Beneath the table
hands held, here and there
The snow is deep enough that I can fall into it: the sensation of pillows. Driving north, there is black ice on the roads. In the notch, it snows all day. Outside of it, the skies are a shocking blue. One day, while shoveling, I make two snow angels. One of them is placed below the upstairs window, not earnestly, but plot-like, the way a ghost might, or an aspiring magician, so that anyone walking down the hallway can see it if they look. It snowed again the other day, then it rained; snowed once more for the final difference. Now it melts.
夢
そこに友達がいていた。手を触れて瞬間は彼女の薄さと感じた。触た時、誰かをわかっていた。
dream
just there was a friend of mine. the moment i touched her arm, i felt her paleness/thinness. when i touched her, i knew who she was.
Back to the present. Someone has told you how something has changed. In them. Outside of them. Maybe they are saying what you’re feeling, kind of—not really, but just so. They sit when their legs get tired, and they lean slightly to the side, towards the window (like a flower) because they favor that hip. And how exciting to talk to a person, and have them talk to you. As it snows.
夢
今朝、中途半端に起きた。窓の外からどこかでコヨーテが泣いていた。その泣いている声が夢の中にもあったけど、目を覚めて夢がなくなった。
dream
this morning, i woke up halfway. there was a coyote crying somewhere outside the window. the sound was inside the dream, too, but when i opened my eyes, the dream was gone.
When I order a coffee in summer, I’m told that yellow is a wonderful color. My shirt is linen, long sleeve, a little transparent: bright yellow with lemons.
“We need it,” says the woman behind the counter, kindly, gesturing to the lemons. “We need that right now.”
“We are losing them, aren’t we?” Someone young asks, from the other side of the room. The context is war, the one happening in the mind.
In December, a stranger has bought coffees for everyone in the line behind him. He leaves before anyone knows what he’s done; he’s smiling as he leaves—you didn’t know why at first, but now you do, and suddenly you believe in Christmas Spirit. The messages pile up in your hand, and the new moral says it’s okay to not answer immediately—what is answering? To respond is to say: I’m here. No, not quite that. 伝える？伝えたかった。繰り返す。Every time you blink an angel gets their wings. Every time you lift your phone to your face, your pupils recede. Grow larger. And the children playing with puzzles in the corner of the room raise the volume—what is a decibel, really? In your ear. They are delighted, to be in your ear, and they, too, know something is wrong. There’s an old man who stares absently; he wants to tell his friends what he thinks, so he talks for a long time at the table. He voted for this, but not for this. He says. He isn’t angry, and he is not scared, not like the other table, the one closest to the door. He hasn’t taken his jacket off because every time the door opens, it’s cold.
God is in the juice, no, God is in the wine, no, God is in the absence of your belief, so says the atheist—I mean, the pastor—as he holds court at the table by the wall. I disarm them when I ask to sit at the table because there’s no room left at the others. I see something remain on their faces as they look up, it’s a gaze of non-recognition, perhaps unable to recall a name they haven’t learned. I am climbing over a wall of shyness and trepidation—a long history of exclusivity dressed in the robes of doctrine. A woman sitting at the end, who isn’t part of their group, looks up and mouths to me, “Yes.” Then smiles, silently gesturing for me to sit. She’s wearing grey ear muffs; she returns to her book, engrossed. One of the men continues the sermon not long after I’m seated.
“The holy spirit writes in perfection, not contradiction,” he says, fingers interlacing. He is consoling his friend, the one worried about his oil stocks. I write: perfection was our death, our separation—in the margins of my notes, briefly imagining what it would be like to speak notes at this table, to raise my hand and wait to be called on. But I am something unfamiliar and invisible and odd, an air of weariness surrounds what it would mean to acknowledge a similarity, a difference. My hands begin to sweat as the conversation sinks further. There’s an impulse to say, “you speak of our death”—without being called on, but this is something they know.
