Spotlight series #87 : Daniel Sarah Karasik
Curated by Canadian writer, editor and publisher rob mclennan, the “spotlight” series appears the first Monday of every month.
STATEMENT
I’m writing to find my people, I guess. To paraphrase Midnight Sun Magazine: writing against capitalism, towards beauty, against empire, towards pleasure, against oppression — those are among my basic orientations as a writer. But I don’t expect capital, empire, or systems of oppression to notice, much; those who notice, or might, are other people, with whom I might be in company and in solidarity. And together we might build experiments that challenge the power of bad, anti-human systems. So I guess I write first of all as a way of reaching out to those comrades, actual or potential.
If those considerations drive me to write, they also shape the content of my writing. The prose poem-y thing below is excerpted from a manuscript of prose poem-y things, micro-essays, in part about how longings to be in good, healthful, nourishing company with each other might become politically effective, build the power to transform society on a mass scale. About the question of the left political party — what is it, is it outmoded, is there a version of it that could be necessary and possible in our time? — and other potential or actual spaces of less-broken sociality beyond the workplace and the home.
My relationship to writing has been shaped by working in theatre, which was a focus for me for many years, and in theatre there’s a lot of discussion of the value of bringing people together in a shared physical space. And of course there is value in that. But/and I guess I’ve increasingly felt a longing for ways of being together that are attentive to the values of the gathered group. Are we comrades, actual or potential? Do we share compatible visions of the future? A common political project? And I feel curious about the ways that words can mediate that kind of substantive togetherness across distances, how we can be in generative company with each other even if we’re not breathing the same air in a room (ideally through N95s, if we are sharing air, what with the ongoing disavowed pandemic). How might we find each other?
Animal
One evening, around dusk, I see two white men emerge from their multimillion-dollar house and stalk down a residential street holding big, jagged wooden planks, intent on clubbing to death a limping coyote that’s appeared (and has frequently appeared before) in the neighbourhood. I’m out for a walk (I don’t live in a multimillion-dollar house or even any kind of house, but live near people who do) and have been keeping company with it, keeping my distance, since I spotted it. “Are you going to call the city,” I call out, stupidly, before I’ve processed what’s happening with the men, the jagged wooden planks, the men’s open air of pleasure and purpose and It’s On. “The city won’t come,” one of them says, “got to take care of these things by yourself.” I stare. “You’re going to kill it?” I call, stupidly. “Hope so,” the man says. I stare. He looks me up and down, sees some kind of effeminate whatever, ill-equipped to defend brood and property, and spits: “Do you have kids??” It isn’t a question.
I keep staring at the men, holding my phone by my side. They walk a ways down a hill and then give up, turn back, let the coyote limp off. Maybe they’re abashed. Too many witnesses, including the kids whose thrilled calls rise from the park the coyote’s limped into. “Mom, a coyote!! It’s a coyote, it’s limping!” The man who hasn’t spoken gives me a jocular shrug when he passes me on his way back to the house. The other man seems bitter. There are at least a few distinct moments when I’m confronted by an image of them — disappointed in their first chase, enraged by my implied judgment — turning their jagged wooden clubs on me. Impossible, unthinkable, thinkable, easy. Because they’re right. I don’t identify with them. I don’t have kids. I don’t own property. All I can feel is the animal.
Daniel Sarah Karasik (they/them) is the author of six books, most recently the poetry collection Plenitude (Book*hug Press). Their work has been recognized with the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Emerging Artist Award, the CBC Short Story Prize, and the Canadian Jewish Playwriting Award. They’re a co-founder of the network Artists for Climate & Migrant Justice and Indigenous Sovereignty (ACMJIS), and the founding managing editor of Midnight Sun, a magazine of socialist strategy, analysis, and culture. They live in Toronto.
