12.7.11
11.7.11
may 21st
a homeless proselyte;
his yellow teeth ringed like an old
oak betraying its age,
confessing long winters
of hunger and paper-thin coats.
he proclaims holiness,
the kind that reproduces,
dandelions in the garden,
covering the continent in their cotton
helicopters.
the couple at the table
look at the ground and reply
that holiness lives between our shoulders.
no, he says, it falls
down from the sky.
the world ends last month,
haven't you heard?
his yellow teeth ringed like an old
oak betraying its age,
confessing long winters
of hunger and paper-thin coats.
he proclaims holiness,
the kind that reproduces,
dandelions in the garden,
covering the continent in their cotton
helicopters.
the couple at the table
look at the ground and reply
that holiness lives between our shoulders.
no, he says, it falls
down from the sky.
the world ends last month,
haven't you heard?
mind the gap
the winter eats my spirit. in january and february i am no more than a walnut shell missing its tumor of a brain, than lake michigan when the ice coats the edges, crispy and slick so no one can hear the slopping, rippling center, like old alarm clocks that refuse to surrender their tickings, but ring at all the wrong hours, like fish stuck staring sideways and snapping their necks just trying to look ahead. i am stamps too dry to be licked.
i am a barnacle shivering against the hull of an alaskan crabbing boat, bleary eyed and iron. i am soccer's slow dive that no one stands up after. there is no after. the little girl who stays inside for fear of geese and lumps. the poppy that drops its petals the moment it is plucked. the writing on the ear canal wall, the cabinet with the lost key. a growing stalagmite, trapped in a saran-wrap uterus.
but only until april.
things are growing. we all donated a piece, then came the zygote. cells are tearing themselves to shreds, and their death is making this new thing. they invade relentlessly,
fetus.
fetus of spring, i look through your translucent skin to a lavender mind. it ticks with the seconds. you dream of the opera, when mimi dies and it is may's birthday. the day when westerns are written and sisters visit and the ducks come home.
i am a barnacle shivering against the hull of an alaskan crabbing boat, bleary eyed and iron. i am soccer's slow dive that no one stands up after. there is no after. the little girl who stays inside for fear of geese and lumps. the poppy that drops its petals the moment it is plucked. the writing on the ear canal wall, the cabinet with the lost key. a growing stalagmite, trapped in a saran-wrap uterus.
but only until april.
things are growing. we all donated a piece, then came the zygote. cells are tearing themselves to shreds, and their death is making this new thing. they invade relentlessly,
fetus.
fetus of spring, i look through your translucent skin to a lavender mind. it ticks with the seconds. you dream of the opera, when mimi dies and it is may's birthday. the day when westerns are written and sisters visit and the ducks come home.
jimmy
i will be a prophet.
a PROPHET.
visions.
trances.
cherubim.
like
those men in italy who
steer boats with sticks,
and the tourists who
float. glass beads.
sometimes, i look at my wife and say, 'darling, speak to me of love!' she stammers, as though she were surprised.
a prophet.
like bakers who breathe and and spices with their eyes closed, like the deaf who feel cellos in their chests and sway, like knife throwers. i dreamed last night, sitting in the german pews, that my skull was full of tiny machines. they look like the type that spear needles through fabric, but they were x-ray machines. they pricked the backs of my eyes and i stared straight ahead, holding very still. they were fragile, like a fox embryo's spine pressed up inside my eyebrows. images whirred, film clicks; they can see through my bones to the scrapings and velvet breeze left behind. they can see through my bones, they can see themselves:
a tiny, curled, fern-of-a-fox.
a miniature seashell fossil fox.
a paper-curl fox.
a skeleton fox, its bones painted gold.
a skeleton in a skull drained dry,
the x-rays reading bones beneath bones.
a PROPHET.
visions.
trances.
cherubim.
like
those men in italy who
steer boats with sticks,
and the tourists who
float. glass beads.
sometimes, i look at my wife and say, 'darling, speak to me of love!' she stammers, as though she were surprised.
a prophet.
like bakers who breathe and and spices with their eyes closed, like the deaf who feel cellos in their chests and sway, like knife throwers. i dreamed last night, sitting in the german pews, that my skull was full of tiny machines. they look like the type that spear needles through fabric, but they were x-ray machines. they pricked the backs of my eyes and i stared straight ahead, holding very still. they were fragile, like a fox embryo's spine pressed up inside my eyebrows. images whirred, film clicks; they can see through my bones to the scrapings and velvet breeze left behind. they can see through my bones, they can see themselves:
a tiny, curled, fern-of-a-fox.
a miniature seashell fossil fox.
a paper-curl fox.
a skeleton fox, its bones painted gold.
a skeleton in a skull drained dry,
the x-rays reading bones beneath bones.
the titanic
loose lips sink ships,
so do holes,
and bombs.
and poorly contrived rhymes.
and occasionally, icebergs.
how did the iceberg feel? the people screaming and burning and drowning, but a steely stern rammed that iceberg in the night, boat-rape.
a sleeping iceberg, crushed. soft pink people, like baby mice or a yawning clam or pomegranate seeds, plummeting into the sea, reeled into rubber boats, survivors casting and pulling them up out of the water like glistening, chocking fish an a line, like my father's preaching shoes, lifted out of the pile by the laces, by the gypsies.
hanging on a string, a hook, a preserver, stolen from death. stolen from heaven, stolen from hell.
the gypsies stole me from my cradle. they stole my father's shoes, the bits of the boat, my friend's grandmother's taxi cab, and me.
from whom did they steal us? the devil? the sea? macedonia?
loose lips sink ships.
rolling stones gather no moss.
naked, twirling stones.
i threw a stone at a little boy once, just to scare him, but it bounced up from the ground and hit his knee. his mom shrieked at me and all the other kids noticed my knees, knobbly, purple, covered in bumps. why are your knees like that, they asked. i gathered no moss. we moved to the aftermath of a genocide.
so do holes,
and bombs.
and poorly contrived rhymes.
and occasionally, icebergs.
how did the iceberg feel? the people screaming and burning and drowning, but a steely stern rammed that iceberg in the night, boat-rape.
a sleeping iceberg, crushed. soft pink people, like baby mice or a yawning clam or pomegranate seeds, plummeting into the sea, reeled into rubber boats, survivors casting and pulling them up out of the water like glistening, chocking fish an a line, like my father's preaching shoes, lifted out of the pile by the laces, by the gypsies.
hanging on a string, a hook, a preserver, stolen from death. stolen from heaven, stolen from hell.
the gypsies stole me from my cradle. they stole my father's shoes, the bits of the boat, my friend's grandmother's taxi cab, and me.
from whom did they steal us? the devil? the sea? macedonia?
loose lips sink ships.
rolling stones gather no moss.
naked, twirling stones.
i threw a stone at a little boy once, just to scare him, but it bounced up from the ground and hit his knee. his mom shrieked at me and all the other kids noticed my knees, knobbly, purple, covered in bumps. why are your knees like that, they asked. i gathered no moss. we moved to the aftermath of a genocide.
last winter
for the first thirty years,
jesus was a carpenter and a brother.
i am in pursuit of pies.
pies are my prize.
pies, the hand of one who slowly dies,
and being the invisible one who dries
your dripping dishes.
i put down my shovel;
i am an assassin;
i kill and eat lists.
my teeth are tiny x's.
allotted a year of alone, i chew and swallow.
jesus was a carpenter and a brother.
i am in pursuit of pies.
pies are my prize.
pies, the hand of one who slowly dies,
and being the invisible one who dries
your dripping dishes.
i put down my shovel;
i am an assassin;
i kill and eat lists.
my teeth are tiny x's.
allotted a year of alone, i chew and swallow.
2010
the fireworks boom beyond my shutters.
i'm in the list business;
i'm an assassin,
skewering boxes with x's
and checks, the words to
their right drifting away,
disembodied.
we are all dying, starting with the moment of our birth. i could hold anyone's hand and earn another x.
my demons are a donkey's bray, shelves of books i've read and reread, and beelzebub.
someone tore out the walls of the creek with a crane and locked the doors of the village church. but the art factory's assembly lines continue to roll, cranking out crates of fired clay and peacocks dressed in buttons and glass.
if i wore a mirror around my neck, would you see that you dwell in my heart?
goodbye, 2010, you labyrinth. long live the compass that truly points north.
[i have rubbed shoulders with a thousand naked germans]
who suckled loneliness? who pitied the poor naked wailing thing and built it a cradle, knowing or not knowing its birth-name? my breasts keep the creature alive, my breasts, the atlantic, and income tax.
the true question is, who birthed it? god, far away? the serpent in the backyard? the woman in my chest? the first dutch mayor of new york and whoever else built these streets so long.
it's the little boys who are the worst, their chests like wooden spoons or raven wings, all knobbly and brittle, hiding their eyes while you promise to come back for summer and pretend to hunt for your suddenly elusive passport.
when the new year first cried, we were with the sugar plum fairy. she was new with a plumed tail and no candy. i am still my demons' wetnurse.
this plane is landing, again and again.
i'm in the list business;
i'm an assassin,
skewering boxes with x's
and checks, the words to
their right drifting away,
disembodied.
we are all dying, starting with the moment of our birth. i could hold anyone's hand and earn another x.
my demons are a donkey's bray, shelves of books i've read and reread, and beelzebub.
someone tore out the walls of the creek with a crane and locked the doors of the village church. but the art factory's assembly lines continue to roll, cranking out crates of fired clay and peacocks dressed in buttons and glass.
if i wore a mirror around my neck, would you see that you dwell in my heart?
goodbye, 2010, you labyrinth. long live the compass that truly points north.
[i have rubbed shoulders with a thousand naked germans]
who suckled loneliness? who pitied the poor naked wailing thing and built it a cradle, knowing or not knowing its birth-name? my breasts keep the creature alive, my breasts, the atlantic, and income tax.
the true question is, who birthed it? god, far away? the serpent in the backyard? the woman in my chest? the first dutch mayor of new york and whoever else built these streets so long.
it's the little boys who are the worst, their chests like wooden spoons or raven wings, all knobbly and brittle, hiding their eyes while you promise to come back for summer and pretend to hunt for your suddenly elusive passport.
when the new year first cried, we were with the sugar plum fairy. she was new with a plumed tail and no candy. i am still my demons' wetnurse.
this plane is landing, again and again.
bible camp
no tripe.
they've wheeling the ark over here now, indigo waves stenciled along the side.
the getaway car.
we're gonna blow this joint, baby.
i'd rather be called sweetheart than any other name, or let you invent a new one every day.
it takes moxie to stalk, lure, and trap a double, but if you have to hunt them down, they've probably not your doppel anyhow.
if everyone else drowns, i want someone else with me in this boat.
they've wheeling the ark over here now, indigo waves stenciled along the side.
the getaway car.
we're gonna blow this joint, baby.
i'd rather be called sweetheart than any other name, or let you invent a new one every day.
it takes moxie to stalk, lure, and trap a double, but if you have to hunt them down, they've probably not your doppel anyhow.
if everyone else drowns, i want someone else with me in this boat.
my childhood
it doesn't matter that my bed was beneath windows frosted inside with ice, or that i slept on the floor for a year, or that we heated our house with a woodstove, or that i woke up every morning to the call to prayer, or that my bunk bed was labelled with my name on an index card or that i spent years in a guest room. the point is that i slept, whether or not i had a bed, whether or not my bed was in the same town as my family, and regardless of which country i lay down in. the moral of the story is that i slept. i slept, ate, read, bathed occasionally. i was a child.
it's so much simpler than we ever imagined.
it's so much simpler than we ever imagined.
honeycomb
i want to be your bee keeper,
a hive of secrets,
smooth unspoken honey-slicks.
i am one of snow white's dwarves,
whistling with my pick ax,
mining up quarrels.
scattered between rubies and jade,
i'm chopping out lumps of sass,
refining bickerments.
i have one of those overt names.
the white cloud-plateaus ahead look so much like icebergs ripping out of this skate-stark cotton lake, i am half afraid to crash through them and feel nothing but wet. they look like whales, bellowing and rearing, frozen and soft-frosted.
i want brilliance,
i aspire to be brilliant.
i catch little glimpses of it scurrying across other brows, skipping across them like tightrope walkers frightened of falling.
i don't want to imagine tangles to solve, i want to find tangles already unsnarling themselves and record what i see. i'm no bloodhound, just an immobile eye.
the whales are one crocodile, a kindred spirit, newborn. newborn. when was the last time anything was born in this town? we've all been elderly, growing, growing, grone.
you there!
i'm warning you, i've got my pick ax and six ugly midgets!
i demand to be right.
all hail the brain queen,
inerrant erin.
small wonder with squabble the nights away.
i'd cut out my tongue to love more purely. i don't want to drag my treasures all over the city on a bus. my nails are purple with cold, and this the fourth day of summer. i'll never be called snow white again. adios, hassle-men. i'm going to live with king arthur in the valleys that didn't go with the wind. why does he always have so many dance partners anyhow? it's not as if he keeps time.
a hive of secrets,
smooth unspoken honey-slicks.
i am one of snow white's dwarves,
whistling with my pick ax,
mining up quarrels.
scattered between rubies and jade,
i'm chopping out lumps of sass,
refining bickerments.
i have one of those overt names.
the white cloud-plateaus ahead look so much like icebergs ripping out of this skate-stark cotton lake, i am half afraid to crash through them and feel nothing but wet. they look like whales, bellowing and rearing, frozen and soft-frosted.
i want brilliance,
i aspire to be brilliant.
i catch little glimpses of it scurrying across other brows, skipping across them like tightrope walkers frightened of falling.
i don't want to imagine tangles to solve, i want to find tangles already unsnarling themselves and record what i see. i'm no bloodhound, just an immobile eye.
the whales are one crocodile, a kindred spirit, newborn. newborn. when was the last time anything was born in this town? we've all been elderly, growing, growing, grone.
you there!
i'm warning you, i've got my pick ax and six ugly midgets!
i demand to be right.
all hail the brain queen,
inerrant erin.
small wonder with squabble the nights away.
i'd cut out my tongue to love more purely. i don't want to drag my treasures all over the city on a bus. my nails are purple with cold, and this the fourth day of summer. i'll never be called snow white again. adios, hassle-men. i'm going to live with king arthur in the valleys that didn't go with the wind. why does he always have so many dance partners anyhow? it's not as if he keeps time.
hustle-bustle
bustling. i want it bustling, but never shoving.
don't touch my back. don't you dare.
i will never conceal, but never proffer.
it's a public mine, mine, my public mine,
germs and gravel mingletwined,
fenced and gloved in patience.
i'll plant my own eden in a tobacco tin and carry it around.
where do you keep your eden? adam's slunk up behind the clouds on eve's leash.
don't touch my back. don't you dare.
i will never conceal, but never proffer.
it's a public mine, mine, my public mine,
germs and gravel mingletwined,
fenced and gloved in patience.
i'll plant my own eden in a tobacco tin and carry it around.
where do you keep your eden? adam's slunk up behind the clouds on eve's leash.
a layover, then georgia glory
the smacking of your lips and slurping of your sandwich are sending spasms through my neck. i can feel your horrid laughter vibrating through the pages of my magazine. you stink like burnt toast.
i hate everybody.
especially fat bodies.
and adolescents.
although i don't particularly mind fat adolescents.
........................................................
the plane lands on its heels, hesitant. it glides along with its toes in the air before flopping forward with an ungainly thump. passengers pour out of its orifices and rush to the restrooms, closeted as close as the plane seats, but with dwarf walls between each throne. lady farts are humming in every corner, like the brief throb of blowing across a glass bottle.
in the south, there are thousands of closets. the only things not hidden away are antiques or edibles.
i hate everybody.
especially fat bodies.
and adolescents.
although i don't particularly mind fat adolescents.
