Najwan Darwish, translated from Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

"Who Remembers the Armenians?" by Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish

Who Remembers the Palestinians? by Armenian writer Sophia Armen

🇵🇸❤️🇦🇲

this turned up in my notifications and it’s still so true! i agree with myself!

saw a post the other day full of people complaining about helping older people use computers, about how clueless they can be, how frustrating it is to have to tell them basics like where to click, exactly what to type, how some people just never seem to get it. then an addition was someone who works in a library sharing a story of a ninety-something woman who picked it up instantly. it’s not difficult, this elderly woman said! wow heartwarming.

i’m here to say that plenty of older and disabled and otherwise marginalised people do not know how to use computers and in some cases will find it very difficult if not impossible to learn to use them. for many people it is difficult. it can be insurmountable. we should be fighting for a world where vulnerable people who are not computer literate can use computers with assistance when they want to, but where they do not need to use computers, ever. this is a serious access issue as so much government paperwork is moving to being online only. your frustration at working a job that likely overworks and underpays you to help people use these computers - please think before turning it on the disenfranchised and vulnerable people who rely on you for assistance and resources.

it’s an annoyance for you? then think about why is it that governments habitually move the resources that vulnerable people need to live to online-only when they know as well as you and i do that the digital divide is real. think about how intentionally difficult governments and agencies make it to access forms and paperwork and everything else that is needed to claim such a small amount of money as people currently get when they are out of work and trying to claim benefits, or on allowances for refugees, etc. how much are governments dedicated to taking away people’s dignity and autonomy by swapping to a system that millions of people do not have access to without going into a public library and asking for help, if there’s even anyone there who is able to or allowed to help? i can get people set up with email and find websites for them but im not even allowed to help with sensitive forms - i can only do what i can, you know. i wish it was more.

before i started this job i thought of myself as impatient. i’m not going to tell you any stories in detail because my library patrons didn’t consent to being A Teaching Moment. but i have requests from “difficult” patrons every day. i take a deep breath and if i don’t have a queue, i try to help. i smile and say “don’t worry” when someone is apologising over and over because they were never taught this and they are stressed out and it doesn’t make sense to them. not everyone grew up with neopets and Hotmail. it makes you no better than them if you did.

i’m not perfect but i’m trying. just… think about it, next time you roll your eyes because another old lady doesn’t know how to use gmail, even though you’ve already shown her what to click. ask if your library has thought about seeing up dedicated sessions for helping people use computers if they need assistance (maybe it’ll take some of the work away from you and give you more breathing space). make leaflets telling people where they can go nearby for help with computers - maybe some local charities or non-profits have drop-in sessions. join campaigns for easier access, for letting people who can’t use computers do what they need to without needing to find some way to get online. all of these are more useful in holding solidarity than in just being frustrated that another person in their seventies, eighties, nineties, struggles to use a computer.

a couple more notes of things that i think about a lot when it comes to computer access at the library that might not occur to people who don’t routinely help people out with basic computer stuff:

2-factor authentication is the devil. i understand the intention behind it and cyber security is important and difficult! but 2-factor authentication in practice locks out and disenfranchises vulnerable people every day, makes them unable to access their emails and everything else on the web that depends on their email, makes them unable to access their data and government portals, and makes them even more vulnerable than governments already conspire to make them. plenty of people just do not understand how 2FA works. it doesn’t matter how many times the google website says : look at your phone and click on this number. or whatever. if somebody else is not there to tell them what to do — if they haven’t recently had to change their phone number, as many vulnerable people might have had to do — they will not be able to do it.

google have recently been selling chromeboxes to public libraries (and schools) cheap. chromeboxes in public libraries are also the devil. on a windows PC loaded with word, lots of people are happy and able to do what they need to do. the problem comes when they have to log in to a google account just to access a fucking word processor. it’s a scandal how many people are locked out of access to something as simple as a word processor unless they have a google or Microsoft account. we are talking people who don’t want email accounts, who just want to type up a letter to send in the post. Every time I ask online for a good alternative I get something extremely tech-y or like fucking online textpad. we just need a good accessible word clone that runs in a web browser like Word XP. It would make a lot much easier. And yet!

Edward Gorey - Dracula "Grand Curtain"

stage set design for 'Dracula, the Musical', Martin Beck Theatre, 1977

Charles Simic, from Dime-Store Alchemy: the art of Joseph Cornell

tomorrow is the big poetry book fair in London so im going to go and buy BOOKS slash pamphlets but also i can’t sleep despite taking my melatonin gummies tonight. very stupid!

anyway please enjoy my outfit of the day

Carnelian stamp seal featuring a kitty, Minoan, 1900-1600 BC

from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lee Harwood As Your Eyes Are Blue As your eyes are blue you move me—& the thought of you— I imitate you. & cities apart, yet a roof grey with slates or lead, the difference is little. & even you could say as much through a foxtail of pain            even you when the river beneath your window was as much as I dream, of. loose change & your shirt on the top of a chest-of-drawers. a mirror facing the ceiling & the light in a cupboard left to bum all day           a dull yellow probing the shadowy room              “what was it?” “cancel the tickets”—a sleep talk whose horrors razor a truth that can walk with equal calm through palace rooms chandeliers tinkling in the silence as winds batter the gardens outside             formal lakes shuddering at the sight of 2 lone walkers                          of course this exaggerates small groups of tourists appear & disappear in an irregular rhythm of flowerbeds you know even in the stillness of my kiss that doors are opening in another apartment on the other side of town             a shepherd grazing his sheep through a village we know high in the mountains the ski slopes thick with summer flowers & the water-meadows below with narcissi the back of your hand &— a newly designed red bus drives quietly down Gower Street a brilliant red                     “how could I tell you …” with such confusion                               meetings disintegrating & a general lack of purpose only too obvious in the affairs of state                              “yes, it was on a hot July day with taxis gunning their motors on the throughway a listless silence in the backrooms of paris bookshops why bother                           one thing equal to another dinner parties whose grandeur stops all conversation but    the afternoon sunlight which shone in your eyes as you lay beside me watching for … — we can neither remember—still shines as you wait nervously by the window for the ordered taxi to arrive               if only I could touch your naked shoulder now                     “but then … ” and the radio still playing the same records I heard earlier today                                             —& still you move me & the distance is nothing “even you …

if you've ever used the London Underground you might have noticed that it often gets uncomfortably hot. the reason for this is actually that its builders dug too greedily & too deep and as a result the trains are very close to the fires of hell. hope that helps.

have been playing the DS style savvy game on this new ios emulator and enjoying the very tasteful retro fashions, it’s indulging both my love for retro 70s-ish clothes and my horror at low rise trousers

(this last one is the most tragically 2005 thing i have ever seen)

also all of the characters who come in and ask for clothing recommendations have such funny descriptions

sadie plant, zeros + ones

Antonio López García (Spanish, b.1936)

McDermott & McGough (American, b. 1952 & b. 1958), The Night Light, 1987. Oil on linen.

Pinball, Suzan Pitt (2013)

Crocus, Suzan Pitt (1971)