[image id: a four-page comic. it is titled “immortality” after the poem by clare harner (more popularly known as “do not stand at my grave and weep”). the first page shows paleontologists digging up fossils at a dig. it reads, “do not stand at my grave and weep. i am not there. i do not sleep.” page two features several prehistoric creatures living in the wild. not featured but notable, each have modern descendants: horses, cetaceans, horsetail plants, and crocodilians. it reads, “i am a thousand winds that blow. i am the diamond glints on snow. i am the sunlight on ripened grain. i am the gentle autumn rain.” the third page shows archaeopteryx in the treetops and the skies, then a modern museum-goer reading the placard on a fossil display. it reads, “when you awaken in the morning’s hush, i am the swift uplifting rush, of quiet birds in circled flight. i am the soft stars that shine at night. do not stand at my grave and cry.” the fourth page shows a chicken in a field. it reads, “i am not there. i did not die” / end id]
a comic i made in about 15 hours for my school’s comic anthology. the theme was “evolution”
I don’t know how to hold this. My excavation is in Israel. Just two months ago I got back from a summer there.
Every (hopefully) person I just met in Ashkelon has fled their homes. The woman who helped me sort out my change in a corner store without a cash register screen. The man who welcomed me to his country. The families in the park celebrating Shabbat together with music and food. The gift shop woman who consistently got me a strawberry slushy.
This was the city that was bombed. This was the city they evacuated. They were not other. They were not lesser.
These people are losing a home for who knows how long. These people are losing their lives and their friends and their family and the people who smile at them when they walk down the street and their doctors and their bankers and every employee that’s ever given them change back.
Yet there are people cheering in the streets on both sides of this fight.
I went to the Southern Levant to study a culture long lost. To revive our knowledge of it and to understand it for what it was and what it means for us now. But I do not care to uncover something lost if I do not have anyone to give it back to.
People are dying. Civilians and soldiers alike. People are being massacred on both sides. People are dying.