........................................................
the plane lands on its heels, hesitant. it glides along with its toes in the air before flopping forward with an ungainly thump. passengers pour out of its orifices and rush to the restrooms, closeted as close as the plane seats, but with dwarf walls between each throne. lady farts are humming in every corner, like the brief throb of blowing across a glass bottle.
in the south, there are thousands of closets. the only things not hidden away are antiques or edibles.
tolkien's forest
it's useless to dredge up the past this way; who, after drinking a mug of tea, would chew the bitter dregs? let us merely remember.
it's the iron curtain all over again, unseen and unheard behind miles of razor-wire, but for the sky's unblinking eye. it's miles of saplings behind the miles of wire, too flighty to take root and too frightened to stand still lest they grow into the ground. they're dancing trees, some waltz in pairs, some boogying with ivy ensnared, some flicking and tripping. they're leaf-heavy and toppling, preening, prancing, tumbling.
the wire is to keep the wise old gardener out, with his startling laugh and fierce hands, but little do they know- the sky is his spy.
with each amber heartbeat, he draws nearer, spade and shears in hand. there is more joy in peaches, call the tallest trees over the wretched curtain, than in crawling across hills and valleys.
choose a peak and blossom.
it's the iron curtain all over again, unseen and unheard behind miles of razor-wire, but for the sky's unblinking eye. it's miles of saplings behind the miles of wire, too flighty to take root and too frightened to stand still lest they grow into the ground. they're dancing trees, some waltz in pairs, some boogying with ivy ensnared, some flicking and tripping. they're leaf-heavy and toppling, preening, prancing, tumbling.
the wire is to keep the wise old gardener out, with his startling laugh and fierce hands, but little do they know- the sky is his spy.
with each amber heartbeat, he draws nearer, spade and shears in hand. there is more joy in peaches, call the tallest trees over the wretched curtain, than in crawling across hills and valleys.
choose a peak and blossom.
the mafia
the mafia lives in a bakery. the bakery is near the zoo. flash a card, step right through the door, but if not, kiss your buttered cakes goodbye. we'll take your money, your drugs, your wife, your rugs, beat them out, coat you in dust, and we'll eat your pastries up.
no ivy; buildings, fountains, angry trees as straight as they are slim. dead hearts, all bound up in ivy like slabs of pork bent into a tight clover by greasy twine, dangling on the handlebars of a chinese boy's bicycle.
i dream of dragons and those times when the compass no longer points north. i want to live in deadly earnest, by the skin of my teeth. break a hole in my hull; send me a monster in a crates; post an engine running wild off its tracks; i need to kill something big.
skewer it and spit its heart. i am a conqueror. give me an army and i'll storm anything you like so long as i can't hear its heart beating.
i grow more and more flippant each day, shouting goodbyes out train windows and feigning hunger as an excuse to cook. i'm digging up reasons, taking my trowel to the garden and unearthing the lies i planted not so long ago. i'll say anything if you'll let me fritter. i'll give you all my teeth if you'll leave me here; i'd trade my soul for something trivial.
i've made a crown of upended telescopes, everything must be three sizes smaller or i will burst. i'm that asthmatic balloon that's been loving too hard and crying too long. so i'm saying, that's not a dam near bursting, just a teacup filled too high.
i'm just so damn angry, anne, that the fat times are fading.
no ivy; buildings, fountains, angry trees as straight as they are slim. dead hearts, all bound up in ivy like slabs of pork bent into a tight clover by greasy twine, dangling on the handlebars of a chinese boy's bicycle.
i dream of dragons and those times when the compass no longer points north. i want to live in deadly earnest, by the skin of my teeth. break a hole in my hull; send me a monster in a crates; post an engine running wild off its tracks; i need to kill something big.
skewer it and spit its heart. i am a conqueror. give me an army and i'll storm anything you like so long as i can't hear its heart beating.
i grow more and more flippant each day, shouting goodbyes out train windows and feigning hunger as an excuse to cook. i'm digging up reasons, taking my trowel to the garden and unearthing the lies i planted not so long ago. i'll say anything if you'll let me fritter. i'll give you all my teeth if you'll leave me here; i'd trade my soul for something trivial.
i've made a crown of upended telescopes, everything must be three sizes smaller or i will burst. i'm that asthmatic balloon that's been loving too hard and crying too long. so i'm saying, that's not a dam near bursting, just a teacup filled too high.
i'm just so damn angry, anne, that the fat times are fading.
long distance
it's cruel to let yourself be kidnapped and leave us always wondering
where the body went.
where the body fell,
mouldered,
withered.
you terrify me, walking around town with your skin grey and shriveled,
your eyes long since stolen
by some raven spoon.
when the wind blows, garden dirt
builds up along my windowsill. i'm
snowed in by carrot beds.
it's all the same; you're dead to me.
(just way the word and i'll tear down your tombstone)
if you're my sister,
why can't we take the same maiden name?
i'm wearing a revolving door, four arms to my starfish's five,
but that's the price of growing up-
cold, sheer glass and this endless spinning.
spinning and spinning,
but never will you fall.
i'm eating wind and shoes.
where the body went.
where the body fell,
mouldered,
withered.
you terrify me, walking around town with your skin grey and shriveled,
your eyes long since stolen
by some raven spoon.
when the wind blows, garden dirt
builds up along my windowsill. i'm
snowed in by carrot beds.
it's all the same; you're dead to me.
(just way the word and i'll tear down your tombstone)
if you're my sister,
why can't we take the same maiden name?
i'm wearing a revolving door, four arms to my starfish's five,
but that's the price of growing up-
cold, sheer glass and this endless spinning.
spinning and spinning,
but never will you fall.
i'm eating wind and shoes.
im mai
i want to be with sinners, not the petty, complacent kind, but the kind that live desperately. people who have terrible secrets and will fight you tooth and nail if you try to dig them up. i want the people who will knock you down if you're doing something crazy. i want someone to punch me. i want to know the people who have a reason to feel guilty. the people who are crushed, and when they are heartbroken, hate as fully as they loved. i want people who rage and aren't afraid to show a little skin. i want a table that is crowded and i don't want people to be offended by little peeves. i want everything to be bigger than it is. i'd rather have war than peace if peace is myopic, narcoleptic, and plastic-wrapped. strike that, narcolepsy is shocking. substitute drowsy. i want to run away, and whether it's to a civil war, a farm, or back to my mother, i don't care. i just want to run. i want subways crashing and people brandishing knives. i want justice to be so exacting as to be cruel, and i want to break my own rules in the name of mercy. i want it all to be harsh so i can teach it to be gentle. i want things to needing taming. i have too little faith to ever imagine i could upset some beast already slumbering.
steinbeck wrote about one little boy who lay on his stomach for hours watching an anthill and another who ruined it to see the ants scatter, frantic. i can never seem to reconcile them in me. one is always punching, flailing, and the other won't even fight back. they'll die of old age and i'll live on, an epileptic marionette until i end up stroking, paralyzed on one side and convulsing on the other. how can i split so precisely, a pared apple? pared in pairs, possessed by a pair, one arm is swinging like a helicopter. my favourite thing is kitchens and living rooms joined by one long wooden table.
i'd rather live in honest turmoil than naive happiness. i'd rather live with people who ask questions than people who are content. i need people who eat books and devour theories, not people who live on bread and milk. they have to be wild, with every ounce of their being, and live for things that already are, not things they've made to be things. i need the people who are burning.
i live in flames.
where are the people who live in the world and can exact formulas and dances from it? not the people who impose false numbers and spins, who candy-coat it in manufactured colours. i would only dye things if i found the yellow in a blossom, never engineer a neon. that's nothing but the backs of our eyelids and they have no other place.
we have to build the future with the stones we have rather than imagining it with gold we have not. i want to hear you scream and believe the sound of your own voice.
i am so damn tired of religious people and i don't even know any yet. i'm afraid to read my bible for fear it will make me want to act like a christian.
steinbeck wrote about one little boy who lay on his stomach for hours watching an anthill and another who ruined it to see the ants scatter, frantic. i can never seem to reconcile them in me. one is always punching, flailing, and the other won't even fight back. they'll die of old age and i'll live on, an epileptic marionette until i end up stroking, paralyzed on one side and convulsing on the other. how can i split so precisely, a pared apple? pared in pairs, possessed by a pair, one arm is swinging like a helicopter. my favourite thing is kitchens and living rooms joined by one long wooden table.
i'd rather live in honest turmoil than naive happiness. i'd rather live with people who ask questions than people who are content. i need people who eat books and devour theories, not people who live on bread and milk. they have to be wild, with every ounce of their being, and live for things that already are, not things they've made to be things. i need the people who are burning.
i live in flames.
where are the people who live in the world and can exact formulas and dances from it? not the people who impose false numbers and spins, who candy-coat it in manufactured colours. i would only dye things if i found the yellow in a blossom, never engineer a neon. that's nothing but the backs of our eyelids and they have no other place.
we have to build the future with the stones we have rather than imagining it with gold we have not. i want to hear you scream and believe the sound of your own voice.
i am so damn tired of religious people and i don't even know any yet. i'm afraid to read my bible for fear it will make me want to act like a christian.
he is two people, and i love the one who smiles in english
even when i rage in the morning and rail in my mind, i have favourites. they are
birch and beech and aspen. they are flushed cheeks and jam. cobblestones and steeples, patchwork farmland. sausage, onions, two-man bands. duets and wooden flutes, stairwells that echo. chagall and the balkans, corduroys, and cardigans. leather sandals and light yellow, maroon and dark grey. white tea, lemonade, poppies, black-eyed susans. foxes and whales and sparrows, hills and green oceans. scarves and sundresses, steinbeck and safran foer, cummings, sexton, the appalachians and their scottish immigrants, kayaks, cherries, music that twangs and music that glides, postcards from street vendors and delivery-men on bicycles, bangs that lie flat and bangs that protrude, the magical way that the british pronounce jaguar, very thin pens, empty notebooks, grocery lists or sketches found on the ground, falconers, men who snore in the subway, bathing suits, cemeteries, grey cats and cats with orange stripes and cats with tuxedos, rag rugs, batman, hoops, rose gold, pearls, strong winds that moan, lace, atlantis, amelia earhart, diners that are always open, descriptions of people's ancestors, lisps, different coloured eyes, trains, beads, mixing bowls, quilts, little kids who peek under bathroom stalls, the cameras that are inside bodies during surgery, the middle crease of anything, sealing wax, letters with umlauts, fountains, bridges, naked germans, peaches, barrettes, floral patterns, ribbons, freckles, milkshakes, lime juice, disposable cameras, cowboys, the grand tetons, lingerie, empty brown bottles, throwing pennies on the ground, grammar, long foreign words, naming streets, maine, crusty bread, dusty streets that smell warm, stoops, shops that open their windows in the summer, midnight christmas eve services, candles, valentines, stories about angels, prophecies, used book stores, my grandma's porch, swings, tall tales and the people who tell them, the president's daughters, the state of the union, sagebrush duns, boulders, ivy, soccer cleats, gymnastic rings, lipstick, braids, brown eyes, men that babysit, tutors, interns, the polar bear plunge, titles tom hanks' whooping laugh, mild fevers, places with no sirens, melon vines, gardens, wells, the smell of cigarettes, the word timshel, all kinds of chairs, research, art therapy, dream interpretations, hula hoops, lollipops, marzipan, rolling pins, aprons that flatter, long hair, paper cranes, rearranging furniture, anastasia, men with mustaches, black squirrels, beating rugs, little boys who don't cry when they fall down, benches, mustard, wooden floors, porch swings, lemon curd, jocks who are friends with artists who are friends with scientists who are friends with teachers, northern lights, bears, zoos, roller coasters, mountains that meet plains, spray paint, babies that nap, carpenters, masks, afghans, umbrellas, ellis island and people who stay in their own countries, ginger beer, heartbeats, collarbones, soaps that smell like cinnamon, baby oil, airplanes, giraffes, farmers, public school teachers, musicals, pioneers, inventions, patents, frozen lakes, the sound of cars in the rain, children who eat all their dinner, breezes, creeks, calloused feet, strapless rompers that don't fall down, friendly strays, fountain pens, houses where shoes are left at the door, putting things in boxes, packing, some extended families, cities that sleep and cities that don't, villagers, farriers, raccoon tails, kisses, karaoke, dressing up, free samples, interviews, bumps on writing fingers, impermanence, roots, and museums.
i'd pay to be anywhere but home. mund. mund-kauen. tomaten-mund.
er isst wie ein kamel. er fuettert.
tomaten mund.
i'm paying to watch tomatoes die.
anything but the comforts of my own phone. cellophane is crackling round my brain.
he has a benign face, broad and creased. the one across the table has two duffel bags. he's sprawling out longer and longer like a lawn or a lectures. soon his leg will be high in my lap.
i know it's less about paths and more about how you walk, but i'm so young.
birch and beech and aspen. they are flushed cheeks and jam. cobblestones and steeples, patchwork farmland. sausage, onions, two-man bands. duets and wooden flutes, stairwells that echo. chagall and the balkans, corduroys, and cardigans. leather sandals and light yellow, maroon and dark grey. white tea, lemonade, poppies, black-eyed susans. foxes and whales and sparrows, hills and green oceans. scarves and sundresses, steinbeck and safran foer, cummings, sexton, the appalachians and their scottish immigrants, kayaks, cherries, music that twangs and music that glides, postcards from street vendors and delivery-men on bicycles, bangs that lie flat and bangs that protrude, the magical way that the british pronounce jaguar, very thin pens, empty notebooks, grocery lists or sketches found on the ground, falconers, men who snore in the subway, bathing suits, cemeteries, grey cats and cats with orange stripes and cats with tuxedos, rag rugs, batman, hoops, rose gold, pearls, strong winds that moan, lace, atlantis, amelia earhart, diners that are always open, descriptions of people's ancestors, lisps, different coloured eyes, trains, beads, mixing bowls, quilts, little kids who peek under bathroom stalls, the cameras that are inside bodies during surgery, the middle crease of anything, sealing wax, letters with umlauts, fountains, bridges, naked germans, peaches, barrettes, floral patterns, ribbons, freckles, milkshakes, lime juice, disposable cameras, cowboys, the grand tetons, lingerie, empty brown bottles, throwing pennies on the ground, grammar, long foreign words, naming streets, maine, crusty bread, dusty streets that smell warm, stoops, shops that open their windows in the summer, midnight christmas eve services, candles, valentines, stories about angels, prophecies, used book stores, my grandma's porch, swings, tall tales and the people who tell them, the president's daughters, the state of the union, sagebrush duns, boulders, ivy, soccer cleats, gymnastic rings, lipstick, braids, brown eyes, men that babysit, tutors, interns, the polar bear plunge, titles tom hanks' whooping laugh, mild fevers, places with no sirens, melon vines, gardens, wells, the smell of cigarettes, the word timshel, all kinds of chairs, research, art therapy, dream interpretations, hula hoops, lollipops, marzipan, rolling pins, aprons that flatter, long hair, paper cranes, rearranging furniture, anastasia, men with mustaches, black squirrels, beating rugs, little boys who don't cry when they fall down, benches, mustard, wooden floors, porch swings, lemon curd, jocks who are friends with artists who are friends with scientists who are friends with teachers, northern lights, bears, zoos, roller coasters, mountains that meet plains, spray paint, babies that nap, carpenters, masks, afghans, umbrellas, ellis island and people who stay in their own countries, ginger beer, heartbeats, collarbones, soaps that smell like cinnamon, baby oil, airplanes, giraffes, farmers, public school teachers, musicals, pioneers, inventions, patents, frozen lakes, the sound of cars in the rain, children who eat all their dinner, breezes, creeks, calloused feet, strapless rompers that don't fall down, friendly strays, fountain pens, houses where shoes are left at the door, putting things in boxes, packing, some extended families, cities that sleep and cities that don't, villagers, farriers, raccoon tails, kisses, karaoke, dressing up, free samples, interviews, bumps on writing fingers, impermanence, roots, and museums.
i'd pay to be anywhere but home. mund. mund-kauen. tomaten-mund.
er isst wie ein kamel. er fuettert.
tomaten mund.
i'm paying to watch tomatoes die.
anything but the comforts of my own phone. cellophane is crackling round my brain.
he has a benign face, broad and creased. the one across the table has two duffel bags. he's sprawling out longer and longer like a lawn or a lectures. soon his leg will be high in my lap.
i know it's less about paths and more about how you walk, but i'm so young.
anatomy
how did we come to live in an age where we can open people up, slide back the two curtains of their chest, and sew them back up, like embroidery, stitch their hearts back together, like a torn pair of blue jeans?
... also, ICE CREAM TRUCKS?
... also, ICE CREAM TRUCKS?
letztes maerz
some men become their fathers. other become their bullies. some even become trees. but very few become themselves. when you are in a room with a hallways outside and the door open, the people walking by have only one face. they glance in as the pass by, grinning, scowling, lost in thought. my memories, my childhood memories of my father, are out in the hallways. their eyebrows are pulled down tight. they crackle with lightning. i waited years for him to walk through my door, for that man who is not only himself, but also me.
everything is wide open, a window through which to leap.
these earmuffs- they hide me from new york's mutters and from the boys watching my reflection in the subway window. today i met a man with no nose and only after he walked away did i see what wasn't there. he knocked on the bathroom door, apologizing when i turned the sign from occupied to vacant. he asked if he was allowed in and i beckoned him through. deep in my cocoa cappucino (say it out loud), wondering if his mind was all there, it struck me that his nose was gone as well and that they may have deserted him together, eloped, left him chunnering with one half of his face in a grin, the other half lonely. he had nothing left to fear, save the embarrassment of interrupting a half-naked girl taking a piss.
the beggars don't ask from their own. every eighth or so sunday, i lose, i lose my fear. by the next morning, it has crept back into my belly, shivering and pulsing, out of its coffin.
if i weren't a celebrity, i would be a teacher in a one room schoolhouse. the future is grey and green like that atlantic that spliced my life, but i'm waiting hand and foot on cherry season until she is ready to take flight. if i could, i would bind books; the thing that bores me most is a newborn. i love surprises, but seeing that i've believed a lie makes me cry. if i were in my mother's kitchen, i would feel safe enough to read this out loud to you. i want to be a prophet and invent the airplane; my heart is a fox and a box, a set of boxes like russian dolls. i am a pyramid. i dream of robins laying eggs, girls with my name, and forgetting the baby at the park. the homeless men raise her as their own. my first memory is of the cake at my sister's birth and her toothless state, but before that i was somewhere in the forest, listening to the rain.
fail fast, he said, fail fast.
everything is wide open, a window through which to leap.
these earmuffs- they hide me from new york's mutters and from the boys watching my reflection in the subway window. today i met a man with no nose and only after he walked away did i see what wasn't there. he knocked on the bathroom door, apologizing when i turned the sign from occupied to vacant. he asked if he was allowed in and i beckoned him through. deep in my cocoa cappucino (say it out loud), wondering if his mind was all there, it struck me that his nose was gone as well and that they may have deserted him together, eloped, left him chunnering with one half of his face in a grin, the other half lonely. he had nothing left to fear, save the embarrassment of interrupting a half-naked girl taking a piss.
the beggars don't ask from their own. every eighth or so sunday, i lose, i lose my fear. by the next morning, it has crept back into my belly, shivering and pulsing, out of its coffin.
if i weren't a celebrity, i would be a teacher in a one room schoolhouse. the future is grey and green like that atlantic that spliced my life, but i'm waiting hand and foot on cherry season until she is ready to take flight. if i could, i would bind books; the thing that bores me most is a newborn. i love surprises, but seeing that i've believed a lie makes me cry. if i were in my mother's kitchen, i would feel safe enough to read this out loud to you. i want to be a prophet and invent the airplane; my heart is a fox and a box, a set of boxes like russian dolls. i am a pyramid. i dream of robins laying eggs, girls with my name, and forgetting the baby at the park. the homeless men raise her as their own. my first memory is of the cake at my sister's birth and her toothless state, but before that i was somewhere in the forest, listening to the rain.
fail fast, he said, fail fast.
