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If you feel this way, here are some Gofundmes you can donate to

Abu Shammalah Family (€953/100,000)

Moment Alostaz family (€7,539/70,000)

Youssef family (€9,395/50,000)

Renad & Her Family (£9,696/25,000)

Alia's Family (€7,870/30,000)

Mohamed Hamad and his family (£3,872/50,000)

Safaa and her family (€9,757/20,000)

Maliha Family (€23,446/32,000)

Mahmoud Abu Hamam (CAD $5,348/10,000)

Eman Abuhayya Family (AUD $40,455/85,684)

Ezzideen & his Family (€26,314/75,000)

Ahmed's family (€4,658/70,000)

Let's do our part to help the people of Gaza!!!!

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Christian Dior Fall/Wint 2000

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'lito lattine' by mirella bentivoglio, 1998 in the book as art: artists' books from the national museum of women in the arts - krystyna wasserman (2011)

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i owe jasmi beauty twelve dollars

I haven't done my eyebrows in weeks now. I always joke that you can tell when I have my shit together, because my brows will be done. The edges will be clean, the arch crisp along the browbone, any stray hairs either trimmed or forcefully yanked out by deft hands and a cotton thread.

I didn't always thread them before. When I first got them done, when they were the shape of my father's eyebrows with enough thickness to prove it, my mother decided to gently coax me into the elusive art of brown beauty. I had already waxed my underarms (this started when I was ten), so waxing my eyebrows should be no issue. And it wasn't. I reveled at the raw, warm, raised flesh above and below whatever was left after the cotton ripped and the Vietnamese lady at the nail salon tweezed off the excess. It felt like I was on that chair for an eternity. At school the white girls couldn't stop complimenting my eyebrows, even though I had nothing to do with it. Even though the skin waws so fresh that it left tan lines and new, angry red bumps began to speckle my forehead. I didn't care. When the soft bushes of my childhood hair began to disappear, bit by bit, only then did I begin to feel clean.

I switched to threading exclusively by the time I was fifteen, preferring the masochistic pop and subsequent sting of every single overgrown hair after finding itself caught in thread and picked away. There is an accuracy to threading that waxing can never really replicate. The girls who thread my eyebrows look like me but are far away. They speak a language I don't recognize. I might as well still be at the nail salon. Oh well. At least they never complain about how awful I have allowed my brows to become before coming back. It's brown hands on a brown forehead with red thread pulling black hair, often eliciting a clear tear response. "Sorry," she always says, handing me a tissue that will end up coated with my tears and stray hairs. "No, it's okay," I say, "This always happens. I promise I'm not actually crying." Because it's true.

This does nothing to assuage her. She asks if I want some aloe once we're done. It is always cooling on tender skin.

"Twelve dollars," she says, once we are both at the register. She speaks with an accent I can't place and a sweet timbre almost laced with pity. I forget to tip her. Maybe now I am the scum of the earth, but my life is now together again. I am clean and fresh and palatable and beautiful and it only cost me twelve dollars.

When I am not so lucky I look in the mirror and swear I can see the world ending between every black follicle that shouldn't be there. Especially the ones that grow back thicker after they've been plucked out. It doesn't matter if I had an açaí bowl for breakfast or switched to oat milk or got my abs back and shaved my legs and peed after sex and refilled my Brita or finally washed my clothes. I see a stranger look at me as we pass one another and I can feel every last unwanted strand vibrating against my skin. Singing, laughing in a mocking cacophony, announcing to them my dirtiness. I want to run up to them and apologize for my lack of care.

I'm sorry, I'd say. I'm sorry I have been lazy and tired and haven't cleaned up after myself like I should. I promise I am pretty under all the layers of grime, and I promise that if you let me speak, it will be soft and gentle to make up for how dirty I am. I'm sorry I am awful at being a girl despite having two sisters. It's my first time at all this and the salon has felt too far away. Please do not blame my mother for this. She raised me well. It's just me who is trying and failing. I hope this doesn't ruin your day. I hope I'm clean the next time you see me.

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a birthday in the middle of a genocide

starting from midnight, in the strange fifth floor haze of my dorm room, the messages have started to flood in. a whole group chat populated with birthday wishes, me flooding them back with heart reactions and endless thank yous. an instagram story there, replies to said story. "liked your story" and mentions. i can't forget that it's her birthday too. i have school and an appointment with my chiropractor today. no mom, i can't have dinner with you and dad tonight. i have meetings until 9pm.

i have not stopped talking about palestine since october 7th. when i believe that i cannot be even more horrified, the occupying entity shows how hopelessly wrong i was. i have cried, screamed for a ceasefire, cursed joe biden and every american politician who has played a cruel hand and profited off of the loss of lives not too different from mine. today marks 22 years since i was born in a california suburb. i cannot see it as anything other than the luck of the draw.

