Rest Is Not Comfort
I love the Four of Knives—I love it so much that I’ve written about it before. It’s a contradiction in itself, fours being the number of structure and knives being the suite of air, language, thought, principles. It’s funny! It’s so funny to remember that air is a material and can be structured; look, wave your hand through the air. You and the air just moved around each other. Speak a thought that you don’t share much with others. There: you just formed air.
The Four of Knives features a person lying in bed with a switchblade in their hand as a thought bubble features the opening of it. The Four of Knives is a card that reconnects our thoughts to our imagination.
It also demarcates a very subtle differentiation: rest is not comfort. I think that there are two key components of rest: the luxury of it and the function of it. When I say luxury, I don’t mean that rest is not necessary, but that when we rest, we are finding the pleasures of living and having a body. The function of rest is that it prepares us for what is next.
In a capitalist state, the luxury of it is reorganized as worthiness; rest is what you deserve after labor—working for the weekend, baby! Rest is time for you to do whatever you want to feel that luxury… a lot of times it’s dissociating through drugs or entertainment (which is generally propaganda, but that’s a whole other road to walk). The luxury is rebranded as comfort.
The function of comfort in a capitalist state is to dull us and prepare us for more labor. You take the weekend, take the vacation, get comfortable so you can come back and be uncomfortably productive for wealth generation, and war mongering.
I am thinking of this, after a month of Israeli-conducted genocide on the Palestinian people. I am thinking of how much so many people are suffering and how hard people in my life and in their lives are doing to resist and halt the advance of this egregious colonial violence. Yesterday, I went to an action and one of the organizers on the mic led us in chants until her voice was cracking like dry dry soil. From day to night, she shouted, her ragged voice held together by spirit.
I thought, this is the least I can do. stay and shout. If there are people surviving in Gaza or dying in Gaza, this is the least that I can do. It feels like all that I can do.
But today, as we have learned that Netanyahu rejected an offer for the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for five days of ceasefire, it is clear that there are different weapons needed. It is clear that shame and calling congresspeople and peaceful demonstrations are not enough. Comfort is not something that I or any of us can afford because it is nourished by blood around the world.
Rest, unlike comfort, is active and crucial. My voice is tired today and it would do me no good to scream more so today I’ll write and learn. Rest is the time to sharpen our knives and imagine new tools of engagement. Rest is the time to understand next steps in the sacred space of your mind and your imagination. We need to intentionally nourish ourselves in rest so that we can come back stronger, not for work, but for resistance. We need to be well-rested so we can pivot and respond.
After the protest, I walk the miles to the Empty Bottle and dance with my person. I talk to friends I haven’t seen in years. I get friendly with the bartenders. When I leave the bathroom, the colors of the Palestinian flag blur from the floor to the wall to the ceiling.
Music is air as poetry is air. I am breathing air that you have breathed. You are breathing the air that I have breathed. I do not rest so that I can be productive. I rest so that I can come back and be more.
Close your eyes. Dream. Rest. Imagine the people of Palestine resting from the river to the sea. Open your eyes. Walk forward. Do not get comfortable.
Beautiful.