9.7.11
i choose you
This week’s papers have been bursting to the brim with Egypt’s crumbling government, Wikileaks, Kabul’s bombings, polio vaccines, Mandela’s illness, Kim Jong-Il’s successor, and the deportation of Uganda’s lesbians. But the most pressing issue cartwheeling through my brain? Grocery shopping.
My neighbourhood in New York City is a neighbourhood of barbershops converted into bookstores where the one man is shaved while ten more talk politics over blaring reggae. It is a neighbourhood of collard greens and bellowing church choirs and brownstone architecture and graffiti in sultry oranges and greens, of fire escapes and stoops and creased women pushing wire hampers down the cracking sidewalks. The grocery store on the corner jostles its customers up against bins of seeping papayas and bloody buckets of pigs’ tails; the Baptist church down the block was built by freed slaves two centuries ago. When I first moved to Bed-Stuy, I was one of the only white people for blocks. Other than mine, blue eyes were rare, and the only blondes I ever saw on the street often turned out to be my roommate. Within the past year, however, gentrification has hit full force, lining coffee shops, vegan co-ops, art galleries, and hipsters clad in their grandma’s skirts and faux-fox.
Neighbourhoods, cities, countries—they are all living organisms. They eat, breathe, grow, shrink, evolve, and migrate. They can contract diseases. Bed-Stuy’s hipster population could be compared to a pregnancy, one indicating the birth of a new culture. However, pregnancies are parasitic by nature, and this new parasite may be more than the neighbourhood can handle.
The white population is comprised mainly of liberal arts graduates from middle class backgrounds. These are the type of newcomers that replace former residents, drive up real estate value, and effectively raise the rent of the entire neighbourhood. The arrival of the white demographic also marks the departure of many of the neighbourhood’s businesses as the demand for hair-braiding salons and R&B record stores dwindles. I see most of the young white residents getting off the subway by the Fulton Street Grocery laden with recyclable Trader Joe’s bags full of fair-trade and organic products like brie, rosehip jam, and soy bacon. The local grocery store has felt the loss of its business enough to start carrying merchandise like almond milk and havarti cheese, but the commodities cost twice as much as they would even in a ritzy Manhattan health shop. If the new demographic can be compared to a fetus, it is evident that the population represented by the pregnant mother is weakening and wasting away.
Here I must pause and make a confession: in my opinion, havarti is heavenly. I own several of my grandmother’s skirts. I am a young white student who has attended a liberal arts school and lives in an artists’ collective; my need for housing played a role in the raising of my building’s rent. I am the parasite.
I am the parasite. But the rosehip jam in my refrigerator was sent from my mother in France. The bakery in which I am currently sitting is named for its original owner, Miss Dahlia, a freed slave, and I shop at the grocery stores I can see from my window. Buying food can be an ethically-complex process. Were peasants were coerced into selling their fertile land to multinational corporations? Does buying imported food from the neighbourhood grocery store undermine American farms? Am I paying outrageous prices for peaches in support of Bed-Stuy’s merchants and maids living in relative poverty only to leave the third-world fruit harvesters to pay the true price: absolute poverty at the hands of greedy corporations eager to extort surplus value from the workers? Myopic charity is just as damning as Dickens’ telescopic philanthropy, but I often feel helpless in a world where every meal I eat is somehow morally reprehensible.
So I choose Bed-Stuy. We have to pick our battles, find the pocket of injustice to which we find ourselves called. If each of us attends to our portion, acting as body parts in one united healing body, the entire corrupt system will begin to crumble. I have chosen Bedford-Stuyvesant, with its tropical turbans and hip-hop. This inevitable gentrification doesn’t have to be a feeble mother’s parasitic pregnancy. It can be a healthy pregnancy resulting in the birth of a joyful new baby to a robust, diverse, and harmonious family, and in pursuit of that goal, I will continue to smile at my neighbours over piles of chicken feet, mangos, and grits.
My neighbourhood in New York City is a neighbourhood of barbershops converted into bookstores where the one man is shaved while ten more talk politics over blaring reggae. It is a neighbourhood of collard greens and bellowing church choirs and brownstone architecture and graffiti in sultry oranges and greens, of fire escapes and stoops and creased women pushing wire hampers down the cracking sidewalks. The grocery store on the corner jostles its customers up against bins of seeping papayas and bloody buckets of pigs’ tails; the Baptist church down the block was built by freed slaves two centuries ago. When I first moved to Bed-Stuy, I was one of the only white people for blocks. Other than mine, blue eyes were rare, and the only blondes I ever saw on the street often turned out to be my roommate. Within the past year, however, gentrification has hit full force, lining coffee shops, vegan co-ops, art galleries, and hipsters clad in their grandma’s skirts and faux-fox.
Neighbourhoods, cities, countries—they are all living organisms. They eat, breathe, grow, shrink, evolve, and migrate. They can contract diseases. Bed-Stuy’s hipster population could be compared to a pregnancy, one indicating the birth of a new culture. However, pregnancies are parasitic by nature, and this new parasite may be more than the neighbourhood can handle.
The white population is comprised mainly of liberal arts graduates from middle class backgrounds. These are the type of newcomers that replace former residents, drive up real estate value, and effectively raise the rent of the entire neighbourhood. The arrival of the white demographic also marks the departure of many of the neighbourhood’s businesses as the demand for hair-braiding salons and R&B record stores dwindles. I see most of the young white residents getting off the subway by the Fulton Street Grocery laden with recyclable Trader Joe’s bags full of fair-trade and organic products like brie, rosehip jam, and soy bacon. The local grocery store has felt the loss of its business enough to start carrying merchandise like almond milk and havarti cheese, but the commodities cost twice as much as they would even in a ritzy Manhattan health shop. If the new demographic can be compared to a fetus, it is evident that the population represented by the pregnant mother is weakening and wasting away.
Here I must pause and make a confession: in my opinion, havarti is heavenly. I own several of my grandmother’s skirts. I am a young white student who has attended a liberal arts school and lives in an artists’ collective; my need for housing played a role in the raising of my building’s rent. I am the parasite.
I am the parasite. But the rosehip jam in my refrigerator was sent from my mother in France. The bakery in which I am currently sitting is named for its original owner, Miss Dahlia, a freed slave, and I shop at the grocery stores I can see from my window. Buying food can be an ethically-complex process. Were peasants were coerced into selling their fertile land to multinational corporations? Does buying imported food from the neighbourhood grocery store undermine American farms? Am I paying outrageous prices for peaches in support of Bed-Stuy’s merchants and maids living in relative poverty only to leave the third-world fruit harvesters to pay the true price: absolute poverty at the hands of greedy corporations eager to extort surplus value from the workers? Myopic charity is just as damning as Dickens’ telescopic philanthropy, but I often feel helpless in a world where every meal I eat is somehow morally reprehensible.
So I choose Bed-Stuy. We have to pick our battles, find the pocket of injustice to which we find ourselves called. If each of us attends to our portion, acting as body parts in one united healing body, the entire corrupt system will begin to crumble. I have chosen Bedford-Stuyvesant, with its tropical turbans and hip-hop. This inevitable gentrification doesn’t have to be a feeble mother’s parasitic pregnancy. It can be a healthy pregnancy resulting in the birth of a joyful new baby to a robust, diverse, and harmonious family, and in pursuit of that goal, I will continue to smile at my neighbours over piles of chicken feet, mangos, and grits.
they asked me for a testimony
Every summer, my father would give me a green towel with a tall, curly B on one side, one of a set of four that he and my mother that some distant relative gave them at their wedding. My father was and is a small, quick man with freckles and an auburn mustache. He would take me out into the yard with the towel and stand in the sun, his freckles blossoming across his face and arms, and spread the towel on the grass, saying, "Everything you want to take with you, Erin. Everything must fit on that towel."
Maybe it wasn't every summer. Maybe it was one of my brother's blankets instead of the towels that we finally got rid of last year when the tall, white Bs finally frayed. And I know we weren't always out in the yard, because more often than not we didn't have one. But in my eighteen years, I have lived in eighteen houses, some with yards and some without. Everywhere we went (my family, a tiny caravan of six nomads), we carried our possessions with us, each of us with our own bag and one extra suitcase for my mother's wooden bookends, the rolling pin we gave her years ago, and a box of Christmas ornaments.
I learned to walk in an apartment just north of New York City. But I grew up dancing and eating chocolate chips out of cookie batter in downtown Detroit, drinking hot soy milk from tin cup and eating empty-heart plant with chopsticks and saving sparrows in China, lying in the mud missing my family and watching the magpies hide in the coconut trees during the rainy season in Malaysia, talking to Mormon men at the playground and eating eel hotpot in Hong Kong, riding a pink bike with purple tassels on the handlebars in Illinois, walking past fields of poppies growing over mines and the stubble of bombed houses to buy bread for thirty cents from an old woman in a tan headscarf at the bazaar in Kosovo, shouting echoes out of bell towers and cathedral spires overlooking cobblestone cities and hopping ancient stone walls into meadows to roll down hills or skinny dip in creeks in Germany, crying frozen tears as blizzards ripped at my cheeks in Minnesota, eating apples straight out of the orchard and grapes straight off the vine and nodding to the farmers wearing suspenders near the French border, and sitting in the back of a tired Communist opera house and watching the neon glow of night clubs from my balcony in Macedonia.
When my parents first brought me to New York to live in a tiny cinderblock apartment near the Hudson, just a few weeks after I was born just outside Chicago, they brought suitcases full of books and dreams, waiting for the day that God would send them over the ocean to share Christ's love with his people. As a child, I was their mirror, carrying a picture-book Bible to kindergarten to show my Chinese friends the illustrations of Jesus, leaving my home as soon as I was old enough to touch my left ear with my right hand at age six, the age when missionary children left for boarding school.
As I grew older, out of braids and into braces, I fell in love- not with any scrawny junior high boy, but with Jesus. An Kosovar man baptized me in a white robe at a lake teeming with sunbathers and trash and my mirror began to crack. Ever-stubborn and willful as I grew out of braces and into mascara, my independence grew exponentially, leading me both to defiantly declare that "after nine years of living without my parents, I no longer needed their advice or guidance, and would in fact eat chocolate cake for breakfast if I so pleased" and to passionately pursue my own personal relationship with Jesus.
Jesus came to dwell on this earth for a short while, God in man's body, a tangible expression of God's character and love, and the Holy Spirit is his spirit come to dwell on the earth forever. Through written accounts of Jesus' life and through interactions with his spirit and others who know him, I continue to grow in intimacy with Jesus. Sometimes I pull a chair up beside me for him while we talk, often I have shouted at him, often I have sung to him, and I am never as good of a listener as I would like to be. Our arguments have left me lying prostrate, my face and clenched fists pressed into the ground, our conversations have me standing on benches with my hands in the air, stretched up towards him, and more than once I have felt the heat and weight of his arms around me.
To truly know Jesus is to trust him, and that trust is the core of my faith.
Somehow, I found my way back to the beginning, in a brick apartment between the Hudson and the train tracks leading into Harlem. But this time I came alone, just a few weeks after my eighteenth birthday. As they have been since I was a little girl skinning my knees under the palm trees in Malaysia and running through patches of nettles in the Black Forest, my family is five thousand miles away from me. Six years ago my faith became more than a mirror of my parents' actions, and six months ago, my life began eerily to echo theirs as I came to the United States with a few cardboard boxes full of books and dreams, waiting for God to take me somewhere that his people needed to know his love. My own journey finally became a mirror of my parents' not because I imitated them, but because all have chosen to imitate Jesus. My mother and father went from New York across the ocean to Asia and Europe and I have crossed the ocean from Asia and Europe to New York to a place full of wealthy bearded boys and wispy vintage girls smoking pot, to a place of professors mocking my faith as lunacy, to a place heralded as the forerunner of the sexual revolution and experimentation movement, to a place of mere shells of humans having traded in their hearts for cold intellect: all symptoms of the loneliness found in a life without Jesus.
Sometimes it seems like my life has been nothing but aimless roaming across the face of the earth, with nowhere to rest. When I was younger, the seventh or eighth time we moved, I found a corner of the sidewalk outside my house broken off by a persistent oak root and carried it in my suitcase for years, determined to have a piece of a home. The sidewalk is forgotten in some house maybe in the Balkans or in France, and sometimes the wandering wind still makes me homesick for nowhere. Yet even on the windiest of days, I know that every step we made, every step I make, has had a purpose. Once in Italy, a dark, elegant woman walking tall and slim in diamonds and black caught her pale hand on her necklace, and it snapped, cascading black glass beads onto Rome's ancient streets. She walked on, stiletto heels clicking, hardly looking down, and my friends and I stood on the street corner, picking the jeweled beads out of the gutter and saving them in our pockets, watching the light glimmer or their facets. I have the earth's forgotten beauty in my pockets to treasure for myself and to share, collected from the soft eyes of an unnamed orphaned baby in Rwanda, from the clicking beaded braids of a little girl dancing in a disabled school in Kenya, from creased hands of an old German woman making kartoffelsalat, from the grin of a young Muslim man from a village in Kosovo talking about going to the university in another country, in the voice of my bisexual, atheist roommate reminiscing about riding her bicycle in Chicago. God leads me one small step at a time, and though I may have no clarity about the next place I will be, I have trust and a pocketful of beauty to move my feet forward one small step at a time.
Maybe it wasn't every summer. Maybe it was one of my brother's blankets instead of the towels that we finally got rid of last year when the tall, white Bs finally frayed. And I know we weren't always out in the yard, because more often than not we didn't have one. But in my eighteen years, I have lived in eighteen houses, some with yards and some without. Everywhere we went (my family, a tiny caravan of six nomads), we carried our possessions with us, each of us with our own bag and one extra suitcase for my mother's wooden bookends, the rolling pin we gave her years ago, and a box of Christmas ornaments.
I learned to walk in an apartment just north of New York City. But I grew up dancing and eating chocolate chips out of cookie batter in downtown Detroit, drinking hot soy milk from tin cup and eating empty-heart plant with chopsticks and saving sparrows in China, lying in the mud missing my family and watching the magpies hide in the coconut trees during the rainy season in Malaysia, talking to Mormon men at the playground and eating eel hotpot in Hong Kong, riding a pink bike with purple tassels on the handlebars in Illinois, walking past fields of poppies growing over mines and the stubble of bombed houses to buy bread for thirty cents from an old woman in a tan headscarf at the bazaar in Kosovo, shouting echoes out of bell towers and cathedral spires overlooking cobblestone cities and hopping ancient stone walls into meadows to roll down hills or skinny dip in creeks in Germany, crying frozen tears as blizzards ripped at my cheeks in Minnesota, eating apples straight out of the orchard and grapes straight off the vine and nodding to the farmers wearing suspenders near the French border, and sitting in the back of a tired Communist opera house and watching the neon glow of night clubs from my balcony in Macedonia.
When my parents first brought me to New York to live in a tiny cinderblock apartment near the Hudson, just a few weeks after I was born just outside Chicago, they brought suitcases full of books and dreams, waiting for the day that God would send them over the ocean to share Christ's love with his people. As a child, I was their mirror, carrying a picture-book Bible to kindergarten to show my Chinese friends the illustrations of Jesus, leaving my home as soon as I was old enough to touch my left ear with my right hand at age six, the age when missionary children left for boarding school.
As I grew older, out of braids and into braces, I fell in love- not with any scrawny junior high boy, but with Jesus. An Kosovar man baptized me in a white robe at a lake teeming with sunbathers and trash and my mirror began to crack. Ever-stubborn and willful as I grew out of braces and into mascara, my independence grew exponentially, leading me both to defiantly declare that "after nine years of living without my parents, I no longer needed their advice or guidance, and would in fact eat chocolate cake for breakfast if I so pleased" and to passionately pursue my own personal relationship with Jesus.
