what is enough, under a government that kills?

It is 12:45am. I cannot sleep, because the government is occupying and killing its citizens — again, and anew.

I can hear the crack of my jaw, too tense as I munch on leftover pizza, standing over the kitchen counter, straight from the foil packet in the fridge. I’m listening to the slow drip of the faucets I squeaked open — the kitchen sink, and the bathtub — so the pipes won’t freeze. A foot of snow used to be normal, has become anomalous.

I suppose the ice never was.

I turn the volume down on the videos, the audio equivalent of stretching half-closed fingers over my eyes as a kid afraid of Spiderman’s carjacking scene — as if a softer sound will somehow diminish the horror of what we witness.

And witness we must.

Today I coped by washing four loads of laundry in between scanning the news, the threads, the feeds. I wrote and published a new services page; I stared at the ceiling. I archived my TikTok data to delete my account and went through an excessive number of stages of grief.

I started and abandoned an essay-slash-audio-slash-video series titled “Relational Skills in an Age of AI and ICE”; I started and abandoned a tray of roasted vegetables; I started and abandoned banal, frantic, mundane searches with questions I already know the answers to, like “how to resist” and “how to keep each other safe” and “what comes next.”

1:11am.

Tomorrow — later today — I will sit in the sleet snowdrift silence with others at my local Quaker meeting, and wonder if it is enough. I will collect my pennies for Minneapolis organizing efforts, and wonder if it is enough. I will return to the vegetables, and the laundry, and the essays, and wonder if it is enough. I will hit send on this newsletter — I will think of each and every one of the 500 or so of you, receiving a little ping of a notification — and wonder if it is enough.

And I will remind myself that “enough” is an impossibility, when the government is occupying and killing its citizens, again and anew.