of course, somehow, life survives on in the midst of mass death. it is like any other grief. i find not just pockets but whole days worth of joy and love. my chest goes hollow at the daily let's talk palestine broadcast, as i learn of another bombing, another hospital attacked, the boycott on unrwa. i find my emptiness washed over with such a profound sense of connection to people who feel the same pain, whose voices hold me when mine goes out at a protest. gentle hands behind me, securing my keffiyeh without me even needing to ask. hands interlinked in so many more ways than just physical, dancing the dabke with not just their ancestors, but their brothers and sisters in their homeland. the innocence and beauty of the tale of the three jewels, a love story in gaza during the first intifada.

i've been rereading the hunger games trilogy as a means to reconcile the dystopic nature of my life as a privileged college student who bears witness to the ongoing genocide in gaza. i remember how surreal the story of mockingjay felt when i was ten years old. my mind could not fathom the bombing hospitals, or a crowd of children and medics without a second thought. i read those passages now with crystal clear images of mutilated bodies, parents carrying their dead children, hospitals crumbling as thousands desperately cling to any hope of survival. i think about the moment that gave katniss hope - finnick and annie's wedding. a celebration of real love in a time of war, a way to uphold tradition, to fill life with beauty, song, dance. it is a reminder to everyone of what they are fighting for. it's why katniss chooses peeta in the end. "what i need is the dandelion in the spring. the bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. the promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. that it can be good again."

i suppose this is what a birthday in the middle of a genocide is supposed to mean. every message, the company, the kindness of friends, old and new. it is a testament to the moments we fight for, that our parents and ancestors worked so hard to give us in diaspora. it is a chance for love to flourish. for us to know that unadulterated joy and an unwavering spirit are the highest forms of resistance we can take. so all i can say is that i am grateful for this life, for the beautiful moments and people i have the honor of experiencing and loving. and i remain committed to the cause of ensuring that every person can experience this too. in this spirit i will keep fighting for a free palestine for as long as it takes. until liberation and return for all oppressed peoples. may we awaken to a consciousness that understands that a world of fear and exploitation was never the end goal.

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All 13 full moons of 2023 | by Ivana Fanti, @moonwise8

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the teapot by Robert Bly

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Auction, Quan Barry

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i think i'm finally getting over it, guys!

the story of me making a "sad" spotify playlist is so streamlined, you could almost boil it down to a recipe. be it due to another boy betraying my expectations or the suburban quiet turning to a deafening roar, it all starts with me legitimizing the nagging feeling that tugs at me like a child. it pulls on my shirt, asking for my attention when all i want is to ignore it, pretend that i am beyond messy tantrums and even messier rooms.

i ran away from the disappointment of this last fling for so long that i accepted that the heartbreak would linger its way into a home. i made room for it in my heart like one does for a stranger in a bus. the sadness, the feeling of unworthiness that followed in his absence, which came as quickly as his presence, it became my companion as i attempted to lead my life as if it was unchanged. it was only one date, amrita. you should be over it by now. he ended it with you already.

i am famously incapable of moving on from people who express any care or interest in me out of their own volition. more than anything, i am stubborn to a fault, and was so shaken by the whirlwind of march 2023 that i didn't even know how to begin to move on. from that one night he took every expectation i had for romance and shattered them. i had never tasted anything like it, and just like that, it was taken away from me. i couldn't understand the sheer insanity of what had happened. all i knew was that i didn't want to be over. and so despite the wishes of everyone around me who wanted me to move on, i let myself hold onto a shred of hope that it wasn't over.

it was that same persistence that numbed me through a month long escapade in greece, where i fooled around with not one, but two different people in my study abroad program. i let their interest in me dictate how these would go, not stopping to think or care about the consequences or how i was being objectified as a result. they weren't him, after all, so why would i care? they simply provided some much (so i thought) needed validation, and my ego craved nothing more.

when i came home, i found myself more miserable than ever as my attempts to get over him failed. as if things had never ended, i found myself learning more about him, finally having an interest in king krule's space heavy and listening to his song "cellular" (from a different album) on repeat. when i could handle it, i would replay the conversations we had in my mind, trying to figure out what went wrong along the way but wishing, more than anything, that the intimacy we had would return again. i let his music create a sort of makeshift intimacy for me, the sounds through my headphones becoming a portal to my dreamland where my heart wasn't broken and we were friends with no awkwardness. music tears down the ego like nothing else. chords, rhythm, melodies, and lyrics can bare your heart open for anyone to see, if you let it.

and so the nagging child of my own hurt continued to be ignored. my feelings swam around me like koi fish in a vast ocean, muddied by selfish motifs of betrayal and "deserving better" and the godforsaken phrase "if he wanted to, he would" plaguing my social media algorithm. where i was once considered "emotionally aware," charting my own feelings for him with any honesty with myself was like sailing this ocean blindfolded. i would meditate and pretend not to hear my own sadness. instead i'd pick up on "still in love" and assume that was the end of it.

