The wind whirled about me as I rode over the Brooklyn Bridge. Through the snow, the bright crisp sun reflected on the snow about me, water frozen below, blue skies about me, shaking off a dream from the night before. Something about Ambrosia, the food of the Greek gods. It made no sense. Little really has lately.
Ray met me at Washington Square. Too cold for a cafe, we made our way inside Judson, talking about poetry and friendship, our stories and the ways they clash, the ways we share them, the way we listen, the way we talk.
Micah thanked everyone as service began.
Still lost, I listened as Jenny sang:
"Underground" by Cody Fry:
"I woke up underground
…
Claustrophobic at first
Struck by hunger and thirst
I stood up and looked around
There was nothing to be found
Just a world I couldn't see
And I heard, "Woo..."
I can't see you now
I'll find my way
Underground
Then my fear began to ease..."
I had the same feeling.
What a barnburner, said Micah after Jenny finished performing, my fear beginning to ease.
Rev Bridget told the story of the Good Samaritan meeting a stranger, welcoming him, the subtext, treat strangers as friends. Being a neighbor means crossing social barriers to help.
"Go and do likewise.”
“The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life.”
There is an abundance for us to share.
After service, Ray and I walk through Washington Square, the tune of “Morning Glow” from Pippin, running through my head.
Down 8th Street, we stroll off to meet Irwin, my old dissertation advisor.
Sitting inside a bistro, we talked about another era in New York, long passed.
And I found my way back home, back to my friends in brooklyn, book group, ten years in the running in Carroll Gardens. The frozen Gowanus Canal down the street from us at Emily’s, we talked about Orwell’s Roses, Rebecca Solnit’s masterful reading of Orwell’s approach to gardening and writing, planting roses and falling in love with the wildness of the natural world, tracing a recurring story of our time.
It’s been the story of our era so many times, it feels cliche to talk about Orwell, who would probably recoil about his name becoming a sort of adjective for the lies that we are told are truths over and over again.
In his last novel, 1984, Orwell wrote about that feeling when you are told not see what we our two eyes see: "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
It’s what we hear about Alex Pretty and Renee Good, killed by ICE, waves of protests following.
They were domestic terrorists we hear, wielding guns, violent, we are told, even when the videos show the contrary. Don’t use your eyes, do as told, our current administration seemingly taking a cue from the Stalin/ Goebbels playbook. (The "Big Lie" Technique employed by Goebbels re if a lie is massive enough, and repeated frequently enough, it is eventually accepted as truth).
Still, there is another life, another freedom, Orwell reminds us, furtive glances, subversive connections, bodily autonomy.
"No emotion was pure,” writes Orwell. “because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act."
No emotion was true, still we talked about Solnit and Orwell, the prison cells we create in Utopia, the leftists who justify authoritarian means, the “embrace” that “had been a battle”, Orwell’s lessons from Homage to Catalonia, his years in Spain, his contradictions and our own.
After the book group, I walked out into the snow, the sun making its way down on Brooklyn. Some people meet for an art opening on Court Street, across from Frankie’s. There, Baby C and I talk about it all, the places we’ve been, Chiang Kai-shek and Anthony Bourdain, Berlin and yesterday, Taiwan and adventures tomorrow, our journeys into the unknown.
Back home, Ken led the discussion of Martin Buber:
For Trump, the Trump relationship with immigrants is an IT relationship, I think. For most of us, it’s an I Thou relationship. Martin Buber’s I and Thou (1923) is a 20th-century work of philosophy, embraced by theologians and anarchists alike. It distinguishes between modes of human relationship: the I-It (treating others as objects) and the I-Thou (encountering others as whole and unique beings). For Buber, meaningful human existence is found in the I-Thou relationship, which ultimately leads to a connection with the "Eternal Thou," or God, contrasting with the objectifying I-It world of modern society.
“When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them,” writes Buber. The electricity is everywhere. Sleeping, I feel it. In the streets right now, I feel it run through us, bodies in motion, the eros effect pushing back, the dreams wild.
It was that kind of a week back from Berlin.
Jan 27th
First day teaching, anti ICE demos at Fed Plaza. To and from, I joined the march, before the sit in/civil disobedience at Hilton where ICE sleeps.
Our neighbors are being tortured, said Micah, as he was being dragged off by the police.
After the demo, my friends met me at Barbes for our jazz Tuesday, leading us into conversation,thinking about our options. The Philly DA says, back off to ICE. Everyone says so. Back off, enough, not in our city of immigrants.
