emily Dickinson, from “To flee from memory”

I am night-touched consoled by so much dark and only the sea  remembers

part of me is like “what the fuck do you mean next week is august when last week was mid april” but then the other part of me is like “approximately 7 years have passed since december 2019 and july 2020″ so that’s fun

Time. A shifting, ever changing infinity, expanding and contracting with the shifts in temperature, timber and balance. Just as the sun inevitably rises, so will it end and begin again. There will be ashes and burnt and rage and destroyed souls. Covered over with sand from the wind that idly roars, quiets and roars. Alone will we be, to sit with the endless nothing and everything, the sheer enormity of it all. The importance of infinitesimal change. All sifted over with sand and carbon and Time

The Trump administration on Friday finalized a regulation that will erase protections for transgender patients against discrimination by doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies, a move announced on the four-year anniversary of the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando and in the middle of Pride Month.

The rule, which does not differ much from a proposed version released last year, is part of a broad Trump administration effort across multiple areas of policy — including education, housing, and employment, as well as health care — to narrow the legal definition of sex discrimination so that it does not include explicit protections for transgender people. 

The Affordable Care Act, the 2010 law often known as Obamacare, established broad civil rights protections in health care, barring discrimination on race, color, national origin, sex, age or disability in “any health program or activity” that receives federal financial assistance. 

The Obama administration interpreted the provision about sex discrimination to include discrimination on the basis of “gender identity.” Under the original 2016 rule, health care providers and insurers would have been required to provide and cover medically appropriate treatment for transgender patients. But rolling back the rule has been a cause for social conservatives since its implementation.

“It’s really, really horrendous to not only gut nondiscrimination protections, but to gut nondiscrimination protections in the middle of a pandemic,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, the deputy executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. “This is a new low. This rule opens a door for a medical provider to turn someone away for a Covid-19 test just because they happen to be transgender.”

The announcement Friday prompted an outcry from groups devoted to gay and transgender rights, including the Human Rights Campaign, which said it plans to sue the Trump administration.

“We will not let this attack on our basic right to be free from discrimination in health care go unchallenged. We will see them in court, and continue to challenge all of our elected officials to rise up against this blatant attempt to erode critical protections people need and sanction discrimination,” the organization said in a statement.

Another rule issued by the administration last year would have provided additional “conscience” protections for health care workers with religious or moral objections to certain types of care. That rule has been voided by several federal courts.

Does it terrify you? That I exist? The scary queer person you were told about. The radical feminist. The anti racist. Anti fascist. Activist. I am Transgender. I exist. In a blaze of thunderous fury at injustice, shall this moment be remembered. The moment where I existed. I resisted. I stood strong with my siblings, my black siblings, my queer siblings, my disabled and neurodivergent siblings. And we told you that you were wrong. We told you that you were wrong. But you persisted, committed crime after crime. The laws that exist, you have broken them all. But in the end it is you who will fall. Toppled by the unbalanced tower of corruption and greed and willful ignorance. Deliberate hate is not a forgivable crime. You will fall. We will rise. We will rise like our ancestors, like our founders and the ones who carry us forward, in an ever increasing wave. We are powerful. And we will win.