Jesus came to dwell on this earth for a short while, God in man's body, a tangible expression of God's character and love, and the Holy Spirit is his spirit come to dwell on the earth forever. Through written accounts of Jesus' life and through interactions with his spirit and others who know him, I continue to grow in intimacy with Jesus. Sometimes I pull a chair up beside me for him while we talk, often I have shouted at him, often I have sung to him, and I am never as good of a listener as I would like to be. Our arguments have left me lying prostrate, my face and clenched fists pressed into the ground, our conversations have me standing on benches with my hands in the air, stretched up towards him, and more than once I have felt the heat and weight of his arms around me.
To truly know Jesus is to trust him, and that trust is the core of my faith.
Somehow, I found my way back to the beginning, in a brick apartment between the Hudson and the train tracks leading into Harlem. But this time I came alone, just a few weeks after my eighteenth birthday. As they have been since I was a little girl skinning my knees under the palm trees in Malaysia and running through patches of nettles in the Black Forest, my family is five thousand miles away from me. Six years ago my faith became more than a mirror of my parents' actions, and six months ago, my life began eerily to echo theirs as I came to the United States with a few cardboard boxes full of books and dreams, waiting for God to take me somewhere that his people needed to know his love. My own journey finally became a mirror of my parents' not because I imitated them, but because all have chosen to imitate Jesus. My mother and father went from New York across the ocean to Asia and Europe and I have crossed the ocean from Asia and Europe to New York to a place full of wealthy bearded boys and wispy vintage girls smoking pot, to a place of professors mocking my faith as lunacy, to a place heralded as the forerunner of the sexual revolution and experimentation movement, to a place of mere shells of humans having traded in their hearts for cold intellect: all symptoms of the loneliness found in a life without Jesus.
Sometimes it seems like my life has been nothing but aimless roaming across the face of the earth, with nowhere to rest. When I was younger, the seventh or eighth time we moved, I found a corner of the sidewalk outside my house broken off by a persistent oak root and carried it in my suitcase for years, determined to have a piece of a home. The sidewalk is forgotten in some house maybe in the Balkans or in France, and sometimes the wandering wind still makes me homesick for nowhere. Yet even on the windiest of days, I know that every step we made, every step I make, has had a purpose. Once in Italy, a dark, elegant woman walking tall and slim in diamonds and black caught her pale hand on her necklace, and it snapped, cascading black glass beads onto Rome's ancient streets. She walked on, stiletto heels clicking, hardly looking down, and my friends and I stood on the street corner, picking the jeweled beads out of the gutter and saving them in our pockets, watching the light glimmer or their facets. I have the earth's forgotten beauty in my pockets to treasure for myself and to share, collected from the soft eyes of an unnamed orphaned baby in Rwanda, from the clicking beaded braids of a little girl dancing in a disabled school in Kenya, from creased hands of an old German woman making kartoffelsalat, from the grin of a young Muslim man from a village in Kosovo talking about going to the university in another country, in the voice of my bisexual, atheist roommate reminiscing about riding her bicycle in Chicago. God leads me one small step at a time, and though I may have no clarity about the next place I will be, I have trust and a pocketful of beauty to move my feet forward one small step at a time.
gryphons: the cons
Sarah Lawrence College: where the men are women and the women wear nothing but mohawks. We commonly saw boys in lipstick and dresses smoking weed on the North Lawn or girls trotting about clad only in a handful of oak leaves taped to their bodies. They would gather at night, to drink and smoke and discuss hegemony or Foucault. Sarah Lawrence seemed to be located somewhere on the earth’s fringe, far away from everything but itself. Very few things existed except ourselves: no ethics, no objectivity, no conventions, no gods, no gender, no government. The world was ours to examine under the microscope and interpret as we saw fit—to dissect, to denounce, to decorate. The school took care to smash our presuppositions and beliefs from the colossal cornerstones they were into little heaps of rubble and sentiment; then they fed us. We simply ate books and research and art, gorged ourselves until we could hardly move, intense curiosity walled in by extreme apathy. Most sat, stagnant, and stewed in their formulas and philosophies. Few mastered the art of digestion: turning theory into practice, knowledge into action. Essentially, our studies were gluttony.
Francis Bacon named three purposes for study: delight, ornament, and ability. Sarah Lawrence indulged in the first two and neglected the latter almost entirely. The school was decadence itself, but though my year there was scholarly bliss, such luxury can be educationally lethal. Example: one girl I often sat beside spent the entire spring semester building naked babies out of rubber and nailing them to walls. She earned top marks and I withdrew. I had intended to stay and use the resources Sarah Lawrence offered for more altruistic purposes. In the end, however, I couldn’t justify a few years of boundless intellectual indulgence and only to spend the following decades shackled by debt.
It’s high time my education had an aim. Scholarly pursuits are not merely an end, but a means to an end. Certainly one of study’s purposes is to transform the minds of its apprentices, but, ideally, the process is cyclical and the transformation mutual. Study should lead students not only to examine but also to shape their given environment, to improve, to innovate, to invent—to identify and meet the world’s ever-present needs. Make no mistake, Sarah Lawrence quilted some of its colours onto my soul; I’ve a skull full of limericks and larks I gleaned there. But I’ve pasted together my crumbled cornerstones, and though they are altered, as I stand tall on them, I am reminded that I was made to be more than an intellectual epicure. My education is not solely for my benefit and I am accountable to something greater than myself. If I am anything at all, I am willing to be challenged, instructed, prepared—disciplined and discipled. Teach me how and I’ll wash the world’s feet.
Francis Bacon named three purposes for study: delight, ornament, and ability. Sarah Lawrence indulged in the first two and neglected the latter almost entirely. The school was decadence itself, but though my year there was scholarly bliss, such luxury can be educationally lethal. Example: one girl I often sat beside spent the entire spring semester building naked babies out of rubber and nailing them to walls. She earned top marks and I withdrew. I had intended to stay and use the resources Sarah Lawrence offered for more altruistic purposes. In the end, however, I couldn’t justify a few years of boundless intellectual indulgence and only to spend the following decades shackled by debt.
It’s high time my education had an aim. Scholarly pursuits are not merely an end, but a means to an end. Certainly one of study’s purposes is to transform the minds of its apprentices, but, ideally, the process is cyclical and the transformation mutual. Study should lead students not only to examine but also to shape their given environment, to improve, to innovate, to invent—to identify and meet the world’s ever-present needs. Make no mistake, Sarah Lawrence quilted some of its colours onto my soul; I’ve a skull full of limericks and larks I gleaned there. But I’ve pasted together my crumbled cornerstones, and though they are altered, as I stand tall on them, I am reminded that I was made to be more than an intellectual epicure. My education is not solely for my benefit and I am accountable to something greater than myself. If I am anything at all, I am willing to be challenged, instructed, prepared—disciplined and discipled. Teach me how and I’ll wash the world’s feet.
literary arts
When I was young, I dreamed every night about being on a raft in the middle of the ocean. My family sat beside me, my father freckled and mustached, my mother with her belly curved and pregnant, my baby sister bald and bug-eyed. The wind pushed the raft to and fro in the water, from America’s beaches down to the Pacific Islands, up through the Arctic floes and all the way around to the Ivory Coast. As we drifted over each border, our faces would change. Near China, my sister suddenly had narrow, brown eyes. In Scandinavia, my mother’s hair went sleek and blond. Along the coast of Africa, my father’s mustache dwindled away as his skin burned dark. They were unrecognizable. They spoke in characters and clicks; they forgot how to pronounce my name.
I have lived in over twenty houses in seven countries and five states. Though my nightmares were nothing but dreams, crossing so many borders does change a person’s spirit. I spent almost every day in kindergarten exiled in a corner, braiding strips of cloth, because it was simpler to isolate me than to teach me Chinese. My nanny rewarded me not with chocolates, but with eel eyeballs, soy bean ice cream, and pickled bird feet. I never had a dog, but I did have two chicks dyed magenta and green. Getting ready to go on a hike didn’t mean packing a lunch, but rather finding a stick to ward off monkeys. From age six onward, I spent eight months of each year thousands of miles away from my family. As a child, I was often followed by crowds wherever I went, all whispering and pointing, the bravest rushing up to rub my cheeks or pull my hair. They thought I was a bewitched doll, with my white skin and pale blue eyes. For years, I was the only one of my friends legally permitted to have brothers and sisters. My childhood heroes included a 13th century Albanian who fought against the Ottomans, Daniel (of the lion’s den), the tank man from Tiananmen Square, one of my dorm dads who had biceps so big he couldn’t touch his shoulders, and the United Nations. I bake in Fahrenheit and dress by Celsius. Boys from five different countries have talked of marrying me and I refused them all. For years, we only watched the news in the winter because in the summer the peach trees grew up around the satellite dish. I’ve lived in houses with bullets in the walls and the marks of Serbian military cleats in the floor, in houses near Mother Teresa’s and Goethe’s and Napoleon’s and Jay-Z’s, in houses with frost on the insides of the windows, in houses that almost never had electricity or water, in houses next to castles, minefields, and brothels.
There are things I want to say. I have stories to tell and poems to pen. One day my mind and I will die, but I want my words to be immortal. Of the things we hear on the radio and in books and on the television, it sometimes seems that only about 10% of them are true things. I don’t necessarily mean that they are lies, but I mean that they are not real, beautiful, meaningful truths. I have true things to say, things that are 100% true, mindblowingly true—the type of truth that comes straight from the core of living, like the dream about the raft.
Even more, I have more truths than just my own. I have things to say for hundreds of people and places that can’t speak for themselves. I write for Hope, my brightest Kenyan student, a quadriplegic whose parents neglected her to the point of refusing a free operation that would have given her the use of her legs. I write for the Black Forest and its suspendered villagers. I write for he Rwandan boy whose mother died before naming him, leaving him alone and anonymous in an orphanage where I worked. I write for Edip’s grandma, who taught me to garden and lived through the Kosovo massacres to emerge not unscathed, but strong and full of joy and for the raging red poppy fields along the road to Macedonia. I write for the egg vendor on my street who wore the same sweat-stained shirt every day and survived on little more than fifty cents a day, for my little friend Mi who saved sparrows and had no future ahead of her but the factories, for the open-air markets with entire halved pigs spilling their intestines at the feet of old women croaking out the prices of their persimmons, and for a thousand more.
I want to write it all down, keep writing everything down as long as I live, and I want to teach other people to write themselves down as well. Expression is the right of every human, and so many of us have been kept voiceless for far too long. I pledge my pen to speaking for those who can’t speak for themselves and my hands to reaching those who are searching for words. Together we can record what we’ve seen and make it heard—the terrible, the beautiful, and the true.
I have lived in over twenty houses in seven countries and five states. Though my nightmares were nothing but dreams, crossing so many borders does change a person’s spirit. I spent almost every day in kindergarten exiled in a corner, braiding strips of cloth, because it was simpler to isolate me than to teach me Chinese. My nanny rewarded me not with chocolates, but with eel eyeballs, soy bean ice cream, and pickled bird feet. I never had a dog, but I did have two chicks dyed magenta and green. Getting ready to go on a hike didn’t mean packing a lunch, but rather finding a stick to ward off monkeys. From age six onward, I spent eight months of each year thousands of miles away from my family. As a child, I was often followed by crowds wherever I went, all whispering and pointing, the bravest rushing up to rub my cheeks or pull my hair. They thought I was a bewitched doll, with my white skin and pale blue eyes. For years, I was the only one of my friends legally permitted to have brothers and sisters. My childhood heroes included a 13th century Albanian who fought against the Ottomans, Daniel (of the lion’s den), the tank man from Tiananmen Square, one of my dorm dads who had biceps so big he couldn’t touch his shoulders, and the United Nations. I bake in Fahrenheit and dress by Celsius. Boys from five different countries have talked of marrying me and I refused them all. For years, we only watched the news in the winter because in the summer the peach trees grew up around the satellite dish. I’ve lived in houses with bullets in the walls and the marks of Serbian military cleats in the floor, in houses near Mother Teresa’s and Goethe’s and Napoleon’s and Jay-Z’s, in houses with frost on the insides of the windows, in houses that almost never had electricity or water, in houses next to castles, minefields, and brothels.
There are things I want to say. I have stories to tell and poems to pen. One day my mind and I will die, but I want my words to be immortal. Of the things we hear on the radio and in books and on the television, it sometimes seems that only about 10% of them are true things. I don’t necessarily mean that they are lies, but I mean that they are not real, beautiful, meaningful truths. I have true things to say, things that are 100% true, mindblowingly true—the type of truth that comes straight from the core of living, like the dream about the raft.
Even more, I have more truths than just my own. I have things to say for hundreds of people and places that can’t speak for themselves. I write for Hope, my brightest Kenyan student, a quadriplegic whose parents neglected her to the point of refusing a free operation that would have given her the use of her legs. I write for the Black Forest and its suspendered villagers. I write for he Rwandan boy whose mother died before naming him, leaving him alone and anonymous in an orphanage where I worked. I write for Edip’s grandma, who taught me to garden and lived through the Kosovo massacres to emerge not unscathed, but strong and full of joy and for the raging red poppy fields along the road to Macedonia. I write for the egg vendor on my street who wore the same sweat-stained shirt every day and survived on little more than fifty cents a day, for my little friend Mi who saved sparrows and had no future ahead of her but the factories, for the open-air markets with entire halved pigs spilling their intestines at the feet of old women croaking out the prices of their persimmons, and for a thousand more.
I want to write it all down, keep writing everything down as long as I live, and I want to teach other people to write themselves down as well. Expression is the right of every human, and so many of us have been kept voiceless for far too long. I pledge my pen to speaking for those who can’t speak for themselves and my hands to reaching those who are searching for words. Together we can record what we’ve seen and make it heard—the terrible, the beautiful, and the true.
a last, grasping response
According to Peet, the pathways of change stem primarily from the organization of the people for the pursuit of an egalitarian society. The people who have no interest and are, in fact, abused by the status quo are the ones who will have the sufficient determination, strength, and cause to change the global hierarchy. The alternative theory Peet presents is a conglomeration of the strengths of Marxism, postmodernism, and feminism melted together to form a new theory of critical modernism working towards the achievement of communities of radical democracy.
The Marxist aspects seek to rescue modernity and give the control of the means of production to the people in order to expand the economic capacities of the poor and marginalized. Public control, collectivism, and democratic reasoning are the strengths of Marxism integrated into Peet’s approach. The poststructural aspects of Peet’s critical modernism focus primarily on examining power relations reproduced through knowledge control and ideologies of reason, science, and progress. By deconstructing the assumptions (informed by capitalism) that make developmentalism universalist, Eurocentric, and detrimental, the path can be cleared for local peoples to express their needs and meet said needs. The feminist aspect of Peet’s approach integrates women’s needs into the development discipline.
Using these theories, Peet desires to create locally-based communities, democratically self-governed and motivated by common compassion, reason, and ethics. The value of developmentalism in this is the transfer of the means of production and reproduction into the hands of the people; chiefly, that economic growth, with reproduction, must be perpetuated and promoted, merely regulated by locals rather than the state or multinationals. Modernity can be used to aid, and not to harm, the people of the earth. Developmentalism redefined as meeting universal needs locally defined by spreading power and access throughout the globe is an invaluable entity. Development is the act of giving people the means to reproduce life.
As far as what is to be done: In reading PDR’s pleas for recognition of the forgotten local peoples, in reading Peet’s cry for a radical democratic compassionate collective, and in reading all of our materials advocating for decentralization and redistribution of power, I am continually taken back to the teachings of Catholic justice workers and Martin Luther King’s rhetoric. Catholic social teaching, especially the teaching of Pope John Paul II, calls not only for social justice, but for social love—the equivalent of social justice motivated by an unconditional compassion for other humans. King’s theories call this unconditional social love “agape,” a love that flows unmotivated, spontaneous, and without expecting anything in return. While uniting a community out of necessity to overcome an abuse or gain justice is powerful, once the need is met, the danger always stands that the community may return to its previous stratified, scattered state. If community collectivism and distributism are motivated by social agape love, it is possible that Peet’s radically democratic collectives may be created and even sustained.
The power of love in uniting people despite their differences and in bringing about equality and selflessness is visible in King’s achievements in the fight against racism, in the base communities of Latin America started by liberation theologians, and in many brands of communes around the world. This social love, however, cannot be imposed from the top down. Taking a compassionate stance on economics and equality is the prerogative of the people; structural change will follow social movements from the grassroots. As elites, our role is to help the people to organize themselves through providing education and basic needs, by building genuine relationships with the faces behind the issues of poverty and inequity, by acting as a medium for their voices so that structural changes may follow the expression of their needs and agendas, and by always treating everyone with unconditional respect and compassion, whether they may be a Chinese peasant or a World Bank economist.
As to my role in these social movements and the empowerment of the people, to be perfectly honest, I do not necessarily see myself being involved in an organization directly challenging capitalism’s injustices. However, I do plan to work in an environment that indirectly challenges it by addressing issues of inequality and vulnerability through some sort of community organization: rather than organizing unions, working in a therapeutic or educational setting designed to allow people to express themselves, to be heard, and to heal.
Though, as the director of Kenya’s USAID education branch said, organizations often “waste” the majority of their money on the populations hardest to reach rather than targeting accessible and economically productive populations, my desire is to work with marginalized individuals who have been hurt by the modern world and forgotten by the system, whether through trauma due to private histories of domestic and sexual violence, or through more public problems like homelessness, poverty, and warfare. In my mind there are two avenues by which to address the problems present in modernity: attacking the causes of problems or treating the effects. I often feel guilty, as if the only valid way to initiate change is by attempting to directly eliminate structural violence by taking preventative measures and reforming the structure itself, but I also believe that working with the brokenness caused by structural violence is equally important in the battle for its elimination.