Back home, a poem Alexandra sent us catches my eye.
"Psalm for the Slightly Tilted" by Ilya Kaminsky.
"This is not
a good year.
But it has
witnesses.
When you see them protest the powerful,
since who else does,
they stand
like flagpoles outside the courthouse
after a northeaster.
They came with
the wrong shoes
for revolution.
Still,
they showed up.
Comfort, Lord,
their bodies—
each a question mark
doing time
as a coatrack,
hung with borrowed jackets.
They are your legion
of bent spoons.
They are the only ones
who showed up—
with their orthopedic flair.
I saw my people lean—
not toward hope but toward each other.
They chant off-rhythm
and mean it.
These are my kind of people:
no tears—just
steam from a kettle
that never quite boils.
In times like these, don’t forget us:
the lopsided
leaning on one another,
like sodden paperbacks
left out on the stoop—
Nobody opens them.
But they still insist
on carrying the plot.”
We’re all insisting on it, on carrying those ever clashing storylines, in our own imperfect ways.
Jan 29th
Vigil for Alex
In between classes and meetings, I bike up to 23rd Street, amidst nurses on strike, radical lawyers, trade unionists, socialists and anarchists for the Vigil for Alex Pretti at the VA NY Harbor Healthcare. The vigil is 5P-6P at 423 East 23rd St. Hopefully there's a Crack opening.
RIP Alex and the others murdered by ICE, say the signs.
People light candles in memorial.
In their internship, one of my students talked about feeding the poor in a food pantry/ soup kitchen where she works. She's afraid of what happens if ICE comes. Everyone is. This has to stop.
Jan 30th
Another afternoon, another demo.
There are moments when it all pops open, when the streets are full, kids are in the streets, their parents, you see them on the train, trade unionists, anarchists, artists, grade school kids, every night. People are writing songs, braving the snow, looking out, moving. No one can say where. Bodies flowing, speaking out, pushing back, boycotting, talking, speaking out.
Immigrants are awesome, says one sign. Immigrants are welcome here. Hands off Civil rights. Melt ICE.
Jan 31
I woke up at Mom’s house.
Good to see you, I say. Good Morning. The night before, we watched the Battle of Saratoga fought September 19 and October 7, 1777 over the same ground by the American Continental Army and the British Army near Saratoga, New York during the American Revolutionary War.
We look at her flowers, imagining the world's in between.
I have to leave early for the Rise and Resist sit in at Trump Tower.
By 12: 30, my crew from Rise and Resist and I showed up for a zap, sneaking into Trump Tower, the privately owned public space, reading the names of the 37 people who've died, under ICE custody, killed.
How many more have to die, we chant, reciting the names of those murdered.
Jonathan, of Rise and Resist, stands surrounded by activists holding signs with images of people who died in ICE custody, and reads:
"We are here today to say the names of those who have died at the hands of ICE and this administration so that all of us remember what is being done by Donald Trump, ICE and this regime. So that this is not politics, it is life and death.
37 people have died in ICE Custody since Trump took office, 5 people have been assassinated by ICE officers, and two by people have died attempting to escape being kidnapped by ICE.
ICE and this administration have blood on their hands, and that blood is also on the hands of every lawmaker and court that has the power to intervene and chooses silence instead of justice.
We will continue to fight nonviolently until ICE is abolished and the Trump regime stops its reign of terror on immigrants and those attempting aid, advocate for and protect them.
No one is above the law. Not the president, not his advisors, not his cabinet members, and not our fed employees.
We call on everyone to speak out, get into the streets, and do everything in their power to nonviolent end these atrocities. The time is now. RISE AND RESIST."
L recalls a young man shot running away, when ICE agents showed up. It can't happen here. But it is, Renee Good was shot in the side of her head, execution style, I testify. They are killing people in the streets.
We read the names of those killed.
Ryan Casey, who read the names with Laurie, wrote:
HOW MANY MORE HAVE TO DIE.
This past weekend @risenresistnyc shutdown Trump Tower in an act of nonviolent civil disobedience. We held a vigil for the 45 lives murdered by MAGA’s Department of Homeland Security this past year. We spoke their names into Trump Tower. And made a commitment to honor their lives by dismantling Trump’s Fascist White Supremacy Regime.
ABOLISH ICE.
IMPEACH MAGA.
HOW MANY MORE HAVE TO DIE.