God is in the wine, no, God is in the water of a well; a darkness we pull from the ground and bring to our lips—God is in the mouths of a claim, but nobody can afford a claim unapproved, and by an eye so remote it doesn’t believe that harm was done. Everyone wants a table. And the child in the corner is still puzzling over decibels with their friend; they point towards transcendence every few minutes, a corporeal reminder of where light goes when uninterrupted and untimed. P is for Pear, or Bepsi, or the inherent contradiction of our Bodies’ language, of stories told that change after telling, and there is a wild gap—a naked pear with several bites taken, a weed growing from the fracture in the hardwood floor that no one in the room wants to tend to for fear of what it means. What does it mean? What could it mean? What will it mean? See how anything turns when peeled? When left open. In the air. Exposed to water, light, minerals, and hands. Click, Tap, Gulp; drive until you see something else. Do you prefer turning left? Turning right on red? Minerals in the tires. Pebbles in your soles. (Take them off by the door). Your souls. Plastic in your lungs. Depends on the road. The blinker. The clicker. The remote. Depends on the geography, the consequence of having slept with the ground; the slope conditions, the nuance of an aging hill, pickled thought, and the parceling of niceties for distribution and delay. The next breath, somehow linked to the last, eventually comes to feel the formality; the slow gathering of accomplishments to grant entry into the next room: delicate arrangement of paper clip that won’t be returned. Not from the upper left corner it holds. And so, despite having not yet arrived, the next breath remembers—instinctually looks for—the sound that preceded assurance, the scene that confounded and found you, the place where the map
fell. Have you spoken to it yet? Into darkness? What is darkness, for you? Someone is asking, quietly, What do you think darkness is? I wonder how you answer, and if we must conjure a window, or at least the idea of one. (So shadows may dance along the floor, along the walls, and along the surface of the shallow end). It must be a window that does not inoculate or satiate, but holds until we can build another. Talking with N once, I remember we came to a moment when he said, “A window is an opening, and it is also a frame.”
He didn’t know, but I wrote into darkness when we couldn’t find our ending. The way in was fraught, so the way out was unimaginable; now, a memory made of spit and omission; whispers that linger like secret recordings I’m not allowed to tell; hurled saliva, a double life to match the emptiness and play both parts—or, a hand placed gently on my neck, which he took for someone else’s, or, recognized as his own.
On the streets, people watched the obvious of us and did nothing; more than a spectacle, we were the forbidden emotions one must not have, abstract strangers, bearing the visuals of incorrect. And that’s how the watchers understood silence then—that day—to keep an imagined peace has always had its own thrust of violence. Caught residing, now residual, in the throat. Even more compelled is the body of impulse; to reach for someone is to reach for another’s consciousness. 煙のように。And this is a silence of a different sort. Walking towards a cloud, you realize you’re already inside it; carrying the newborn, who feels adversity with their lids unopened. Once again life is made from raw, sleeping materials, the way you were, and you walk, knowing only a little more than you used to. This is \ from where, we loved. The husk (a shell) is concave and confused when met, confused for the wet thing that lives inside it. Confused for being the dangerous, wet thing that lives, alongside the expectations of those who wish to contain what they have imagined of you for themselves. “Would you like some coffee?” 3eib; begins as a wrinkle of suspicion, a play that is untrue even as it fulfills itself, becomes real. Eventually, these fractions dissolve in you, not for lack of helium breathed into their false shadows, but because, like many materials undergoing metamorphosis, they lose the shape of the original sin for which they were held, suspended, in perpetuity. Assumption and Negation are (perhaps) the flat horror harbored and handled by The Good; the good, who you no longer belong to, who you’ve just met. To be bound to them, bound up by them—how they bound you to them with a learned ease, as soft as feathers. I held them in half invisible hands, until, in either world, I became their stranger, and then a stranger became my friend: I think of his hand on my back, how he made this gesture ordinary, and dimensional; I think of a knee barely touching mine that day on the train; her voice in the backseat of the taxi, thoughts spilling freely and uninhibited, as our palms pressed together in an imprint; she was sure that, like her, I was returning to love—that I knew what love was; I think of these strangers, every time the fears of this life return.
I wrote so we became birds. N and I. It was imperfect, and almost as mystical as the negation that threatened it. At the end of the script, I turned us into something we couldn’t achieve, something we already were, (so I did nothing, or, I did very little, or I did the impossible), not to leave behind the room, but to fly through its window. To this day, to run into the ocean with our bodies is a relation we don’t know how to name. It’s something we point to, hands quivering, and say: Look! We swallowed the ocean! Salt in our mouths! And, Look! The swallows, they are flying — they flew! True and tangled, as if at once.
夢
昨日の夜、夢の中に大好きな人たちを集めました。みんな一緒に晩御飯を食べました。私が座っているところから友達を見ていて十分だった。「みんながいる、みんなが一所」と考えていた。AさんがBさんのとなりにいて、それが奇跡だ。大好きな友達をそのままで見ているのが感動した。みんなが笑ったり、泣いたりします。「AさんがBさんに会えるのは何年ぶりかな。。。」と考えたまさにその時、Aさんがお父さんの亡くなる話を伝えて始めた。テーブルの下にあちこち手をつないで、聴きました。
dream
Last night, the people I love gathered in a dream. Everyone ate dinner together. From where I sat, watching my friends was enough. “Everyone is here, all in one place,” I thought. B. was sitting next to A., and this was a miracle. Watching my friends, as they were, moved me. Everyone was laughing, crying. Just when I thought: “How many years has it been since A and B met?,” A. began expressing the story of their father’s passing. Everyone together, hands held, here and there, beneath the table, we listened.