Challenging structural violence means addressing both the causes and working with those affected. Naturally, the two are not mutually exclusive; working as an art therapist with street children or teaching confessional writing in a high school for traumatized youth is not a separate task from working with welfare policies or social work. Working for humanitarian change at any level or sector means addressing issues at all levels of every sector, for all are interrelated and interdependent. While I may want to work directly with people in need of healing and love, others may want to work in policy or trade or agriculture to address the issues of structural neglect and suffering found there.
With every paragraph this becomes less of an essay and more of a reflective catalogue of Erin’s dreams for the future, but though I do not necessarily have specific plans to organize collectives of people for the purpose of empowering said populations, I do hope to always live in community. My desire would be to always live cooperatively, on compounds or in shared houses, with a group of people dedicated to spreading love and justice and beauty, whether through art or education or activism or community organization, whether they come from the elite class or the most destitute level of society, whether they come from a Western culture or another. I do not know where or with whom I want to work, although I know that I have never anywhere felt as immediate and deep a connection as I did in Rwanda, Kenya, and Kosovo—but surprisingly enough, I felt nearly the same love for south Yonkers when I began volunteering with Hispanic immigrants down near the projects.
I suppose my answer then is that I desire to work with individuals in need of love and healing, individuals that will compose a society of people finding wholeness and continuing the cycle of service and love they became a part of.
The Marxist aspects seek to rescue modernity and give the control of the means of production to the people in order to expand the economic capacities of the poor and marginalized. Public control, collectivism, and democratic reasoning are the strengths of Marxism integrated into Peet’s approach. The poststructural aspects of Peet’s critical modernism focus primarily on examining power relations reproduced through knowledge control and ideologies of reason, science, and progress. By deconstructing the assumptions (informed by capitalism) that make developmentalism universalist, Eurocentric, and detrimental, the path can be cleared for local peoples to express their needs and meet said needs. The feminist aspect of Peet’s approach integrates women’s needs into the development discipline.
Using these theories, Peet desires to create locally-based communities, democratically self-governed and motivated by common compassion, reason, and ethics. The value of developmentalism in this is the transfer of the means of production and reproduction into the hands of the people; chiefly, that economic growth, with reproduction, must be perpetuated and promoted, merely regulated by locals rather than the state or multinationals. Modernity can be used to aid, and not to harm, the people of the earth. Developmentalism redefined as meeting universal needs locally defined by spreading power and access throughout the globe is an invaluable entity. Development is the act of giving people the means to reproduce life.
As far as what is to be done: In reading PDR’s pleas for recognition of the forgotten local peoples, in reading Peet’s cry for a radical democratic compassionate collective, and in reading all of our materials advocating for decentralization and redistribution of power, I am continually taken back to the teachings of Catholic justice workers and Martin Luther King’s rhetoric. Catholic social teaching, especially the teaching of Pope John Paul II, calls not only for social justice, but for social love—the equivalent of social justice motivated by an unconditional compassion for other humans. King’s theories call this unconditional social love “agape,” a love that flows unmotivated, spontaneous, and without expecting anything in return. While uniting a community out of necessity to overcome an abuse or gain justice is powerful, once the need is met, the danger always stands that the community may return to its previous stratified, scattered state. If community collectivism and distributism are motivated by social agape love, it is possible that Peet’s radically democratic collectives may be created and even sustained.
The power of love in uniting people despite their differences and in bringing about equality and selflessness is visible in King’s achievements in the fight against racism, in the base communities of Latin America started by liberation theologians, and in many brands of communes around the world. This social love, however, cannot be imposed from the top down. Taking a compassionate stance on economics and equality is the prerogative of the people; structural change will follow social movements from the grassroots. As elites, our role is to help the people to organize themselves through providing education and basic needs, by building genuine relationships with the faces behind the issues of poverty and inequity, by acting as a medium for their voices so that structural changes may follow the expression of their needs and agendas, and by always treating everyone with unconditional respect and compassion, whether they may be a Chinese peasant or a World Bank economist.
As to my role in these social movements and the empowerment of the people, to be perfectly honest, I do not necessarily see myself being involved in an organization directly challenging capitalism’s injustices. However, I do plan to work in an environment that indirectly challenges it by addressing issues of inequality and vulnerability through some sort of community organization: rather than organizing unions, working in a therapeutic or educational setting designed to allow people to express themselves, to be heard, and to heal.
Though, as the director of Kenya’s USAID education branch said, organizations often “waste” the majority of their money on the populations hardest to reach rather than targeting accessible and economically productive populations, my desire is to work with marginalized individuals who have been hurt by the modern world and forgotten by the system, whether through trauma due to private histories of domestic and sexual violence, or through more public problems like homelessness, poverty, and warfare. In my mind there are two avenues by which to address the problems present in modernity: attacking the causes of problems or treating the effects. I often feel guilty, as if the only valid way to initiate change is by attempting to directly eliminate structural violence by taking preventative measures and reforming the structure itself, but I also believe that working with the brokenness caused by structural violence is equally important in the battle for its elimination.
Challenging structural violence means addressing both the causes and working with those affected. Naturally, the two are not mutually exclusive; working as an art therapist with street children or teaching confessional writing in a high school for traumatized youth is not a separate task from working with welfare policies or social work. Working for humanitarian change at any level or sector means addressing issues at all levels of every sector, for all are interrelated and interdependent. While I may want to work directly with people in need of healing and love, others may want to work in policy or trade or agriculture to address the issues of structural neglect and suffering found there.
With every paragraph this becomes less of an essay and more of a reflective catalogue of Erin’s dreams for the future, but though I do not necessarily have specific plans to organize collectives of people for the purpose of empowering said populations, I do hope to always live in community. My desire would be to always live cooperatively, on compounds or in shared houses, with a group of people dedicated to spreading love and justice and beauty, whether through art or education or activism or community organization, whether they come from the elite class or the most destitute level of society, whether they come from a Western culture or another. I do not know where or with whom I want to work, although I know that I have never anywhere felt as immediate and deep a connection as I did in Rwanda, Kenya, and Kosovo—but surprisingly enough, I felt nearly the same love for south Yonkers when I began volunteering with Hispanic immigrants down near the projects.
I suppose my answer then is that I desire to work with individuals in need of love and healing, individuals that will compose a society of people finding wholeness and continuing the cycle of service and love they became a part of.
poverty
Understanding the causes of poverty entails first understanding the condition symbolized by the ambiguous word. Dominant in modern discourse is poverty defined as an economic state, as a concrete measurement of income and the adequacy of that income to meet basic needs. Although one component of poverty is certainly the inability to meet basic needs, the term poverty expresses a broader condition: deprivation of agency, power, and freedom. Not only does poverty deprive its victims of their power to house, feed, clothe, and heal themselves, but it also deprives them of control over all aspects of their lives. Earning enough money to live above the poverty threshold in the United States (an income of $10,830 per year) might possibly allow an individual enough food to survive, a room to live in, and minimal healthcare, but such an income certainly restricts his or her ability to engage in intellectual activities, to function as a social individual, to engage in interests and hobbies, and to all leisurely, non-survival pursuits. Rather than being a measurement of physical wellbeing, poverty should be understood to refer to an individual’s socioemotional, spiritual, and mental wellbeing.
In searching for the “cause” of poverty (though the cause should not be assumed to be a singular, essentialist cause but the interaction between a multiplicity of agents) it is imperative to understand poverty as a comparative, rather than an absolute, term. Poverty is visible only when people and their lifestyles are compared: the Bronx versus Manhattan, the descendents of the Mayflower immigrants versus the children of Mexican immigrants, field workers in Louisiana to field workers in Kenya. In the United States, poverty means the inability to afford a flat-screen television while in Nigeria poverty means the inability to afford bread. While in an American family poverty’s effects may be seen in a father’s inability to provide a high-quality education for his son, poverty in an Albanian family may be evident in a father’s inability to take the customary morning tea break with his daughter. Seeing poverty as a comparative term referencing an individual’s inability to assert his will on his circumstances, realizing its inconsistencies of definition even when stretched from one borough of New York to another, begins to crack away at the absolute, linear, factual face it presents.
In order to find the causes of poverty, the mechanisms of structural violence and the roots of vulnerability, one must examine no factor alone, but the nexus of dependent agents in the areas of academia, technology, society, ecology, culture, and politics. The causes of poverty are the factors that make up the entire world system of economics, politics, and culture. Locating these agents and causes demands asking substantive questions: rather than, “Why do some people have low incomes?” ask instead, “Why are they malnourished, sick, and uneducated?” Money is not the cause of poverty, though the questioning its unequal distribution brings us much closer to finding poverty’s roots. In finding those roots, we are forced to confess that as participants in the world system living in relationship with agents, we all partake in the perpetuation of poverty. However, while this revelation may result in guilt, it should also result in freedom: as agents in the system causing poverty around the globe, we are not only agents of perpetuation but agents of liberation. If we collectively and individually are the cause of poverty, then we collectively and individually are the key to finding a true solution.
In searching for the “cause” of poverty (though the cause should not be assumed to be a singular, essentialist cause but the interaction between a multiplicity of agents) it is imperative to understand poverty as a comparative, rather than an absolute, term. Poverty is visible only when people and their lifestyles are compared: the Bronx versus Manhattan, the descendents of the Mayflower immigrants versus the children of Mexican immigrants, field workers in Louisiana to field workers in Kenya. In the United States, poverty means the inability to afford a flat-screen television while in Nigeria poverty means the inability to afford bread. While in an American family poverty’s effects may be seen in a father’s inability to provide a high-quality education for his son, poverty in an Albanian family may be evident in a father’s inability to take the customary morning tea break with his daughter. Seeing poverty as a comparative term referencing an individual’s inability to assert his will on his circumstances, realizing its inconsistencies of definition even when stretched from one borough of New York to another, begins to crack away at the absolute, linear, factual face it presents.
In order to find the causes of poverty, the mechanisms of structural violence and the roots of vulnerability, one must examine no factor alone, but the nexus of dependent agents in the areas of academia, technology, society, ecology, culture, and politics. The causes of poverty are the factors that make up the entire world system of economics, politics, and culture. Locating these agents and causes demands asking substantive questions: rather than, “Why do some people have low incomes?” ask instead, “Why are they malnourished, sick, and uneducated?” Money is not the cause of poverty, though the questioning its unequal distribution brings us much closer to finding poverty’s roots. In finding those roots, we are forced to confess that as participants in the world system living in relationship with agents, we all partake in the perpetuation of poverty. However, while this revelation may result in guilt, it should also result in freedom: as agents in the system causing poverty around the globe, we are not only agents of perpetuation but agents of liberation. If we collectively and individually are the cause of poverty, then we collectively and individually are the key to finding a true solution.
hurricanes and tsunamis
Observing the Katrina and Haiti crises through the lens of a television, the views of the two disasters are nearly identical. Newscasters provide constant stream of images depicting a handful of resident charities handing out food and water, groups of empty-handed foreign aid workers milling about trying to find some avenue by which to help, and a horde of military troops with drawn weapons defending donated supplies against alleged violent looters and deranged rioters. A few stations broadcast stories of homeless families banding together to find shelter or victims gathering food to share. Both in the cases of Katrina and Haiti, however, the media presents the average citizen with gruesome stories featuring heaps of dead bodies, reported by shaken correspondents, and typically concluded with calls for small, satisfying donations through texting or buying from certain brands dedicated to donating their profits.
Both Katrina and Haiti’s stories are tales of poverty and racism, regions weakened by exploitation and neglect and then devastated by natural disaster. The government responses to the two situations continues their similarities: reports of hunger-crazed looters resulted in large-scale military presence to subdue the people by might rather than large-scale aid workers to pacify the people with providing food and water. In addition, both catastrophes have been widely regarded as opportunities for change and growth in the afflicted areas, as opportunities for development. Disaster effectually spells invitation for big businesses and investors, an economy razed and ready to be rebuilt.
Though the faces of Katrina and Haiti as shown on the television appear identical, some glaring yet overlooked differences reveal much about the role of the United States in the disasters of the 21st century. Two blatant differences between the disasters are found in numbers: while the United States donated to date has donated 100 million dollars to Haiti’s crisis, the government spent close to 110 billion dollars on the Katrina disaster. Also, though both Katrina and Haiti were products of poverty, Haiti’s projected death toll is nearly 50 times Katrina’s. In short, though Haiti’s need is greater, the aid provided has been lesser. Though this statement seems initially to be wildly unfair, reflection proves the opposite: it is only logical that the United States would expend more money and energy attending to a problem within its own borders. However, as the US’s role is drawn into question, other concerns arise. If the United States contributions to Haiti are a fraction of what they were during Katrina, why is the US military presence equal greater in Haiti than it was in Katrina? Why is the United States so strictly regulating and restricting relief efforts from other nations and organizations while themselves providing very little other than military might? The US may have had the clear right to organize the Katrina efforts (infamous for their chaotic disorder), but taking control of, and effectively preventing, much of Haiti’s relief does not seem to be a right assigned to the United States. The United States should limit their military generosity to the same level as their aid, if not reducing it much beyond, as well reexamining their role in foreign countries: assistance or authority?
Both Katrina and Haiti’s stories are tales of poverty and racism, regions weakened by exploitation and neglect and then devastated by natural disaster. The government responses to the two situations continues their similarities: reports of hunger-crazed looters resulted in large-scale military presence to subdue the people by might rather than large-scale aid workers to pacify the people with providing food and water. In addition, both catastrophes have been widely regarded as opportunities for change and growth in the afflicted areas, as opportunities for development. Disaster effectually spells invitation for big businesses and investors, an economy razed and ready to be rebuilt.
Though the faces of Katrina and Haiti as shown on the television appear identical, some glaring yet overlooked differences reveal much about the role of the United States in the disasters of the 21st century. Two blatant differences between the disasters are found in numbers: while the United States donated to date has donated 100 million dollars to Haiti’s crisis, the government spent close to 110 billion dollars on the Katrina disaster. Also, though both Katrina and Haiti were products of poverty, Haiti’s projected death toll is nearly 50 times Katrina’s. In short, though Haiti’s need is greater, the aid provided has been lesser. Though this statement seems initially to be wildly unfair, reflection proves the opposite: it is only logical that the United States would expend more money and energy attending to a problem within its own borders. However, as the US’s role is drawn into question, other concerns arise. If the United States contributions to Haiti are a fraction of what they were during Katrina, why is the US military presence equal greater in Haiti than it was in Katrina? Why is the United States so strictly regulating and restricting relief efforts from other nations and organizations while themselves providing very little other than military might? The US may have had the clear right to organize the Katrina efforts (infamous for their chaotic disorder), but taking control of, and effectively preventing, much of Haiti’s relief does not seem to be a right assigned to the United States. The United States should limit their military generosity to the same level as their aid, if not reducing it much beyond, as well reexamining their role in foreign countries: assistance or authority?
structural functionalism
If society does indeed make people what it needs them to be, the obvious following question is this: what is society’s goal? What are the “imperatives society has to pursue” (Peet 140)? If society’s needs are met by the state of its people, the answer lies then in examining what the people are and do. The overwhelming number of people in the United States seem occupied with the buying and selling of commodities, anywhere from Hummers to Hershey’s to Hallmark’s. Somehow the production of items such as massive cars, chocolates, and greeting cards seems to be less urgent than the “imperatives” described by Parsons.
The notion that society is driven forward by needs seems to have little historical support. The most primitive societies of man, such as those of the Kalahari bushmen described by Sahlins in The Post-Developed Reader, have remained static in their development for millennia and yet seem to have very little specialization, roles, or driving imperatives. Toennies attempts to argue away inconvenient examples of societies such as the bushmen’s by dividing societies into two categories: gemeinschaft and gesellschaft, claiming that the first traditional, communal-style society exists in families or neighborhoods (organizations dependent on a greater state), while the second self-serving, driven society extends to the entire independent state or multinational companies. This dismissal of static societies can be dismissed in turn, as traditional societies such as the bushmen are also as self-sustained and independent, or even more so, than the modern nation state. If all independent societies evolved based off of needs, then the modern world would have remained in a primitive state of relative freedom from want, as with the bushmen.
The idea that “people must stick together in societies to survive” seems, as well, to be false (Peet 114), as throughout the ages people have been known to survive alone, whether as hermits, lone hunters, or the ostracized. The only truly imperative mutual dependency is for the purpose of reproduction and the continuation of the human race. If not involved in procreation, man can, in fact, be an island.
The question then remains: what common goal prompts people to form societies and become mutually-dependent in its pursuit? Luxuries. Commodities. Comforts. Massive cars, chocolates, and greeting cards, as well as electricity, running water, packaged food, and entertainment. Society desires ease, leisure, and pleasure, and the less uncomfortable work necessary to attain these, the better. To achieve these ends, the West has forgotten, distorted, or reconstructed the meaning of the word “need” while the developing world lives in squalor to produce its luxuries. This is what society demands and needs to satiate its avarice, hierarchical lounging and labouring classes.
