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I read TwERK at the mall today, because my classes were canceled. I tried to make sense of all the languages, all the references, wondered if the eels in one of the poems (“Unagi”) were a metaphor for sex or violation or both or something else. I looked up videos of Diggs reading from the book, and it was cool how she incorporated music and background vocals and images. I got a better sense of the rhythm and sound from the videos, though I still didn’t always grasp the words. Reading TwERK involves trying to piece things together, characters I’ve never heard of, languages I don’t speak, words I’ve never seen. Nothing makes much sense lately. I’ve been sleeping too much the past few days, nine hours and a midday nap, feeling sluggish and unmotivated and pushing my assigned readings off for tomorrow. I shut off when I’m overwhelmed, I think; when I don’t know how to process, I just don’t. We all know, right? We all know what happened. We’ve all seen the same videos of all those cops and their batons and their pepper spray and those buses about to run over students. 

Though the draft due Sunday isn’t entirely ready yet, I’ve been writing for my project: about my identity, about being Jewish or not being Jewish, my nose and my hair and my sore lack of knowledge. Then there’s the rest, my life right now: graduation, another thing that I tend to avoid thinking about too much, and my personal life, which feels so silly and yet so endlessly consequential despite everything. I’m trying out different formats, different topics. I don’t think they all fit together. Do they need to? Does anything fit? What does it mean to fit, what does it mean to be coherent, what does it mean to make sense in a world where nothing makes sense? I know we’re not the first generation to feel like this, that this moment both is and isn’t unique. I know everyone has probably felt like this — well, not everyone, but many people — young and idealistic and looking on helplessly at atrocities. I don’t know what the right way to respond is, but I don’t think it should make sense to us.