Restless
Letter from Away — February 26, 2026
It’s the middle of the night or dark early morning, and I am wide awake. In these wee small hours with a deadline looming close, I stand at the keyboard awaiting inspiration to give some value to my wakeful state.
It has become too easy, when my mind is at loose ends, to check email and news and the ad-filled gossip column that calls itself a social network. Saying he was compelled by popular demand, the Lord of Chaos has decided to release government files on “extraterrestrial life.” As if an entire populace, restless at 2 a.m., could be lulled into complacency with any old data dump that might divert our attention from the ugly tale of power worshipers using children as toys.
As if, now that we are finally awake to the absurd cruelty of those who demolish the lives of the poor and powerless so that they can build and gain wealth from resorts and playgrounds, they can distract us with intimations about something we might call “life” on other planets. As if that would make up for the continued destruction of this world that we call home.
As the meek slip into homelessness, physical disability, financial ruin, and slavery, the masters of the moneyed class throw billions of dollars and acres of land into reckless technologies, not because the people ask for such things, but in pursuit of profit from what are essentially the beanie babies of the 21st century — speculative toys such as cryptocurrency, robot brains, and simulated realities that might replace our own autonomy. Our children are malnourished, body and mind, on a diet of empty calories and streams of fast-paced fantasy, and the tools that make these things waste the land and pollute the waters.
People say the world has gone crazy, but it is only humans having our way. Fed on the idea that we are different from all other life, that we are superior to the other creatures on earth, and possibly in heaven, we cover our eyes with Google glasses and fill our ears with the roar of accelerating machines. Faced with the lies of a profit-seeking infotainment cycle, many give up on knowledge entirely.
After an hour of looking into darkness, and no more ready to sleep than I was when I started this rant, I heat some oat milk with honey and return to bed.
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In the morning I wake to headlines that tell me armed Israelis, settlers in the occupied territory northeast of Jerusalem, after more than a month of violent harassment against West Bank villages, have killed a 19-year-old U.S. citizen, Nasrallah Abu Siyam, and injured several others.
Encouraged by Israeli soldiers who responded to a disturbance with teargas, sound grenades, and live ammunition, the settlers started shooting. When the injured Palestinian targets fell to the ground, the invaders clubbed them with sticks. Abu Siyam was the second Palestinian American person to be killed by Israeli settlers in the past year.
That same day, in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa valley, air strikes from Israel killed at least 10 people and wounded another 24, three of whom were children. Speaking to podcaster Tucker Carlson and applying a Old Testament lens to the Mideast conflict, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee offered the opinion that Israel was within its rights to claim an area of West Asia along the Eastern Mediterranean that comprises Cyprus and land bordering the Mediterranean Sea, as well as the modern states of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and southern Turkey, extending west into Greece, Egypt and Eastern Libya. Of course, the non-state of Palestine, a bone of contention since before David slew Goliath, is enclosed in all those borders.
When Carlson asked if Israel has the right to that territory, Huckabee told him, “It would be fine if they took it all.”
While comfortable academics and former diplomats traveled to the Midcoast to discuss this, “… volatile arena where regional powers, global interests, and local aspirations intersect in ever-evolving and often violent ways,” Israeli national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir decided to detain, without charges, five staff members of the investment charity, Jerusalem Waqf (Trust), that is charged with managing the al-Aqsa mosque site, also known as the Temple Mount. Another 38 staff members were banned from entering the area and six imams from the mosque were denied entrance.
For those whose calendars mark only some Abrahamic holy days, this act of religious and cultural oppression took place at the start of Ramadan, a month-long Muslim observation to honor the date when the first verses of the Quran were revealed to the Prophet Muhammad more than 1,400 years ago. As with the Christian practice of Lent, this is a time of abstinence. For centuries, the mosque and its surrounding area have hosted thousands of Muslims for prayer and daily fasting, encouraging participants to develop a deeper consciousness of God. In addition to limiting access for those to whom Al-Aqsa is sacred, Israeli police almost doubled visiting hours for Jews and other tourists and raided the compound during first night Ramadan prayers. The following morning, February 18, approximately 400 Israeli settlers arrived a the Temple Mount, occupying that space and disrupting Muslim worship in contradiction of a half-century of international agreement.
Here in Rockland three Saturdays ago, a few of the many folks who have been expressing concern about the actions of the Executive Branch decided to cross the intersection into what has, for much of the past year, been used as a space for those supporting the 47th presidential administration. In doing so, they may have unnecessarily stirred the waters of free speech and peaceable assembly. This week a private paving and plowing contractor from a nearby town aimed his vehicle’s blade and tonnage toward the edge of Chapman Park. That story is unfolding as I write this.
Space can be taken from others in a variety of ways; none of them advance the needs and goals of healthy societies. Trucks as weapons, prayer as land grab, data as false reality, trauma as entertainment. A few days ago, it was suggested to me that, while humanity appears mostly to know we’re headed in a dangerous direction, there is no way to turn our path away from a world of pain.
That should keep us all up at night.
Shlomit Auciello is a writer, photographer, and human ecologist who lives in Midcoast Maine. Letter from Away has appeared online and in print since 1992. Back issues of this column can be found at shlomitauciello.medium.com.