The notion that society is driven forward by needs seems to have little historical support. The most primitive societies of man, such as those of the Kalahari bushmen described by Sahlins in The Post-Developed Reader, have remained static in their development for millennia and yet seem to have very little specialization, roles, or driving imperatives. Toennies attempts to argue away inconvenient examples of societies such as the bushmen’s by dividing societies into two categories: gemeinschaft and gesellschaft, claiming that the first traditional, communal-style society exists in families or neighborhoods (organizations dependent on a greater state), while the second self-serving, driven society extends to the entire independent state or multinational companies. This dismissal of static societies can be dismissed in turn, as traditional societies such as the bushmen are also as self-sustained and independent, or even more so, than the modern nation state. If all independent societies evolved based off of needs, then the modern world would have remained in a primitive state of relative freedom from want, as with the bushmen.
The idea that “people must stick together in societies to survive” seems, as well, to be false (Peet 114), as throughout the ages people have been known to survive alone, whether as hermits, lone hunters, or the ostracized. The only truly imperative mutual dependency is for the purpose of reproduction and the continuation of the human race. If not involved in procreation, man can, in fact, be an island.
The question then remains: what common goal prompts people to form societies and become mutually-dependent in its pursuit? Luxuries. Commodities. Comforts. Massive cars, chocolates, and greeting cards, as well as electricity, running water, packaged food, and entertainment. Society desires ease, leisure, and pleasure, and the less uncomfortable work necessary to attain these, the better. To achieve these ends, the West has forgotten, distorted, or reconstructed the meaning of the word “need” while the developing world lives in squalor to produce its luxuries. This is what society demands and needs to satiate its avarice, hierarchical lounging and labouring classes.
marx
Marx’s contributions to politics, economics, and development have had an undeniably significant impact on the formation of theories in each of these areas. Underlying all of these contributions is a revolutionary philosophy concerning man’s nature and his role in society.
Marx’s ideas concerning human nature stem from the Enlightenment, taking its emphasis on man’s rationality and integrating it with an emphasis on man’s social nature. In addition, Marx adheres to the Enlightenment belief in the perfectibility of man, observing man, like society, transcending his former self over and over again. The process of transformation is made up of the elements of contradiction and instability, a new idea or force, and the synthesis of the two, transcending the original self.
This process is the result of man struggling to extract a livelihood out of nature and continue existence, becoming better and better at both dominating and cultivating the environment in such a way as to reap the most reward. Because it is man’s struggle with the earth that leads to his transformation, science, the means of understanding and subduing the natural world, also holds transformative powers for man.
If science and the natural world are the two forces that form and re-form man, then Marx seems to be putting forth the idea that man is the product of the material world rather than the spiritual or intellectual realms. But Marx also states that man is the source of his own consciousness. These notions create a tension between man as the creator and the natural world as creator, a tension between consciousness and evolution, a power struggle between man and his environment.
This seeming contradiction is the root of Marxist thought. On the one hand, “human nature is created under definite natural and social conditions…and man’s consciousness comes from real-life experience in the physical world” while at the same time, “we think up our ideas and construct our own rationalities” (Peet). In one breath, man is awarded agency and robbed by his environment of his very will and character. We know we exist and have free thought and will because of our ability to act and understand our own actions as reactions to the physical world, but at the same time our initiative is dependent upon having the world as a stage upon which to act, and our thoughts are formed and bound to the conditions into which we were born. Ideas have material origins, meaning that we assimilated the material world into our understanding and created thought around it, but it is the material world that gives our thoughts meaning and not vice versa. In fact, Marx describes our very happiness as being dependent upon materialism and that which we have or have not. This paradox, man’s conscious direction of his own fate coupled with his inability to operate independent of his environment and fellow beings, proves to be more of a balance of ideas than a contradiction, a balance that makes Marxism incredibly attractive.
Marx’s ideas concerning human nature stem from the Enlightenment, taking its emphasis on man’s rationality and integrating it with an emphasis on man’s social nature. In addition, Marx adheres to the Enlightenment belief in the perfectibility of man, observing man, like society, transcending his former self over and over again. The process of transformation is made up of the elements of contradiction and instability, a new idea or force, and the synthesis of the two, transcending the original self.
This process is the result of man struggling to extract a livelihood out of nature and continue existence, becoming better and better at both dominating and cultivating the environment in such a way as to reap the most reward. Because it is man’s struggle with the earth that leads to his transformation, science, the means of understanding and subduing the natural world, also holds transformative powers for man.
If science and the natural world are the two forces that form and re-form man, then Marx seems to be putting forth the idea that man is the product of the material world rather than the spiritual or intellectual realms. But Marx also states that man is the source of his own consciousness. These notions create a tension between man as the creator and the natural world as creator, a tension between consciousness and evolution, a power struggle between man and his environment.
This seeming contradiction is the root of Marxist thought. On the one hand, “human nature is created under definite natural and social conditions…and man’s consciousness comes from real-life experience in the physical world” while at the same time, “we think up our ideas and construct our own rationalities” (Peet). In one breath, man is awarded agency and robbed by his environment of his very will and character. We know we exist and have free thought and will because of our ability to act and understand our own actions as reactions to the physical world, but at the same time our initiative is dependent upon having the world as a stage upon which to act, and our thoughts are formed and bound to the conditions into which we were born. Ideas have material origins, meaning that we assimilated the material world into our understanding and created thought around it, but it is the material world that gives our thoughts meaning and not vice versa. In fact, Marx describes our very happiness as being dependent upon materialism and that which we have or have not. This paradox, man’s conscious direction of his own fate coupled with his inability to operate independent of his environment and fellow beings, proves to be more of a balance of ideas than a contradiction, a balance that makes Marxism incredibly attractive.
long lasting effects
The rise of the African slave trade and European imperialism led to obvious material transformations as well as certain paradigm shifts on both the African and European continents. Both the transformations and the paradigm shift were nothing but symptoms of the disease running rampant across the face of the globe: greed. Though all humans possess an innate sense of greed, the condition is most easily observable in those equipped with the means to express their greed. Europe possessed such means: the slave trade and imperialism were ideal for extracting resources, labour, and capital from Africa. Thus, greed transformed Europe and Africa as it transforms all its victims and their prey: the greedy become wealthy and the defenseless become poorer; the wealthy despise the poor and the poor hate the rich.
The economic transformations of Europe and Africa presented themselves, simply put, as Europe prospering and Africa sinking into poverty. As Edmund Dene Morel observed on the Belgian docks, a steady stream of ships carried expensive commodities such as rubber and ivory to Europe and left empty of any tradable goods (Hochschild 2). Once the international slave trade began to develop, Europe benefited further as its nations found an export market in their African colonies, trading European products for African slaves at an exchange rate hugely in the European’s favour (Wolf 198). Thus, while European economies flourished, Africans rapidly lost control of their economies as the Europeans depleted their resources and depopulated their lands, leaving the African nations impoverished and powerless (Hochschild 13).
Equally as important as the economic transformations, both Europeans and Africans underwent major paradigm shifts in the ways they perceived race. Originally, the Europeans and Africans imagined each other to be supernatural beings such as spirits of the dead, mythical birds, and three-faced one-legged lions (Hochschild 6, 15). After some interaction, the two races very briefly learned to view one another as human beings, trading with one another and discussing religious beliefs together (Hochschild 9). However, as the Europeans came to value objects such as ivory and gold more highly than African lives, the value of an African life became equal to the amount of money that could be extracted by his labour. By the time slave traders referred to little girls as worthless once the girls became to sick to work and politicians referred to their Africa porters as “beasts of burden”, the European paradigm had shifted completely, no longer regarding Africans as humans, but as animals (Hochschild 11, 119). As the Europeans wreaked death upon the African continent, Africans returned to their original conclusion: that the white men were ambassadors of the land of the dead (Hochschild 16). These shifts and changes left Africa and Europe’s economies and mentalities irreversibly transformed.
The economic transformations of Europe and Africa presented themselves, simply put, as Europe prospering and Africa sinking into poverty. As Edmund Dene Morel observed on the Belgian docks, a steady stream of ships carried expensive commodities such as rubber and ivory to Europe and left empty of any tradable goods (Hochschild 2). Once the international slave trade began to develop, Europe benefited further as its nations found an export market in their African colonies, trading European products for African slaves at an exchange rate hugely in the European’s favour (Wolf 198). Thus, while European economies flourished, Africans rapidly lost control of their economies as the Europeans depleted their resources and depopulated their lands, leaving the African nations impoverished and powerless (Hochschild 13).
Equally as important as the economic transformations, both Europeans and Africans underwent major paradigm shifts in the ways they perceived race. Originally, the Europeans and Africans imagined each other to be supernatural beings such as spirits of the dead, mythical birds, and three-faced one-legged lions (Hochschild 6, 15). After some interaction, the two races very briefly learned to view one another as human beings, trading with one another and discussing religious beliefs together (Hochschild 9). However, as the Europeans came to value objects such as ivory and gold more highly than African lives, the value of an African life became equal to the amount of money that could be extracted by his labour. By the time slave traders referred to little girls as worthless once the girls became to sick to work and politicians referred to their Africa porters as “beasts of burden”, the European paradigm had shifted completely, no longer regarding Africans as humans, but as animals (Hochschild 11, 119). As the Europeans wreaked death upon the African continent, Africans returned to their original conclusion: that the white men were ambassadors of the land of the dead (Hochschild 16). These shifts and changes left Africa and Europe’s economies and mentalities irreversibly transformed.
colonial blame
Stereotypes make everything simpler, easier to comprehend. If all boys liked blue and all girls liked pink, birthday shopping would be far easier; if all French men were terribly attractive and all British men had dreadfully snaggled teeth, meeting good-looking men would be somewhat more straightforward; if all those with white skin in the Congo had been evil villains and all those with dark skin innocent victims, Congolese colonial history would certainly be less convoluted and complex. Unfortunately, stereotypes are never completely accurate, making everyday life considerably more complicated than anyone would like it to be. It may be true that a great many Europeans contributed to the abuse of a great many Africans, but it is also true that some Europeans defended African rights, while much of the abuse, torture, and murder in the Congo was committed by Africans against Africans (Hochschild 122).
Typically, three avenues led Africans to work under Leopold and his companies, committing atrocities against their own people. One of the first groups of Africans to join Leopold’s forces was that of the African mercenaries (123). Until the arrival of the Europeans in Africa, tribes frequently made war on one another. Within Africa, loyalty depended not upon skin colour but upon clan and blood, implying that the mercenaries, imported from various regions, did not regard Africans from other tribes as their brothers. This perspective left the mercenaries free of any allegiance to the men and women they tortured and killed and free to view their position merely as an occupation, a means of earning a wage, rather than a way of life or personal decision.
The second group of Leopold’s soldiers were conscripted, forced into labour and often transferred to a different part of the Congo far from their familiar lands and tribe. This displacement led them, again, to feel less brotherly towards their victims, Africans of different tribes. In addition, their European supervisors outlined the choices clearly: obey and brutalize your fellow Africans or be beaten to death (Hochschild 122, 226). Any attempt to refuse, to behave humanely, to spare prisoners, still resulted in violence and imminent death. Chiefs turned their people over to Leopold to spare themselves and their families; men murdered, severed hands, beat other men, and fought to spare themselves from the same fate. The African soldiers could either bring back the hand of a dead man or have their own lifeless hand severed and presented in its stead.
The third avenue by which to enter Leopold’s employ was simply to enlist voluntarily. This group of soldiers acting by their own free will seems by far to be the cruelest, most inhumane of all Leopold’s soldiers. The enlisted men can only be understood through the study of humanity’s immense capacity to disassociate, to disconnect, to distance, to desensitize. In the words of a Nazi commandant overseeing Treblinka and Sobibor: “To tell the truth, one did become used to it” (Hochschild 122). With each murder, with each beating, the African soldiers became further dehumanized. Enlistment began with the simple urge to avoid pain, to avoid suffering, to avoid weakness, to desert the losing side for the winning side. One enlistee explained that he simply preferred “to be with the hunters than with the hunted” (Hochschild 127). Human selfishness and the overwhelming desire to escape pain even at someone else’s expense led the African enlistees to become completely desensitized to the pain of others, allowing them to continue down the paths of violence.
Humanity is caught in a constant battle between self-interest or selflessness, ever-torn between cruelty and kindness. The colonial Congo was one such battleground, ravaged by those who chose the ways of violence and greed over peace and justice.
Typically, three avenues led Africans to work under Leopold and his companies, committing atrocities against their own people. One of the first groups of Africans to join Leopold’s forces was that of the African mercenaries (123). Until the arrival of the Europeans in Africa, tribes frequently made war on one another. Within Africa, loyalty depended not upon skin colour but upon clan and blood, implying that the mercenaries, imported from various regions, did not regard Africans from other tribes as their brothers. This perspective left the mercenaries free of any allegiance to the men and women they tortured and killed and free to view their position merely as an occupation, a means of earning a wage, rather than a way of life or personal decision.
The second group of Leopold’s soldiers were conscripted, forced into labour and often transferred to a different part of the Congo far from their familiar lands and tribe. This displacement led them, again, to feel less brotherly towards their victims, Africans of different tribes. In addition, their European supervisors outlined the choices clearly: obey and brutalize your fellow Africans or be beaten to death (Hochschild 122, 226). Any attempt to refuse, to behave humanely, to spare prisoners, still resulted in violence and imminent death. Chiefs turned their people over to Leopold to spare themselves and their families; men murdered, severed hands, beat other men, and fought to spare themselves from the same fate. The African soldiers could either bring back the hand of a dead man or have their own lifeless hand severed and presented in its stead.
The third avenue by which to enter Leopold’s employ was simply to enlist voluntarily. This group of soldiers acting by their own free will seems by far to be the cruelest, most inhumane of all Leopold’s soldiers. The enlisted men can only be understood through the study of humanity’s immense capacity to disassociate, to disconnect, to distance, to desensitize. In the words of a Nazi commandant overseeing Treblinka and Sobibor: “To tell the truth, one did become used to it” (Hochschild 122). With each murder, with each beating, the African soldiers became further dehumanized. Enlistment began with the simple urge to avoid pain, to avoid suffering, to avoid weakness, to desert the losing side for the winning side. One enlistee explained that he simply preferred “to be with the hunters than with the hunted” (Hochschild 127). Human selfishness and the overwhelming desire to escape pain even at someone else’s expense led the African enlistees to become completely desensitized to the pain of others, allowing them to continue down the paths of violence.
Humanity is caught in a constant battle between self-interest or selflessness, ever-torn between cruelty and kindness. The colonial Congo was one such battleground, ravaged by those who chose the ways of violence and greed over peace and justice.
objectivity
Objectivity is the act of observing and understanding facts and their place in reality without said observations and understandings depending upon the features of the observer. Though objectivity is highly prized, especially among scientists, journalists, and researchers, complete objectivity is unattainable. Even on a purely physical level, it is impossible to see an object without the view depending upon the features of the observer.
Take for example a child’s view of the ocean from the beach. The child’s view is limited first by his location. If he is looking out at the ocean from the beach, he is primarily experiencing the waves and tides of the ocean. He has no concept of the ocean’s size or its dynamics from an aerial view. A second limitation is that of the child’s own physical body. His visual comprehension of the height of the ocean’s waves and the length and breadth of the entire body of water is almost entirely dependent on its size in relation to that of his own body. Third, the child’s view of the ocean is affected by his eyesight. Depending on his age, his eyesight could be less developed than that of an adult’s, limiting how much of the ocean or the horizon he can actually see. He could be near-sighted or farsighted; he could be wearing sunglasses. His vision would even be affected by his eye colour, as light eyes are more easily affected by sunlight and ultraviolet rays than dark eyes. The child’s view of the ocean is completely dependent on his own features, and, by definition, not objective.
In addition to these physical limitations, all humans have mental and emotional limitations that prevent them from thinking, reasoning, or understanding anything completely objectively. Shumacher’s list of ideas (as quoted by Pepper) that shape environmentalist though are examples of these handicaps; if humans are raised on the theories of evolution, competition, and natural selection, these subconscious beliefs will in turn form their beliefs about science, the government, and even the basic nature of man, a process detailed by Lewontin. However, these limitations should not be viewed exclusively as handicaps. As Zinn suggests, biases can be acceptable. He describes his own bias as “holding fast to certain fundamental values—the equal rights of all human beings…to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happyness.” This bias gives direction to his work and studies, as well as providing a purpose for his life: righting the wrongs and inequalities in the world. Each person’s system of beliefs includes a sense of a general purpose, and whether they believe so consciously or unconsciously, whether that purpose is self-serving or community-serving, logical or illogical, that purpose directs their opinions and actions.
Of course Pepper’s assertion that “having first made up our minds, frequently from an irrational base, about what we want, we all tend to look for ‘facts and figures’ to support our position” must also be taken into consideration. In that light, this entire essay is a collection of “facts and figures” supporting a belief already in place in my mind: the belief that pure objectivity is unattainable.
