SENSE: 1st Edition 🤲🏼

Sensorium for times of crisis

Thank you for engaging with this new personal project. Your attention is sacred. There is so much else vying for it so I appreciate you taking the time to read this.

Death, war, and genocide, are heavy topics I will continue to explore. Some people aren’t afforded the choice not to. The daily onslaught can eventually leave us desensitized or dissociated. Grounding myself in the senses has been a way for me to stay present during the pain and discomfort.

After long-form posts I’ll be curating a round-up of links based on the theme of the month’s essay. Re-engaging with tragic topics through the senses. This first edition holds things I’ve been returning to during dark moments this spring.

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SCENT

Mala, the ‘deep, dark, and sensuous perfume inspired by flower garlands threaded for rituals commemorating life, love, and death’, has been my companion during vigils & cemetery visits. It has notes of marigold, rose, carnation, cardamom, sage, saffron, henna, incense, and tobacco.

This independent luxury beauty brand sustains the work of

Tanaïs

, a queer femme Muslim Bengali who is the author of ‘In Sensorium: Notes for my People’.

In Sensorium Pilgrimage by Tanaïs

SIGHT

Many Palestinian art books have been made available online amidst the epistemicide. Some of my favorites include Lifta, Subjective Atlas of Palestine, and Yesterday Come Closer. You can find free books, zines, and more here.

‘Yesterday Come Closer’ by Ibrahem Hasan

SOUND

Anohni’s album Hopelessness addresses drone warfare, totalitarianism, and climate change. Her body of work feels as relevant now as it did back in 2016.

‘My model is the kind of music that people were dancing to in the late ’80s, during the height of AIDS. Rage is a really fun place to dance from—expressions of anger sublimated into something beautiful are invigorating, especially if you feel like you’re telling the truth’.

‘I tried to keep a focus on myself in terms of addressing my complicity in so many of these issues — as a taxpayer, as a consumer, as a passive participant. I got to thinking perhaps as an artist, even as an artist with the best of intentions, that I was kind of a microcosm of the brokenness of the whole system. That within my body I contained the whole conflict’.

TASTE

I’ve been taking this remedy for resilience & sumud made of Levantine plants. It’s discounted/free for those from communities facing genocide. Layla Feghali is an ethnobotanist, cultural worker, and the author of ‘The Land in Our Bones’. Both her book and ancestral hub explore plantcestral medicine of SWANA.

She’s also fundraising for this mutual aid network organized by and for Gazans.

Land is Life is Love by River Rose Remembrance

TOUCH

Showers have been a source of solace for me. Consistent access to hot water is a daily luxury I don’t take for granted. In Guatemala water is often contaminated and in Palestine many grow up never having seen the ocean. When survivor’s guilt and despair overwhelm me, I soak in water until it (briefly) melts away.

‘memories of simple pleasures often center the poetry that emerges from tragedy and loss of freedom. From the soft haze cast by the sun’s rays, to breaking open a watermelon, the unremarkable becomes a mark of a different time, carrying its own sense of escapism’.

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May you indulge the senses this summer. May this solstice bring justice to light.