My feed lurches between worlds. A woman folds egg whites into almond flour. A father buries his son. A freed hostage steps off a bus into a blur of arms and cameras.
My thumb moves without thinking, the feed pulling me under. One reel after another, giving myself whiplash. The algorithm doesn’t care. It keeps building my echo chamber out into infinity – darting between cemeteries, a spotless cupboard, a family reunited.
Sometimes I pause on a frame – a face, an embrace, a blur – and realize I’m not really watching them. I’m watching myself, measuring the distance between emotions – violence, joy, denial – all flattened into the same infinite scroll.
Some nights I scroll until the faces blur together: salt, acid, sugar, loss. The rhythm becomes its own pulse. Reel after reel, frame after frame, each one landing a little harder. Light on a countertop. The edge of someone’s grief. I pause, breathe, scroll again.
Maybe that’s the only way to bear witness now. Not to understand, not to move on, but to keep looking, even when it’s too much.
A friend told me they saw Emily Damari at a bar in Tel Aviv. The bartender kept trying to give her things for free, but she insisted on paying. I liked that image – just a woman paying for her own drink. After everything, the simple act of reaching for her wallet felt like its own kind of resistance, a quiet way of reentering the world, of saying I’m still here without having to post or explain.
