One of the reasons I am so interested with history is that I find it resolves my self-obsession. I’ve been obsessed with myself for a long time. Like most westerners, I consider myself above all else, an individual.

As I sat in church pews at two recent funerals, I thought about the stories I was hearing. They were in perfect opposition: one dominated by longevity, consistency, and simplicity; the other a complex and thoughtful bright light put out tragically short. Both had congregations gathered to send them off from all their varied chapters lived. I could see the accounts of their lives spread out in front of me, and at each chapter’s start, I thought of the moments in their lives when their roads seemed to split in infinite ways. I thought about the varied decisions they had to make during those moments. I wept that they would not be alive to make any more.

Yet, these inflection points remain so compelling to me. They’re depicted in heist and sports movies all the time - the arc has come to its end, and we watch as each individual follows their own path. The Italian Job, Remember the Titans, the Ocean’s series, etc. If you’ve seen HBO series Band of Brothers, you’ll remember in the last episode where the men of the 101st Airborne Regiment are informed they’d be going home after WWII. The audience listens as Maj. Winters narrates “what happened to them after”, telling tales of their later civilian lives. The men lead them very differently, mostly shaped by them of their own wills. They were individuals, and their stories were told individually.

I have realized that the thing I come back to again and again is this privilege of choice and individuality. Together in that moment, the men could have just been the 101st Paratroopers or the U.S. Military. But when their lives are recounted in BoB, they are Joe Toye, Bill Guarnere, Dick Winters.

In the last year+ as I have made so many individual choices, I have thought about who we bestow this label of individual on. When we look at stabbings in London or shootings in Whitehall, the victims are named, and their stories are valid. When I read about the juntas gunning down crowds in Khartoum or bombs being dropped on tent cities in what is left of Khan Younis, I can only read numbers. The stories that follow are a word salad of passive voice.

Edward Said referred to this as the “Permission to Narrate”. Who is afforded the ability to have their story told? Who is an individual? This permission is ultimately a privilege and we don’t afford it everyone. Necropolitics is a real bitch.

I am fortunate. I fill a lot of the identifiers that will (I think) allow me to have a story told. After all, I’m writing it myself right now in the middle of a comfortable café, in the steam of a Third-Wave cup of coffee.

This year I have been extra fortunate. I moved to a downtown high-rise in central Austin. I flew thousands of miles to see my uncle before he passed on and we smiled and shook hands one last time. I went to pray before my ancestors’ bones and asked for intercessions to my inconsistent prayers. I walked up Fushimi Inari with legs unburdened by long-term disability and was stunned to silence by Todaiji. I rode the Shinkansen and bowed to a Tokyo itamae after eating fish I didn’t know existed. I listened to mariachi on the Xochimilco and stayed out till 4am at a new bar with new friends. I saw the big skies of Nebraska and Texas, where God’s face stretches before you.

In years past, I have been rained on at Heidelberg Castle and seen the light shine through the Segrada Familia. I hiked Jabal Akhdar and ate pomegranate with its farmers. I sat courtside at MSG for Knicks-Lakers, partied at John Scott’s and Steven’s Talkhouse. You’re reading now the story of an individual - you, no doubt, have your own version.

I’ve been reading a series by author Joe Abercrombie in which a character reflects soberly that “progress just means bad things happen faster”. I haven’t known what to make of that, but I know that based on my permission to narrate (amongst many others), that progress is unequal. I know too that if my spirit was sat in a church pew and heard my name called, it’d be furious if my self-obsession and individuality is where it ended.

- Michael

R.I.P.

Agnes M. Eshak (1990 - 2024),

Antonious N. Antonious (1938-2024)