nika on 65
nika dubrovsky on david graeber‘s 65th
via nika tweet [https://x.com/nikadubrovsky/status/2021950517291675878?s=20]:
Today would have been @davidgraeber ‘s 65th birthday. Wherever you are, may you be surrounded by freedom and сare. When people say about the dead “he’s always with us,” for me that turned out to be true. David died so sudden, and we had so sincerely planned to live until 85 (at least), then medicine would figure something out and we’d live another 30 years, and we’d see from there. It seemed like eternity together stretched ahead. And David was the best of all possible partners for eternity.
I’m a very stubborn and I don’t intend to abandon my plans, especially since they were our shared plans with @davidgraeber . So one could say I’ve spent the past six years exploring different possibilities for eternal life. Here’s what I’ve understood so far:
You can continue loving someone who has died. My therapist thinks this destroys me. But I think norms and rituals are given to us to be changed. Love is beautiful. Real love is rare, hard to find, and it’s completely natural to hold onto that.
so happy she’s ‘holding on’.. i often think of david’s beyond the monastic self and what a great portrayal of that nika has been.. in embodying and extending him forever.. much love
nika on david’s open library ness et al
The other thing: it looks like monuments are almost always gravestones. Immortality is different for everyone, but for David, a wanderer and explorer who lived through friendships, it had to be collective. When I think about collective immortality, it’s about carnival and library. Not a monument, not a grave, but a living, constantly growing environment, an architecture that can include new people and shatter time.
Carnival and library, as peaks of collectivity, are above all the opposite of war and authoritarian political structures. Parties and wars demand uniformity and discipline.
Carnivals and libraries have their own architecture, but one built around searching for discoveries, encounters, surprises, possibly unkind and dangerous ones, rather than a fixed march toward pre-approved happiness.
In the photo is David’s birthday five years ago, when I was living in Michael Hudson’s tiny studio during Covid, completely alone, barely leaving the house.
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be you. 