Around a passover table, gentle with the sorrows of generations, tipsy and filled with questions.

Jax: Oh, my friends, the war in Ukraine has me tormented. We radicals, we heirs of the debacle of the Second International a hundred years ago and more, what are we to do?

a subtle sob

j(A)de: Wow.

Mary: Oh, he might be wordy, but he's right that it's hard. Did you see the recent callout from the Resistance Committee for money for medical equipment?

Velvet: Yeah, and I sent what I could. It could be you over there. It could be me. (Well, probably not me, I'd run away and get stuck at the border, most like, and then try to help others... but my lovers, it could be so many of them! Of course I tried to help.)

Jax: But isn't that exactly the problem? We have identity overlap with one of the "sides", and then out the window goes all our fancy ideo-critique of "states" and "nationalism" ...

j(A)de: ... not to mention the damn Azov Nazis subsidized by the state and kicking our trans* and Roma friends' asses. Beyond the blithering, Jax, I feel you on this.

Velvet: (pondering) Yes, and why do we feel such identity with Ukraine, rather than (say) Myanmar, or Sudan, or Rojava?

Jax: Well, honestly, a lot of people were galvanized by Rojava...

j(A)de: (bitterly) Or fucking Ethiopia! Who's paying attention to the Tigray war? Fucking white supremacy...

Pause

Mary: Well, yes. But surely we can agree that Russian aggression must be stopped, here. As bad as the Ukrainian Nazis may be, as much as we resist states on principle, surely self-defense calls for us to support them!

Jax: (in hushed tones) With Javelins and Switchblades hurling invisible death? Boiling alive tincan upon tincan filled with cold and hungry, terrified Donbas conscripts? Isn't NATO's "military aid" the uttermost grotesquerie of alienated war-cults, where the fashion for video killshots replaces any real valor or risk, making of true gore and grue a mere spectacle?

j(A)de: (shaking head) He always talks like this? He always talks like this.

Velvet: It's horrible to think of those young Russians caught up in this, yes. Of course. But at the same time, so many Ukrainians, regular folks as well as soldiers that at least have some idea what they're in for, so many are being torn to shreds by bombs and bullets... It's horrible. It's to be expected that we'd react by wanted to fight back. Surely there's a clear enemy here, and it's Putin's military?

j(A)de: Of course. None of us are tankies. But opposing Putin doesn't mean supporting Ukraine. Fuck all those yellow and blue flags everywhere!

Mary: (pondering) I'm contemplating this line: that as much as we oppose Russian victory, we also can find seeds of liberation in Ukraine's defeat. What can that even mean?

Coyotes howl and titter in the distance, one by one then all together.

Velvet: It seems it's all about the details, isn't it? Maybe what matters most is keeping this grandma alive to see her grandkids' graduation, or that forest from being flattened and poisoned -- and exactly how to do so is less about what we think we're doing, than our intuition?

Jax: You mean, sometimes it means getting involved and getting our hands dirty?

Mary: And maybe asking a lot of questions. And not knowing the answers.

j(A)de: Hunh! And maybe those in the best position to tend those seeds of liberation, in this defeat for Ukraine (and for Russia), will be those with clear hearts and minds who have been in the trenches already? Making relationships, tracing dynamics, gaining traction?

Velvet: Next year in freedom!

Four glasses raised.