Salama’s Instagram Story on March 2nd, 2026
“The civil defense is sending us messages, warning us not to go up to the rooftops and to stay in the safest area inside our homes. And in that moment, I realize that I am living with my family in a tent.”
Messages from Marwa on March 1st, and 2nd, 2026
“My child's feet are deformed due to malnutrition and starvation. Please, my child needs treatment, proper nutrition, and a device to wear on her feet.
She was two years old when the war began; with famine, malnutrition, and a lack of medical personnel, her condition worsened. I need your support.”
When corresponding with Marwa, she also informed me that she has a serious eye condition that needs immediate treatment.
Lebanon Emergency Relief
“As we write this, Lebanon is under a barrage of attacks from the Zionist entity. The south of the country, the Bekaa and the capital, Beirut, are all being hit continuously and indiscriminately with the number of martyrs and wounded still unknown. This attack came after almost 15 months of continuous aggressions despite the so-called “ceasefire," near daily attacks across the South, with the number of martyrs only increasing. Currently, hundreds of families are fleeing their homes across the South, Beirut, and within the Palestinian refugee camps, as the entity continues launching violent airstrikes in residential areas, wrecking a country still recovering from the last full-scale Zionist onslaught it suffered a year ago.”
Donate to Lebanon Emergency Relief here
Look here, for an exhaustive list for urgent relief in Lebanon
Purchase any of these three art prints by artist, Sama Beydoun, your funds go directly to grass roots initiatives in Lebanon
Nation Station: a community kitchen located in Beirut, making and delivering food for displaced people in Lebanon
Give me a paw, a dog shelter in Lebanon taking care of wounded, and abandoned pets
At the time of publishing this entry, the state of Israel has forcibly displaced over one million people in Lebanon. Please take the time to look through the urgent relief initiatives, (and the above links), and consider contributing what you are able to. This is one way we can counter ongoing harm.
Notes for myself and others:
Care is something we are capable of returning to, even when we’re not our best. What if care is innate? Helplessness is the experience of being cut off from possibility. Those emotions, real, are a tangibility we can alchemize into something else. In these phases of estrangement, we may catch ourselves sensing that we can’t do our best for ourselves or for other people. But care isn’t perfect. It never has been. The (re)orientation towards care is interdependent, varied, and multiple, and it looks different to everyone. It’s messy. Maybe allowing yourself to return to care, to tender strength, despite yourself, and despite everything, is the dance. It does not happen only inside the absence of error. It comes with the mistake. Sometimes, because of.
If you are able to, consider donating just five dollars to Salama and Marwa, respectively, and sharing their links with friends. Please consider contributing what you can to an urgent relief initiative in Lebanon. These gestures, especially when returned to, and even in small amounts, add up in more ways than we can ever know. We won’t be able to wrap our entire minds around this. And, in a way, we aren’t meant to. Amazingly, we have so many different kinds of fluctuating skills and capacities, with alternative routes to approach from. A note is a reminder to return to the soft animal inside of you that wants to hold and be held; a note is a reminder to harbor imagination, regard the limitation as the teacher, tend to the heart, and whatever else that breaks, as you change and encounter fear.
爆発は無意味だ 反対しているだけは十分じゃない 「逆」じゃない 「別」じゃなくて、「他」じゃない 大切な亡くなった人の意味は終わりがないの 同時に 山 と 川 が 繋 が っ て い る は ず まだ 同じ 手 「悪」に意味を探すのは危険 「入らないで」 「天井がない」 「床もない」 と ま れ 幕が上がり 体 の 心 の 残ったこと そこへ とっても近い ついに 壁が曇りになれ、柔らかいのを まだ見えない、まだ見える柔らかい部分があって この部分を大事にしているのは完璧じゃないけど、そうする ただ 無意味は無意味だ そこに種を育つできない 「 人生を忘れた人々 」のせいで酸性雨 言語が足りなくて、画像の影は残っていて、薄く伸ばしているか、限界があったまま でも、柔らかさは動ける 割れ目に流れる 口から出ない時も 綺麗じゃない時も 変な形 友達と特に想像ができる 目から 足から 耳 柔らかいって何？ どこでも柔らかいことを書いてください 痛いかもしれない 体に戻ること ここにも書いて、お願い：
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Today’s featured artwork is :
This is \ from where, we loved (2018)
10 x 13.33 in. \ 25.4 x 33.83 cm
limited edition
printed on fine art archival paper
135.00
+ shipping
This piece exists on its own: pulled from a different frame of mind in 2018, having gradually come into this shape. Its final form is a mixed mediums fine art print on archival paper. The original components are made of oil paint and pen on paper, which were then scanned together and played with digitally; texture arrived post-scan, and has been left as is.