Take for example a child’s view of the ocean from the beach. The child’s view is limited first by his location. If he is looking out at the ocean from the beach, he is primarily experiencing the waves and tides of the ocean. He has no concept of the ocean’s size or its dynamics from an aerial view. A second limitation is that of the child’s own physical body. His visual comprehension of the height of the ocean’s waves and the length and breadth of the entire body of water is almost entirely dependent on its size in relation to that of his own body. Third, the child’s view of the ocean is affected by his eyesight. Depending on his age, his eyesight could be less developed than that of an adult’s, limiting how much of the ocean or the horizon he can actually see. He could be near-sighted or farsighted; he could be wearing sunglasses. His vision would even be affected by his eye colour, as light eyes are more easily affected by sunlight and ultraviolet rays than dark eyes. The child’s view of the ocean is completely dependent on his own features, and, by definition, not objective.
In addition to these physical limitations, all humans have mental and emotional limitations that prevent them from thinking, reasoning, or understanding anything completely objectively. Shumacher’s list of ideas (as quoted by Pepper) that shape environmentalist though are examples of these handicaps; if humans are raised on the theories of evolution, competition, and natural selection, these subconscious beliefs will in turn form their beliefs about science, the government, and even the basic nature of man, a process detailed by Lewontin. However, these limitations should not be viewed exclusively as handicaps. As Zinn suggests, biases can be acceptable. He describes his own bias as “holding fast to certain fundamental values—the equal rights of all human beings…to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happyness.” This bias gives direction to his work and studies, as well as providing a purpose for his life: righting the wrongs and inequalities in the world. Each person’s system of beliefs includes a sense of a general purpose, and whether they believe so consciously or unconsciously, whether that purpose is self-serving or community-serving, logical or illogical, that purpose directs their opinions and actions.
Of course Pepper’s assertion that “having first made up our minds, frequently from an irrational base, about what we want, we all tend to look for ‘facts and figures’ to support our position” must also be taken into consideration. In that light, this entire essay is a collection of “facts and figures” supporting a belief already in place in my mind: the belief that pure objectivity is unattainable.
genocide
When the spring rains came and caught us outside, we used to run to the ancient cemetery that marked the edge of our village and crouch beneath the memorial beside the slate wall. While we laughed and shivered and dripped, I would silently greet each of the tombstones surrounding the memorial. Hallo, Herr Silbereisen. Grüss Gott, Frau Stein. Guten Tag, Herr Brombacher. The same names were on the sandstone memorial, only instead of Friedl, Günter, instead of Rolf, Hans, instead of Gisela, Roland—sons, husbands, and brothers. Fifty-four names in all were carved onto the memorial, commemorating fallen German soldiers, functionaries of the most famous genocide of the modern age. Nazi murderers—Günter, Hans, Roland, men from a quiet village of vineyards, apple orchards and five hundred people.
When the spring rains came to Rwanda, a tall Tutsi couple, Chantal and Laurent Mbanda, told us stories of standing in the lobbies of government buildings in Washington DC, of begging day after day for the United States to intervene in Rwanda, and of being sent away unheard or ignored every night. We spent our nights at the Mbanda house and our days in Chantal’s New Hope children’s home. All of the home’s workers were widowed in the genocide. I remember standing downtown Kigali outside the Hotel des Milles Collines, waiting for the van and watching a man roll his wheelchair down the sidewalk across the road, pants knotted around the stumps of his legs, limbs taken from him by the Hutus. As I watched him, a truckload of men in pink jumpsuits holding brooms filed onto the curb and began to sweep the sidewalk around him—Hutus forgiven by the families of their victims and therefore allowed community service rather than a full jail sentence. Later, at the genocide memorial, I stood in a room filled with hundred of bones and thought about the men in pink and their families, so many of them refugees in the Congo after fleeing the forces of the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Hutu killers, Tutsi guerillas— forgiven street sweepers and freedom fighters.
When spring came to Kosovo six years ago, NATO troops shot at my father as he ran through the streets one March night. A horde of riot police and a mob armed with Molotov cocktails, shouting and torching a Serbian orthodox church, stood between him and our house where two men looting homes during the pogrom were holding my mother and brother at gunpoint. The floorboards of our house were already pockmarked with the cleat-marks of Serbian soldiers during the 1999 Kosovo genocide, our walls already had bullet holes in them, our street already had tank treads graven into the concrete, and Bill Clinton Boulevard already boasted a fifty-foot banner of the president beaming a hero’s smile down on the street below. Walking through the streets of Prishtinë in April after my family escaped the March violence unharmed, I saw the rows of photographs of missing Albanians, four years after the genocide, still hanging on the fence outside the parliament building. Uptown, the scorched Serbian Orthodox church stood empty on my street, its walls blackened and its windows dark. On the same block, apartment buildings remained abandoned, walls missing and entire floors bombed and burned during the 1999 NATO air strike. Serbian murderers, Albanian looters, lynchers, and mobs, NATO and UNMIK bombers and snipers—soldiers fighting to keep their country in one piece, men and women avenging their families, foreigners attempting to bring peace, equality, and justice to a place torn apart by violence.
I don’t know exactly what these instances, these memories, have in common, other than that they involve people killing one another in places far away from New York and the United Nations headquarters. And that they leave me feeling sick and impassioned and determined and protective—not only of the victims, oddly enough, but of the killers as well.
Even the smoothest of peacekeeping operations, even the most justifiable military interventions met with open arms, has moments of failure, whether that failure comes in the form of relapse, riot, resistance, or death. All attempts to make peace will inevitably result in some violence. But these attempts to make peace must not weaken in the face of difficulty. My elementary school roommate, Naomi, lived in Mostar, Bosnia, where the East Bank, the Muslim half of the city, had been completely leveled in the Serbs’ attempts to exterminate the Bosnians. One of my high school roommates, Alyssa, left her birthplace, the Congo, with the emergency evacuation helicopters that came during the civil war and has never returned. My friend Johann sat through junior prom knowing only that his parents’ village in Darfur had been attacked and overrun, and that his entire family was most likely dead. Genocide and violence cannot continue to pervade the lives of innocents around the world. And no matter the cost, those in power cannot continue to ignore the responsibility they have, not only to keep peace, but to make peace.
Ibrahim Mehmeti, a man working in Skopje with refugees from the Kosovo genocide, remarked about international community’s criticism of NATO’s violent intervention: “I know that the pacifist opposition to the bombing was strong. Pacifism is a nice thing. I am the biggest pacifist. But this is not pacifism, to stand by when people are being killed. That is like when a man is drowning, and you will not jump in the lake to save him, because your shoes are dirty and you are an environmentalist.”
When the spring rains came to Rwanda, a tall Tutsi couple, Chantal and Laurent Mbanda, told us stories of standing in the lobbies of government buildings in Washington DC, of begging day after day for the United States to intervene in Rwanda, and of being sent away unheard or ignored every night. We spent our nights at the Mbanda house and our days in Chantal’s New Hope children’s home. All of the home’s workers were widowed in the genocide. I remember standing downtown Kigali outside the Hotel des Milles Collines, waiting for the van and watching a man roll his wheelchair down the sidewalk across the road, pants knotted around the stumps of his legs, limbs taken from him by the Hutus. As I watched him, a truckload of men in pink jumpsuits holding brooms filed onto the curb and began to sweep the sidewalk around him—Hutus forgiven by the families of their victims and therefore allowed community service rather than a full jail sentence. Later, at the genocide memorial, I stood in a room filled with hundred of bones and thought about the men in pink and their families, so many of them refugees in the Congo after fleeing the forces of the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Hutu killers, Tutsi guerillas— forgiven street sweepers and freedom fighters.
When spring came to Kosovo six years ago, NATO troops shot at my father as he ran through the streets one March night. A horde of riot police and a mob armed with Molotov cocktails, shouting and torching a Serbian orthodox church, stood between him and our house where two men looting homes during the pogrom were holding my mother and brother at gunpoint. The floorboards of our house were already pockmarked with the cleat-marks of Serbian soldiers during the 1999 Kosovo genocide, our walls already had bullet holes in them, our street already had tank treads graven into the concrete, and Bill Clinton Boulevard already boasted a fifty-foot banner of the president beaming a hero’s smile down on the street below. Walking through the streets of Prishtinë in April after my family escaped the March violence unharmed, I saw the rows of photographs of missing Albanians, four years after the genocide, still hanging on the fence outside the parliament building. Uptown, the scorched Serbian Orthodox church stood empty on my street, its walls blackened and its windows dark. On the same block, apartment buildings remained abandoned, walls missing and entire floors bombed and burned during the 1999 NATO air strike. Serbian murderers, Albanian looters, lynchers, and mobs, NATO and UNMIK bombers and snipers—soldiers fighting to keep their country in one piece, men and women avenging their families, foreigners attempting to bring peace, equality, and justice to a place torn apart by violence.
I don’t know exactly what these instances, these memories, have in common, other than that they involve people killing one another in places far away from New York and the United Nations headquarters. And that they leave me feeling sick and impassioned and determined and protective—not only of the victims, oddly enough, but of the killers as well.
Even the smoothest of peacekeeping operations, even the most justifiable military interventions met with open arms, has moments of failure, whether that failure comes in the form of relapse, riot, resistance, or death. All attempts to make peace will inevitably result in some violence. But these attempts to make peace must not weaken in the face of difficulty. My elementary school roommate, Naomi, lived in Mostar, Bosnia, where the East Bank, the Muslim half of the city, had been completely leveled in the Serbs’ attempts to exterminate the Bosnians. One of my high school roommates, Alyssa, left her birthplace, the Congo, with the emergency evacuation helicopters that came during the civil war and has never returned. My friend Johann sat through junior prom knowing only that his parents’ village in Darfur had been attacked and overrun, and that his entire family was most likely dead. Genocide and violence cannot continue to pervade the lives of innocents around the world. And no matter the cost, those in power cannot continue to ignore the responsibility they have, not only to keep peace, but to make peace.
Ibrahim Mehmeti, a man working in Skopje with refugees from the Kosovo genocide, remarked about international community’s criticism of NATO’s violent intervention: “I know that the pacifist opposition to the bombing was strong. Pacifism is a nice thing. I am the biggest pacifist. But this is not pacifism, to stand by when people are being killed. That is like when a man is drowning, and you will not jump in the lake to save him, because your shoes are dirty and you are an environmentalist.”
6.7.11
many waters cannot quench love (though tall walls may)
place me like a seal over your heart; love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. it burns like a blazing fire, like a mighty flame.
there is an army of lovers
somewhere in the countryside,
making their way towards our city,
a lover’s army following a frail
basil-eyed bride following a lion.
we are the industrial jericho,
no angry, bearded, thundercloud
god to topple our unfalling walls.
before my blue eyes faded grey, i wore a cherry
blossom behind my ear, far
before i met the north wind and his furtive
invitation up the brown bottle stairs
an alaskan harbour.
i married the boats and their seabirds,
i married the ships and their holds,
to keep the wind at bay
before i knew the wind and his sister,
the arctic sea, had slipped into the hollow
of my chest, a whistling cradle leaking cold.
the lovers sing, beardless, coral-cheeked,
cherry-blossom eyed;
our city grows slick and silver.
she steps beside the lion,
his mane aflame.
they are chanting:
there is an army of lovers
somewhere in the countryside,
making their way towards our city,
a lover’s army following a frail
basil-eyed bride following a lion.
we are the industrial jericho,
no angry, bearded, thundercloud
god to topple our unfalling walls.
before my blue eyes faded grey, i wore a cherry
blossom behind my ear, far
before i met the north wind and his furtive
invitation up the brown bottle stairs
an alaskan harbour.
i married the boats and their seabirds,
i married the ships and their holds,
to keep the wind at bay
before i knew the wind and his sister,
the arctic sea, had slipped into the hollow
of my chest, a whistling cradle leaking cold.
the lovers sing, beardless, coral-cheeked,
cherry-blossom eyed;
our city grows slick and silver.
she steps beside the lion,
his mane aflame.
they are chanting:
*the man who escaped the minotaur’s labyrinth
theseus* lent me a spool of rough red wool thread
that i forgot to tie to my doorknob
and instead knit into mittens.
when we were younger
uncle gideon said that if we waved at planes
skating across the sky’s frozen ceiling
their bellies would creak open
and drop candy canes down to us.
uncle gideon knocked a shivering wren
out of the sky with a stone
that cracked the top of the pond
and your head, craned toward the planes,
splintered from the trunk of your neck
and slipped earthward to grow in the valley
between your china shoulder blades,
to ever stare up.
god let a string of light bulbs down
from his trapdoor and asked
if we wanted to come up for tea,
but you said his tea choked you—
bitter without honey
and i couldn’t leave you behind.
the dim bulbs burned out,
tapping against the blank bright white sky.
i wander naked except for
my red wool mittens
and the frigid, flickering light
of a clicking projector
showing reruns of silent films
on my back.
that i forgot to tie to my doorknob
and instead knit into mittens.
when we were younger
uncle gideon said that if we waved at planes
skating across the sky’s frozen ceiling
their bellies would creak open
and drop candy canes down to us.
uncle gideon knocked a shivering wren
out of the sky with a stone
that cracked the top of the pond
and your head, craned toward the planes,
splintered from the trunk of your neck
and slipped earthward to grow in the valley
between your china shoulder blades,
to ever stare up.
god let a string of light bulbs down
from his trapdoor and asked
if we wanted to come up for tea,
but you said his tea choked you—
bitter without honey
and i couldn’t leave you behind.
the dim bulbs burned out,
tapping against the blank bright white sky.
i wander naked except for
my red wool mittens
and the frigid, flickering light
of a clicking projector
showing reruns of silent films
on my back.
one day we will live in windmills, side by side and twirling:
2010
this house is too large.
i rattle against the walls
like the only coin in a beggar’s tin cup,
my cheeks dented in like a lost tin can.
yours is too small even for the two of you.
i pray your husband never sprouts corners,
grows flat and square.
the baby is coming in august.
where will he sleep?
2005-2008
the night is crammed up against our ribs,
asleep, you catch at my hair and tremble
“where are you?”
“where are you?”
“where are you?”
2009
you went north with a white cat.
i went west with a box of books.
do you remember the day,
before you left, we swam
in the pond in our clothes?
i knotted my skirt up around my waist;
you kept your legs a secret.
2010
i have seen the scars.
i have seen your knees.
we will farm the breeze, catch it in nets streaming with air.
we will weave blankets out of the wind,
yellow for me, orange for you, green for your husband,
and for the baby: blue.
this house is too large.
i rattle against the walls
like the only coin in a beggar’s tin cup,
my cheeks dented in like a lost tin can.
yours is too small even for the two of you.
i pray your husband never sprouts corners,
grows flat and square.
the baby is coming in august.
where will he sleep?
2005-2008
the night is crammed up against our ribs,
asleep, you catch at my hair and tremble
“where are you?”
“where are you?”
“where are you?”
2009
you went north with a white cat.
i went west with a box of books.
do you remember the day,
before you left, we swam
in the pond in our clothes?
i knotted my skirt up around my waist;
you kept your legs a secret.
2010
i have seen the scars.
i have seen your knees.
we will farm the breeze, catch it in nets streaming with air.
we will weave blankets out of the wind,
yellow for me, orange for you, green for your husband,
and for the baby: blue.
the albanians call june the cherry month
darling persephone:
they named you she who destroys the light and when you left us, the sun went out.
i wonder somedays why you traded your meadows and mother for four or seven or eight pomegranate seeds and then i remember that everyone who hadn’t lost you lied to you.
last weekend you clawed through the dirt ceiling and higher still, the sky’s blue caked under your nails, and for the first time in months i felt warm.
you live always in warmth, six coated in sun and six with the blanket of the earth pulled up to your chin, thousands of stagnant sighing souls crammed up against your sides.
am i jealous?
we all ask you if you miss the stars, the sea, the breeze, but i want to ask you:
do you miss the dark, persephone?
the lights of the underworld burn bright, i think.
i see them through my eyelids.
red.
yellow.
white.
do you remember april nights?
they named you she who destroys the light and when you left us, the sun went out.
i wonder somedays why you traded your meadows and mother for four or seven or eight pomegranate seeds and then i remember that everyone who hadn’t lost you lied to you.
last weekend you clawed through the dirt ceiling and higher still, the sky’s blue caked under your nails, and for the first time in months i felt warm.
you live always in warmth, six coated in sun and six with the blanket of the earth pulled up to your chin, thousands of stagnant sighing souls crammed up against your sides.
am i jealous?
we all ask you if you miss the stars, the sea, the breeze, but i want to ask you:
do you miss the dark, persephone?
the lights of the underworld burn bright, i think.
i see them through my eyelids.
red.
yellow.
white.
do you remember april nights?
the monks' insomnia
the things that trap us all—some are massive and heavy and full of corners, but somehow cactus sap and celebrities seem titanic even though they fit into pots and planes. the third man, his trap is in a plane, and i don’t know if he wants to be them or their planes or anything but one person, but it is a lucky thing that planes have lights on their wings.
traps are subjective. i mean, i know we all know that everything is subjective. but dennis thinks that the monastery is subjective and the third man thinks the plane is subjective and i just want us all to know that subjective things are still titanic.
dennis knows that. because he said, “schoolgirl obsession with the cheap doings of tv starlets breaks everybody’s hearts.” yes, dennis. he knows stuff. like when he said that each person is one chance or set of days. i think maybe that if anyone else had called me that, i might have argued, but i know that dennis doesn’t mean “one set of days” in a small way, but in a big and true way. he isn’t demeaning, he is only saying that even sets of thousands days look small when i can hold them in the palm of my hand, or drop and break them.
