Dia de los Muertos

Today I celebrate the lives of Nina Simone for keeping me company; James Baldwin for being a mentor who knew that home ≠ birthplace, that it "is not simply a place, but an irrevocable condition," who reminds me again and again that we all have the capacity to love and we ought to be taking full advantage of this capacity since there is already so much hatred in the world, who reminds me to approach the people I am wont to dismiss with love as well.

I am grateful, too, for all the women and men who worked for the liberation of people they would never know.

I privately whisper my gratitude to the mothers and fathers who have created lives that have inspired and sustained my vitality with their friendship, with their words. Thank you for the people you have brought into my life. (You, who are reading this, know who you are.)

Thank you Nesim, my father's father whom I've never met; Rashel, Gramama, my father's mother, who could create infinite stories inspired by the same three paintings in her living room; Leon, my mother's father, my Grampapa, who believed (or at least told me) eating bananas would give me strong biceps and who, I found after he died, loved traveling and going on road trips.


And I celebrate once again the life of my cousin Moshe, who was my age when he died—for reminding me each day and each night when I look at his picture above my bed: I am alive. No matter what anxieties and pettiness might distract me from this fact, I am alive.



"So live."