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metastasizing war:
examining treatment options
diagnosing humanity’s cancer and prescribing remedies to contain it
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Are you well today? If so, I suggest you celebrate it! Because there might be no greater treasure in life that we are less aware and appreciative of than wellbeing. It is only through suffering that we learn its value, and as suffering passes, so does our gratitude. Wellbeing isn’t an occasion, but it would surely merit the occasional party.
Humanity’s wellbeing suffers the same unawareness and underappreciation. And there is no harder lesson to learn its value than war, but as war passes, so does our aha-moment. Again and again. We never graduated from the School of History, so it doesn't come as a surprise that the UN is currently registering an uptick in armed conflicts and war-related casualties, especially among civilians.
With war spreading across the globe like cancer, this newsletter diagnoses its underlying conditions and looks for remedies in lieu of a cure to contain this chronic illness. I don’t know how much time you have, but I put it into one word, one line, one passage, and one essay.
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M E M O R E A L | Germany’s Holocaust Memorial can hardly approximate the evil precision of the Nazi regime’s death manufacture, but as a brutalist, graveyardish cluster of succinct concrete memos it reminds us that the unfathomable was and is and will always be real – no matter who forgets, denies, or rebrands their remake as anything other than genocide.
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Berlin / Germany · 2023
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TEN THOUSAND NAMES | That was it. No political speech, no calls for resistance. It had all been said and shouted before. That was it. A simple list of names read aloud. But nothing, nothing could have been more powerful. Every name said everything. Every name belonged to one killed Palestinian child. Still belonged to them, still meant something, still meant everything to those who mourned them. One name, one life. Ten thousand names, ten thousand lives. A million dreams. It takes a long time to read ten thousand names and the forever-too-young age shackled to them. Sarah Asaad Mushtaha, 7; Lana Asaad Mushtaha, 6; Atef Dabour, 15; Maha Fadi Al Baba, baby… And as much as the laces of those children’s shoes had set roots long after the square was cleared, the names lingered in the air like the pigeons that weren’t doves, like they couldn’t be set free fully. Because they were ten thousand so far and that was so far from an end that it defied words. Only the names could tell.
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Amsterdam / Netherlands · 2024
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from reflection to action
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If this newsletter resonated with you, please feel free to share it around.
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If you feel compelled to take some more action, check out these two charitable prints now available in the shop – all proceeds go towards UNRWA to support Palestinian refugees, and UNHCR to help families in Ukraine:
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You can learn more about the stories behind these prints on their product pages.
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come find me
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If you can guess where this is, you know where to find me and have a place to stay!
So long,
Miles
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