These days, all I talk about and think about is the cognitive dissonance required to move through the world. Increasingly, I struggle to disentangle my many selves, to get on with the day. All my selves weep often. I try to have grace. I tell my friends that I’m no longer sure how anyone just drifts through the days, the months, without acknowledging the horrors. I imagine what it must be like to be able to turn off the parts of the world that unsettle you. It must feel like existing in an animated universe that adheres to cartoon physics: you fall from an inconceivable height and, landing, a cloud of dust billows up from the ground, but then you shake yourself off and keep moving.
— Hanif Abdurraqib, from Zohran Mamdani and Mahmoud Khalil are in on the Joke (The New Yorker, July 13, 2025
Notes:
- Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels)
- Portrait of Hanif Abdurraqub via Canisius College