the date itself was a very divine and ethereal moment in time. my body seemed to buzz from how right everything felt at that time. it was so surreal i felt drunk. because of how desperately i wanted these feelings to last, i fixated on them and neglected the anxiety which followed immediately after. i couldn't believe it even happened. my skin felt like it was on edge. my body knew it was over before my mind could even understand it. but these were feelings i knew too often and too well. i wanted him to be different, because he was so different. when i think about the divinity i saw in him, how loving him felt like a religion, how blissful it is to be in love with someone, the allure of unconditional devotion, it felt like a healing balm. i didn't want to walk away, and so i rooted down and stayed to no answer.

it was like that for eight months. the moments of divinity found their ways back to me in ways i never expected. another hours long conversation that ended at 2 in the morning, tying my keffiyeh before a protest, making eye contact that once again felt like years condensed into a second. when i got into that car accident, he only waited for me to say yes before driving over, staying with me for an hour, and driving me home. in these ways, when i think about it, there is still love. it's just confused.

but too much in my life is uncertain and in flux. my routines after the accident have disrupted the facets of my life that kept me grounded. so much has changed in a few months, and i graduate after this next semester. new house, no car, no job. new friends, new pain, your doctor said no exercise for at least a month. no relationships in sight. the ocean of feelings swimming around me has only grown deeper. the nagging feeling of heartbreak is still tugging at my shirt, silently begging for me to pay attention to her.

the nagging feeling finally had a chance to grow louder once my finals ended, and i couldn't numb myself by partying, organizing, working, or studying. i was home, left to my own devices for days on end. and so i numbed myself with my last resort of doomscrolling, and that's where the nagging turned into a scream.

i'd heard the harmonies of "can't catch me now" by olivia rodrigo and they captivated me almost instantly. but instagram reel audios don't always tell you the song name. all i knew was that those were undoubtedly her vocals, and that she'd released an album pretty recently. i searched through her discography, incessantly looking for the song i only knew the melody for, and was left disappointed. still, it tugged at me. it was too pretty - i had to find it, i knew that. but maybe i had gotten the artist wrong, and without knowing the lyrics i was lost on a google search. and so i once again let go of the nagging child's hand.

it only took until the next day for me to find another reel with a sped up version of that song. and, like a beacon of light, someone in the comment section will always ask, "song?" and an angel will bless them with an answer. it was the one song i'd chosen to ignore in olivia's discography, naturally. when i finally pressed play, let the verse bleed into the chorus, a gentle lilt of harmonies and the lyrics "but i'm in the trees, i'm in the breeze / my footsteps on the ground" with nothing but soft strings and finger pickings on an acoustic guitar for an instrumental, i was captivated. i dissolved into the music almost instantly, and the muddied ocean in my body began to clear. i could hear it so vividly, "i'm here, i'm there, i'm everywhere / but you can't catch me now" and felt those words graze my skin with the sunlight streaming through my window. i was ready to let go. my body and mind, my emotions, they were tired. i had neglected myself, that nagging child, for so long.

i've listened to that song on repeat for close to two days now. i parked myself on my couch and let my soul find answers. what about this song spoke to me so loudly? what feelings did it elicit? were there other songs like it? and from those answers, a new playlist was born. olivia's femininity, the sheer power that radiated from soft lyrics and quiet harmonies in the chorus. this was what it has always felt like to walk away. it is to realize that whatever divinity you felt was yours always. the experience came from you and was felt within you. the other person was simply a trigger. i could finally feel a sense of control over myself again. i could embrace something to be "mine," and mine alone. other songs quickly followed suit: by woom, by adrianne lenker, billie marten, laufey. it needed to be explicitly feminine. it needed to be rooted in nature, and soft. and it needed to be beautiful.

the title of this playlist is "555." the caption is "change. everything is shifting." and i'd had it empty for a few months. i knew that when i was ready, the right songs would find their own way into that playlist. it's like any other creative act, or any act in general. when we are ready, we will receive. it took me this time to be ready to move on, to really try everything and feel fleeting moments of connection before fully letting go. do i have answers to most of my uncertainty? no. but the fog finally feels like it's lifting. the ocean is clearing. i finally feel like i'm getting over it.

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strange trails is a great album for aces who are obsessed with romance i think

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WHAT DOES IT MEAN IF IT ALL MEANS NOTHING

WHAT DOES IT MEAN IF IT ALL MEANS NOTHING

WHAT DOES IT MEAN IF IT ALL MEANS NOTHING

WHAT DOES IT MEAN IF IT ALL MEANS NOTHING

WHAT DOES IT MEAN IF IT ALL MEANS NOTHING????

WHAT DOES IT MEAN IF IT ALL MEANS NOTHING????

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Lambertus Hendrik van Berk, Garden of the house Kersbergen, Zeist, including sunflowers, c. 1914

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