These days, the act of sitting down and writing a dissertation on an eight-hundred-year-old text feels absolutely absurd. 

I believe on some level that what I’m doing is important and in fact relevant—whatever that means. 

What is relevant these days? 

These days are dark; indeed, some of the darkest I have lived. 

A recent social media post I wrote out of my heartfelt agony stating that I could not vote for Kamala Harris given her failure to make any significant break with the Biden administration’s policy on Gaza has generated largely thoughtful comments, but notably more reaction than anything I have posted about the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. 

I understand—a little, anyway. I’m one person. I am someone in your social sphere, and you can speak to me directly and register their alarm or disappointment or solidarity. None of us have a direct line to Kamala Harris or Joe Biden.

A family member of mine likes to say that they never understood how people could be so blindly loyal to Hitler until they saw the way friends and family threw their loyalties behind Trump. 

For my part, I now no longer wonder what it was like to deal with indifference and complicity during the Nazi Holocaust of gays and lesbians, socialists, communists, Gypsies, Jews, and other “undesirable” populations. We are living through that right now. 

My heart is tender. I don’t wish to bludgeon or belittle or shame. But I simply cannot live in silence. 

I will go for a walk. I will tell my husband how much I love him. I will return to the dissertation even as my heart burns for Palestine. I pray for kindness, I write for sanity, I hope for humanity—even if it is but a small flicker in the storm.