Nested

Yesterday I wrote about erasures, art and remembering. Today I am thinking about space, possessions and remembering.

As the only boy growing up in a family with three sisters, I always had my own room. It must have been pretty empty at first but it filled up over the years. In America, growing up means acquiring stuff.

As these things go, I didn’t acquire all that much stuff. We weren’t rich and my tastes tended more toward ideas and fantasies than toys, clothes or objects.

When I left home for college, it was for good. Within a few years, I’d graduated, married, worked in the Peace Corps in Afghanistan and moved across country from Ann Arbor to San Francisco.

As was the practical thing to do, my parents packed up some of my stuff and discarded the rest. And the things they chose to save — a few books, many yellowed newspaper clippings of my early articles, some of my collections (baseball and hockey cards, seashells, a scrapbook, some random relics) have followed me around wherever I’ve gone over the many decades since.

Throughout all those middle years (ages 20-70) I lived in a succession of houses with multiple rooms and we acquired plenty more stuff.

But then, four years ago my health faltered, and my possessions had to be weeded out. While I recuperated in a series of hospitals and health-care facilities, my remaining possessions were radically distilled down to the contents of about 20 boxes.

Now the residue of that material co-exists with me in one room, just like when I was a child. The bell curve of life has brought me right back to where I started from.

As I sort through those boxes now, the contents stir memories and rediscoveries, many of which I’ve written about here. This newsletter is my living memoir; it’s going to have to serve the purpose of a book. Because I’ve decided they’ll not be a book, at least not on my watch.

But I’ll continue to write and rewrite this series of essays, some new, some old, in this space as long as I am able.

HEADLINES:

• Israel-Hamas war rages as US deploys additional missile defenses to Middle East (CNN)

• Israel-Hamas war: Air strikes pound Gaza, Hamas says repelled ground attack (Al Jazeera)

• IDF apologizes for blast at Egyptian border post; U.S. senators visit Tel Aviv (WP)

• Biden and Aides Advise Israel to Avoid Widening War With Hezbollah Strike (NYT)

• Israel to step up airstrikes on Gaza ahead of expected ground incursion (CBS)

• Second aid convoy enters Gaza as Israel steps up bombardments (Al Jazeera)

• Trickle of aid to Gaza not enough, U.N. says, as IDF plans more airstrikes (WP)

• Blast, ambulances heard near Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza, witnesses say (Reuters)

• Gaza health ministry says death toll surpasses 5,000; EU foreign ministers talk Israel-Hamas in Luxembourg (CNBC)

• Over 100 incubator babies at risk due to Israel’s fuel cuts to Gaza: UN (Al Jazeera)

• Is Hamas winning the war? (WP)

• U.S. expects ‘likelihood of escalation’ in the Middle East, Blinken says (NBC)

• Middle East War Adds to Surge in International Arms Sales (NYT)

• Global divisions over Gaza fuel anti-western sentiment (TRT World)

• Some Israeli Journalists Express Fear About Conveying Dissenting Views (NYT)

• Detroit synagogue president Samantha Woll found murdered (BBC)

• Trump Shares Post Labeling Judge Who Fined Him A ‘Lunatic’ (Forbes)

• Kevin McCarthy is using a desperate tactic to excuse the GOP's speaker dysfunction (MSNBC)

• Lunar bugs to ocean moons: seven things science has revealed about aliens so far (BBC)

• Inside Apple’s Big Plan to Bring Generative AI to All Its Devices (Bloomberg)

• ‘AI Godfather’ Yoshua Bengio: We need a humanity defense organization (BAS)

• ScaleAI wants to be America’s AI arms dealer (WP)

• How Does AI ‘Think’? We Are Only Starting to Understand That (WSJ)

• This week in AI: Can we trust DeepMind to be ethical? (TC)

• Buying Everything Hairstylist Recommends Would Cost $8,000 (The Onion)