Genry Ruiz Guillén
Serawit Gezahegn Dejene
Maksym Chernyak
Juan Alexis Tineo-Martínez
Brayan Rayo-Garzón
Nhon Ngoc Nguyen
Marie Ange Blaise
Abelardo Avellaneda Delgado
Jesus Molina-Veya
Johnny Noviello
Isidro Pérez
Jaime Alanís Garcia
Tien Xuan Phan
Chaofeng Ge
Lorenzo Antonio Batrez Vargas
Oscar Rascon Duarte
Norlan Guzman-Fuentes
Silverio Villegas González
Santos Reyes Banegas
Ismael Ayala-Uribe
Huabing Xie
Miguel Ángel García Medina
Leo Cruz-Silva
Hasan Ali Mohammed Saleh
Kai Yin Wong
Josué Castro Rivera
Gabriel Garcia Aviles
Francisco Gaspar-Andres
Pete Sumalo Montejo
Shiraz Fatehali Sachwani
Isaias Sanchez Barboza
Delvin Francisco Rodriguez
Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir
Jean Wilson Brutus
Nenko Stanev Gantchev
Keith Porter
Luis Gustavo Nuñes Caceres
Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz
Parady La
Renee Nicole Good
Geraldo Lunes Campos
Heber Sanchez Dominguez
Victor Manuel Diaz
Wael Tarabishi
Alex Pretti
We were there for 90 minutes. The police and security said to leave. We kept reading names, testifying. Security locked the doors. The police watched, seemingly waiting us out. No arrests. A solemn action, we’ll need a little more play, a little more prank next time, a little more noise and energy to really disrupt.
Sitting there, Ken Schles snapped a few shot, posting a note:
“BREAKING: A contingent from @risenresistnyc occupied Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in NYC and have effectively shut it down for an hour and a half.
They are demanding Trump be impeached, indicted, and jailed for his crimes, that ICE be abolished, that all that have been separated from their families, deported and imprisoned be brought back their homes and their loved ones, and that all in the administration be held to account for their crimes. “We want justice and for democracy to be restored. Abolish ICE!! Abolish ICE”
37 have died in ICE custody since Trump took office in 2025. Rise and Resist will continue to fight nonviolently until ICE is abolished. They ask everyone to get involved and to fight nonviolently until ICE is abolished.
After reading the names of those who have died in custody or at the hands of DHS they ask, “How many more have to die.”
The New York moments are many.
Walking away, Ken and I stroll to the MOMA, talking about art, activism, our moment and where it's all going. We stroll through the Ruth Asawa Retrospective, thinking about the cycles of art, activism, through the treasures, the August Sanders prints, the Weimar mysteries, the Matisse Red Room, the Dalis and Surrealism, lost worlds and stories, looking at the Beckmans, Otto Dix, Tina Modotti’s roses in Mexico City, George Grosz, looking at our grotesque.
Back home, my friend who lived in Mexico City, sent me a note about a dream he’d been having that would make Salvador Dali proud:
“And I suddenly feel asleep to have a nightmare. It started while I was still awake and fighting my stupor…after closing my eyes there was a wash of red, dark blood that was liquid but then turned to a distant massive fire. It was disturbing but not frightening and then it stopped… everything went dark, I must have drifted into a deeper sleep for a time and then a sensation of bodies, clothed bodies moving around me and I was moving as well. It was all dark and the sensation was tactile and vaguely sensual and then it stopped. Later I realized I was witnessing some kind of group sex thing where a woman with long dark hair in her thirties was lying naked and at first seemed to be enjoying being fisted up her vagina. This was in no way an erotic turn on for me and I felt uncomfortable. I sensed that there were other people present watching this but I couldn’t see them. As this continued the hand started removing things from her vagina, the only object that I clearly remember coming out was a large alarm clock, it was beige plastic and covered in blood, but other things came out of her too but I didn’t recognize what they were, like dark pieces of engine parts maybe. I then woke up. All day I had been feeling that heavy pressure to varying intensities, the underwater pressure. I wonder if my heart is failing, when this is happening I feel very relaxed not faint but like moving is impeded when I’m walking, maybe like a generalized neuropathy where not just my feet and legs are numb and also I am feeling heavy, the weight of my shoulders and torso seem acute. I usually lie down and it goes away or I just continue doing what I’m doing and it eventually ends.”
We’ve all been having these sorts of dreams lately.
Feb 1
I flipped through the paper and read a bit of Orwell and the NY Times on the way to Judson.
Minneapolis May Be Trump’s Gettysburg, says Jamelle Bouie:
“ICE and C.B.P. still roam the streets, and Trump’s authoritarian aspirations have
