"And all of this will happen again.”
I finished watching Battlestar Galactica early October and find myself still haunted by its finale. The resolution of this saga, humanity,small in number scattered in the infinite searching for home was satisfying and bittersweet. If you haven’t had an opportunity to watch it yet, I won’t spoil it for you. I will say that its themes of exploring moral rights and wrongs, survival, faith, time, and above all, love in the fourth season, are powerful.
A constant refrain through two seasons of Battlestar is a rephrasing of Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory of eternal return, “All of this has happened before. And all of this will happen again.” I’m still thinking about this because I haven’t pinned down how I feel about this notion. What I mean is, I’m not sure if it’s comfort, fatalistic, resignation, or hope —- absent any sentimentality, but hope with clarity?
In the early months of this year, I pulled my copy of Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being because it occurred to me that there’s a moment in the novel that captures daily and deliberate living in an oppressive regime. The first time I read this book was in the early years of George W. Bush’s presidency. We were at least a year after the towers collapsed, and New York City still felt raw.
Kundera opens the book ruminating on Nietzsche’s theory of eternal return, and it was my first introduction to the theory of eternal return. Then I believed the message Kundera wanted to advance for us in the messy lives of Tereza, Tomas and Sabrina, living in an autocratic society is that while surrounded by so much horrible, life —- living your life —- is resistance. Terrible things happen at any moment in human history, yet, we live.
I’m thinking about (and looking for) texts, novels, essays, or stories that we could that we could turn to that help conceive of survival of the day to day malaise of slow rolling horror and disfunction. I like looking backwards to review details or clues to avoid repeating as we live our lives forward.
I’m re-reading slowly Octavia Butler’s Earthseed Series — The Parable of Sower and The Parable of Talents— although at moments I have to set the books down.
We’ll see where this leads me in my thinking, visioning, imagining. But in the meantime, I’m living off these delicious images from this Ava DuVernay directed video for Jay-Z’s “Family Feud”.
Things I wrote
I wrote a good deal less this year, but I really like the pieces I wrote. Most of the year has been dedicated to researching a long term, yet to be named writing project. However, three of my favorite pieces I wrote this year: an essay for Man Repeller about women’s marches, a profile for Rolling Stone about the Harlem GlobeTrotter’s female point guard, and an essay for Timeline’s “Long Hot Summer” Series about Milwaukee’s 1967 riot.
I also wrote an essay for the discussion guide for the documentary John Lewis: Get In The Way that really crystalized for me symmetries between the waking consciousness of young people of the Civil Rights Movement and the movement for black lives. I knew many of these things before, but in the process of writing of this piece, these connections deepened for me.
In October, I went back to Milwaukee and wrote about the hometown screening of The Blood Is At The Doorstep, a documentary exploring the police shooting Dontre Hamilton and its aftermath. The film hasn’t secured national distribution yet but I do hope it does soon. It’s one of the best films I've seen of out a crop of new and hyper local documentaries exploring the aftermath (and complexity) of police violence in black communities. In November, I wrote about what Colin Kaepernick (another dude with a Milwaukee connection) and his lawsuit against the NFL signals for workers of color and unions.
Oh, I wrote about the royal engagement of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. I really think Harry is the one who lucked out here.
Ephemera
In case you missed them, I really recommend reading:
Patrick Rosal’s essay about being mistaken identity at the National Book Awards.
Kaitlin Greenidge story about the secret society of black women.
Tanvi’s Misra piece about Paris suburbs, and Citylab in general because they’ve been killing it.
Topic Stories is my favorite new publication and you should sign up for their fresh ass newsletter.
This Adam Serwer’s article breaking down dominant narratives about Trump voters.
Talia Buford deep dive into the EPA today.
Nikole Hannah Jones’ reporting on the resegregation of Alabama schools.
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The First White President.
Podcasts I loved this year:
Another Round, always
Still Processing, especially this episode and this episode.
Stacia Brown’s Hope Chest
How to Survive The End of The World
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If Janus, the Roman God of Gates, Endings, Doorways, Beginnings would have a tagline, it would totally be: ”All of this has happened before. And all of this will happen again.”
Happy NYE,
S.