************************************************************************************
after rain:
a man destroyed by his garden and the wagons of the dead (because we all think the dead are mute, but the truth is that the dead are a riotous, boisterous, clamorous crowd that crush the sky and our fathers into mutes).
************************************************************************************
bring in the gods:
i did not write this, only made it into small and more broken lines.
but it is beautiful.
“we don’t have the knack for eating what we are living...”
“what do you want?”
“to keep what i already have.”
“you ask too much.”
“then you are at peace.”
“i am not at peace. i want to fail. i am hungry for what i am becoming.”
i thought this: i want to keep what i have and steal what i am to become. i want them both and i want to be myself in layers, keeping what i have under on a secret inside skin, and putting what i become over the top like a new coat of paint over some rust and jewels, until i am layered like a tree, by years and years and hunger.
traps are subjective. i mean, i know we all know that everything is subjective. but dennis thinks that the monastery is subjective and the third man thinks the plane is subjective and i just want us all to know that subjective things are still titanic.
dennis knows that. because he said, “schoolgirl obsession with the cheap doings of tv starlets breaks everybody’s hearts.” yes, dennis. he knows stuff. like when he said that each person is one chance or set of days. i think maybe that if anyone else had called me that, i might have argued, but i know that dennis doesn’t mean “one set of days” in a small way, but in a big and true way. he isn’t demeaning, he is only saying that even sets of thousands days look small when i can hold them in the palm of my hand, or drop and break them.
************************************************************************************
after rain:
a man destroyed by his garden and the wagons of the dead (because we all think the dead are mute, but the truth is that the dead are a riotous, boisterous, clamorous crowd that crush the sky and our fathers into mutes).
************************************************************************************
bring in the gods:
i did not write this, only made it into small and more broken lines.
but it is beautiful.
“we don’t have the knack for eating what we are living...”
“what do you want?”
“to keep what i already have.”
“you ask too much.”
“then you are at peace.”
“i am not at peace. i want to fail. i am hungry for what i am becoming.”
i thought this: i want to keep what i have and steal what i am to become. i want them both and i want to be myself in layers, keeping what i have under on a secret inside skin, and putting what i become over the top like a new coat of paint over some rust and jewels, until i am layered like a tree, by years and years and hunger.
not so anonymous after all
i had a friend who once wore a long pink dress with lace around the collar and ruffles at the bottom and my friend was a man named johann, the type that carried around an angry austrian wrench longer than my arm and told me that so as not to be forgotten he would write his name on the dome of st. peter’s basilica. we all laughed until i screamed and dan turned, wild and still, towards a corner, whispering, “oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck” because one moment we were looking down, watching the city breathe and, the next, johann eclipsed rome.
he was afraid of being forgotten by himself, but he was even more afraid that he might never die. we all knew and he knew as well that no one would ever forget johann because once he climbed a tree and it bent in half and threw off its leaves at his feet when he stood before it in a gas mask.
i found him on a street corner in eastern europe, sitting on the curb with a white sack of clothes and a bible, watching traffic and letting yellow dust gather on his red pants. the next morning he was arguing with a taxi driver in arabic. when johann won, because johann always wins, he put me in the taxi across three other people, cradled in their laps, and told me not to let the police see me.
the windows and doors were missing, their gaping frames choked with barbed wire and plastic bags, caught like flies in a spider’s web. it was the enemy’s church, they had been building it for years, and when the bombs drove them out, it refused to be touched. johann walked up the brick wall and put me in the bell tower.
we were the only ones to stand in the balcony where the pulpit and its priest should have gone, looking down, watching to see if the empty cathedral had breath. my father told me a year later that it had a few breaths, all stolen and hidden.
it almost seemed like someone forgot to bring the white soldiers home when the war ended nine years ago, but they were left there on purpose, to keep the peace.
one soldier from across the ocean kept everyone’s peace but his own and though we were not the only ones to stand in that balcony, we were the only ones to come down the rungs growing deep in the grey wall alive.
johann wanted a mustache to match his dress, but the mustache was for the french foreign legion, and the french foreign legion was not for johann’s dress. he kayaked up the nile instead until the police caught him. they never did catch me in that turkish man’s taxi cab.
he was afraid of being forgotten by himself, but he was even more afraid that he might never die. we all knew and he knew as well that no one would ever forget johann because once he climbed a tree and it bent in half and threw off its leaves at his feet when he stood before it in a gas mask.
i found him on a street corner in eastern europe, sitting on the curb with a white sack of clothes and a bible, watching traffic and letting yellow dust gather on his red pants. the next morning he was arguing with a taxi driver in arabic. when johann won, because johann always wins, he put me in the taxi across three other people, cradled in their laps, and told me not to let the police see me.
the windows and doors were missing, their gaping frames choked with barbed wire and plastic bags, caught like flies in a spider’s web. it was the enemy’s church, they had been building it for years, and when the bombs drove them out, it refused to be touched. johann walked up the brick wall and put me in the bell tower.
we were the only ones to stand in the balcony where the pulpit and its priest should have gone, looking down, watching to see if the empty cathedral had breath. my father told me a year later that it had a few breaths, all stolen and hidden.
it almost seemed like someone forgot to bring the white soldiers home when the war ended nine years ago, but they were left there on purpose, to keep the peace.
one soldier from across the ocean kept everyone’s peace but his own and though we were not the only ones to stand in that balcony, we were the only ones to come down the rungs growing deep in the grey wall alive.
johann wanted a mustache to match his dress, but the mustache was for the french foreign legion, and the french foreign legion was not for johann’s dress. he kayaked up the nile instead until the police caught him. they never did catch me in that turkish man’s taxi cab.
world war two was handwritten
some things float when they should not, like lamps in the dining room, and some things fly when then should not, like my five-year-old self swinging on my mother’s hand across the gap between the train cars. my father held all our bags and someone must have had my baby sister, but all i could see was the long tunnel of train cars lined up like tin can telephones. i walked the tightrope between, swaying and watching the tracks clatter beneath my feet.
i lay awake last night after an hour of coaxing my shoulders into a curl against my mattress, staring at the rectangle of yellow light coming from the kitchen of the girl with no soul. my window shade lay crumpled on the ground. i do not know whether it was awake or asleep, although i do know it was not curled, but heaped. i lay awake because needed to think of a language without the letter n. albanian has no w, chinese no th, german no ch, but how could anyone’s world be like mine without the letter n? if we took it away, there would be no perëndisë, no bi-wen-ya, no no one, no nowhere, no nothing, no naked, no not, no no,. but there would still be krieg, no matter how many letters we subtracted from our ledgers and abacuses.
speaking of things subtracted and things added and things revealed that should have been left hidden: should anything be left hidden? perhaps bodies in the cemetery, perhaps certain tufts of hair (although perhaps not), perhaps the identical gap in her uncle’s smile. her father always had perfect teeth.
people are staring in my window again, friends of the girl with no soul and newly bleached hair. they are all boys, they all smoke great puffs of burning tobacco that catch, writhing, in the screen of my window, they all talk too loudly when they are drunk and i know who they love. it is only fair that i know. they know the shape of my mouth when i sleep.
they say and i know that i lack a centre: indian boxes all stacked inside each other and holding nothing, but so dense and orange without cause. even now, hello dolly is a siren in my ear, iceland the muse in the other and one of my eardrums has been shattered since that day our airplane flew too high. and in between, who knows, other than a wedding ring my father found on the ground in thailand that makes me someone’s bride, someone with the eyes of a untamed lion demanding my surrender.
i am my vulture-eyed lover’s fountain pen, the length of my body running green and deep.
the light in the kitchen has gone out and no one watches me lying in a curl on my mattress. perhaps she has a soul after all, although there is a loaf of bread lying in the roof’s corner slashed into strips the size of the marbled spoons my mother bought me.
i lay awake last night after an hour of coaxing my shoulders into a curl against my mattress, staring at the rectangle of yellow light coming from the kitchen of the girl with no soul. my window shade lay crumpled on the ground. i do not know whether it was awake or asleep, although i do know it was not curled, but heaped. i lay awake because needed to think of a language without the letter n. albanian has no w, chinese no th, german no ch, but how could anyone’s world be like mine without the letter n? if we took it away, there would be no perëndisë, no bi-wen-ya, no no one, no nowhere, no nothing, no naked, no not, no no,. but there would still be krieg, no matter how many letters we subtracted from our ledgers and abacuses.
speaking of things subtracted and things added and things revealed that should have been left hidden: should anything be left hidden? perhaps bodies in the cemetery, perhaps certain tufts of hair (although perhaps not), perhaps the identical gap in her uncle’s smile. her father always had perfect teeth.
people are staring in my window again, friends of the girl with no soul and newly bleached hair. they are all boys, they all smoke great puffs of burning tobacco that catch, writhing, in the screen of my window, they all talk too loudly when they are drunk and i know who they love. it is only fair that i know. they know the shape of my mouth when i sleep.
they say and i know that i lack a centre: indian boxes all stacked inside each other and holding nothing, but so dense and orange without cause. even now, hello dolly is a siren in my ear, iceland the muse in the other and one of my eardrums has been shattered since that day our airplane flew too high. and in between, who knows, other than a wedding ring my father found on the ground in thailand that makes me someone’s bride, someone with the eyes of a untamed lion demanding my surrender.
i am my vulture-eyed lover’s fountain pen, the length of my body running green and deep.
the light in the kitchen has gone out and no one watches me lying in a curl on my mattress. perhaps she has a soul after all, although there is a loaf of bread lying in the roof’s corner slashed into strips the size of the marbled spoons my mother bought me.
and here we are, miles even from march
thirty cigarette butts in the snow outside my window are
a constellation of my seventh grade braids,
trapped under my elbows in every armchair,
to make a dense wig for some girl
better off bald.
the winter, my warden, squints at me while i
decide to dream
not of every or any armchair, but of
my grandmother’s porch staring serenely,
crouched beside the pregnant tomatoes,
trailing its finger through heaps of soil, tracing its name in the—
you need me again
to listen to you curse and weep and swear you
won’t go inside until a flickering satellite drops on your head,
sitting on the hill with a sullen, raging satchel you forgot to pack,
slouching home before orange and black crawl into the sky.
last year’s red-shingled attic leaked, let in the melt in march,
my mattress damp, the meadow between my shoulders molded.
whenever i moved and whenever i didn’t,
(my back rigid and rusting) my shirt gaped, i shivered and sweat.
my mind, though, still remembered how to tulip.
this january, with the freeze lounging on the sills,
a creased woman with a mustache pushes a shopping cart
piled with red plants through my mother’s cathedral.
i am the silent tower bell, my stagnant tongue and bronze ear
(eternally mute, ever undeaf—to you and your satellites)
lying across two pews like a bridge to nowhere.
i pluck out my eyelashes one by one.
a man with half a mouth and an umbrella mutters, no coffee,
i’ve been wearing the same shadows for days.
a constellation of my seventh grade braids,
trapped under my elbows in every armchair,
to make a dense wig for some girl
better off bald.
the winter, my warden, squints at me while i
decide to dream
not of every or any armchair, but of
my grandmother’s porch staring serenely,
crouched beside the pregnant tomatoes,
trailing its finger through heaps of soil, tracing its name in the—
you need me again
to listen to you curse and weep and swear you
won’t go inside until a flickering satellite drops on your head,
sitting on the hill with a sullen, raging satchel you forgot to pack,
slouching home before orange and black crawl into the sky.
last year’s red-shingled attic leaked, let in the melt in march,
my mattress damp, the meadow between my shoulders molded.
whenever i moved and whenever i didn’t,
(my back rigid and rusting) my shirt gaped, i shivered and sweat.
my mind, though, still remembered how to tulip.
this january, with the freeze lounging on the sills,
a creased woman with a mustache pushes a shopping cart
piled with red plants through my mother’s cathedral.
i am the silent tower bell, my stagnant tongue and bronze ear
(eternally mute, ever undeaf—to you and your satellites)
lying across two pews like a bridge to nowhere.
i pluck out my eyelashes one by one.
a man with half a mouth and an umbrella mutters, no coffee,
i’ve been wearing the same shadows for days.
like standing in church with no lights and long arms, or falling in love
my insides, the cluttered parts, grow cold like the white winter
sun on a woman’s blue silk fan, drifting back and
forth and back.
there was something that used to be tucked in a corner down there,
in the muddled and mismatched places,
kept in a corner or a closet,
something i misplaced that came back and now breaks
in the mornings, when the curtains part
and i know the world like adam knew eve in all her shining,
the drum takes me
a cage, a drum, a small brown bird—am i ready to trade my soul?
the grass is bluer, teal like my grandfather and his ducks,
behind the long, bronze, scarred bars.
teal like my grandfather and his berry bushes,
his cans and cans of jam and his cracking pond,
the timbre of an empty cowbell,
and pulsing, pulsing, pulsing,
your thighs forcing your bike up the hill,
and knowing the top is ours.
the cluttered parts flutter, frosted.
a drum is a cage that speaks true.
sun on a woman’s blue silk fan, drifting back and
forth and back.
there was something that used to be tucked in a corner down there,
in the muddled and mismatched places,
kept in a corner or a closet,
something i misplaced that came back and now breaks
in the mornings, when the curtains part
and i know the world like adam knew eve in all her shining,
the drum takes me
a cage, a drum, a small brown bird—am i ready to trade my soul?
the grass is bluer, teal like my grandfather and his ducks,
behind the long, bronze, scarred bars.
teal like my grandfather and his berry bushes,
his cans and cans of jam and his cracking pond,
the timbre of an empty cowbell,
and pulsing, pulsing, pulsing,
your thighs forcing your bike up the hill,
and knowing the top is ours.
the cluttered parts flutter, frosted.
a drum is a cage that speaks true.
louise in love
louise, ham, lydia, charles gordon, and isabella are traveling nowhere, or so it would seem.
some days they travel by train (travel is easy by train), other days they sleep on hideabeds in boats, and at least once louise and ham drove to the top of a forest fire and sat in their car at the top of the hill, watching the trees grow back into their roots. the clairvoyant behind the beaded screen told louise first that she had been born on an eclipse and then she would be going on a journey. but in the deepest part of her, she always was a journey.
we all are journeys because we all end up somewhere different than where we began—not our bodies, both because some of us wither in the same roots we had on when our seeds were planted and because then we would be on a journey. but we all are journeys.
it is odd that louise should be a journey—she is both so full of the broadest, thickest thoughts and so empty of all else that neither part seems able to traverse anywhere, only to spread wide like too much syrup or hang in a vacuum of sheerness.
louise begins as will without fear, or object, other than to name dogs “lucky to be alive” and to learn about the six knobs controlling the night and the rudderless day. but in truth, she was wary, reading to faint onto a mirror to be whole or to reckon the sums of orchestras and attractions. ham is kept outside in the yard, until louise was ready for him to stop her ticking. even then, she is afraid, because for her, loving is needing and ham might not lend an ear forever, even in exchange for a bed wider than one. louise is a hurricranium.
louise ends believing ham, that love is a childhood dog bite, borne in silence and pain and trapped in a vibrant drama, for “the boat could not be capsized as long as someone listened.” louise ends fumbling in the dark, with ham in emptiness and nothingness, made into nothing. she who was will skates across the syrup to find that vastness is a vacuum of sheerness. “nothing but nothing can save us.”
perhaps it is true that to be saved, your eyes must make a retreat back, back, and still back.
but in the long run, what louise thought was a sea of nothing was truly a forest of fire lit like an ancient woman’s cake, wax dribbling into the frosting and leaves dribbling into the soil.
some days they travel by train (travel is easy by train), other days they sleep on hideabeds in boats, and at least once louise and ham drove to the top of a forest fire and sat in their car at the top of the hill, watching the trees grow back into their roots. the clairvoyant behind the beaded screen told louise first that she had been born on an eclipse and then she would be going on a journey. but in the deepest part of her, she always was a journey.
we all are journeys because we all end up somewhere different than where we began—not our bodies, both because some of us wither in the same roots we had on when our seeds were planted and because then we would be on a journey. but we all are journeys.
it is odd that louise should be a journey—she is both so full of the broadest, thickest thoughts and so empty of all else that neither part seems able to traverse anywhere, only to spread wide like too much syrup or hang in a vacuum of sheerness.
louise begins as will without fear, or object, other than to name dogs “lucky to be alive” and to learn about the six knobs controlling the night and the rudderless day. but in truth, she was wary, reading to faint onto a mirror to be whole or to reckon the sums of orchestras and attractions. ham is kept outside in the yard, until louise was ready for him to stop her ticking. even then, she is afraid, because for her, loving is needing and ham might not lend an ear forever, even in exchange for a bed wider than one. louise is a hurricranium.
louise ends believing ham, that love is a childhood dog bite, borne in silence and pain and trapped in a vibrant drama, for “the boat could not be capsized as long as someone listened.” louise ends fumbling in the dark, with ham in emptiness and nothingness, made into nothing. she who was will skates across the syrup to find that vastness is a vacuum of sheerness. “nothing but nothing can save us.”
perhaps it is true that to be saved, your eyes must make a retreat back, back, and still back.
but in the long run, what louise thought was a sea of nothing was truly a forest of fire lit like an ancient woman’s cake, wax dribbling into the frosting and leaves dribbling into the soil.
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