Sculpture

This may be familiar to some:

Michael: A Story about Vomit from My Summer Vacation (which is far less debaucherous than it sounds)

I had just crossed the midpoint of my journey, about six weeks in. I was leaving Charlotte, North Carolina for Washington, DC. But as was always the case, it was much more than place I was leaving and much more than place I was moving toward. It was a ten-hour bus ride between love and death, or between death and love; which is which, I am not sure.

These are stories for another day, but the very short of it is that in Charlotte I madly fell for a fellow, fully knowing the entire time that the whole matter had to be unbearably, impossibly temporary. And in DC, I didn’t know any of this was going to happen of course, but I arrived in town the same day as a member of the community I was visiting passed away and sat with strangers in their grieving.

Between those things was still another overnight Greyhound bus ride and still another morning of waking up upright, stiff of body from the awkward seating, languid otherwise from the lameness of heartbreak. And not too long after I woke up, somewhere about 25 minutes outside of Richmond, a woman vomited on her way out the bus. Putrid barf, right in the middle of the aisle.

Bruises

I was told to detach myself
Not to get too emotionally invested
When you’re spending time with those people
Some painful falls are to be expected

But a “bad apple” is still an apple
And what’s grace without it?

See I made the mistake of falling in love
with a place that’s chaos like a barn
mangy as that one with a manger and a baby
(who we pretend didn’t poop* on himself
and spit up when he was eating)

and I let my heart get tied up
in dangerous things
in too many people
so that each life boat rope they threw me
wrapped around my heart and
knotted
it
tight

The coarse fibers of twine
have kept me up at night
and ropes cut away
leave the worst indentations
nicks and bruises

But is the Sacred Heart of Jesus
just a glowing valentine
outside a white man’s chest
a plastic candy heart
he won’t even look at

or is his skin ripped and raw
above the bent bars of a ribcage
a heart that broke loose
its tissues bruised
and frayed?

I used to spend so much time afraid
to use this electric muscle
whose first job was to
keep pumping outward
I kept it behind my own bone walls
But every chest
rises
and
falls

And what is grace without
a rise and a fall?

Alas

“Alas. It is so easy to talk, and so hard to do. It is so easy to love people in theory. But anyway, we do hang on to those principles that each should be the least, should take the least place, that each should take less, so that others can have more, that each should regard himself as the worst. And then we go ahead and fall seven times daily, and seven times seven.”
—Dorothy Day

Flying (2011, Dec 2)

I’ll add this to the list of phases I think everyone goes through: Everyone, at some point, or another wishes she could fly. Everyone has some desire to get away and get above, some longing to have enough faith and hope that if you jump, if you let go of the ground, you will be lifted.

But when we play the little game where you name your ideal superPower and people get bored with an old answer, we box it in stipulations.

Do you have wings?
–Wouldn’t you get tired flapping them? What kind of superpower is that?
—-So, like angel wings? Or bat wings?
So, fine, you don’t have wings. Do you just spread your arms out?
–That’s it?
—-Doesn’t it hurt?
Well, can everyone else fly?
–Then are there traffic laws in the sky?
—-But what if too many people are flying? You can’t just have everyone flying.

And so we become preoccupied with the requirements, the attire, the equipment, the authority, the rules involved, the words we use, who gets it, who doesn’t, what we call it, when we do it…when all we wanted was to take one gracious leap of faith and soar.

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About the Haikube Free-Writes:
Haikubes are a set of cubes with words printed on them, like magnetic poetry with a multidimensional, randomizing twist. (I got a box as a Christmas/birthday present this past year—thanks, sis!) Many mornings I pull one from the box, roll it, and write a small page prompted by whatever word I roll.

Tired Old Revelations [updated]

“I keep running into this question: why did I leave to learn about community? It’s a little ironic, no? I am at this point now where I am tired and not sure what I’m doing. I recognize that a week (or less) is no time at all to get to know people or a place, and it is emotionally exhausting to go through the cycle of meeting them, awkwardly getting to know them, finally feeling warm and at home, and then leaving indefinitely. There’s a good chance I’ve spent the summer living with people I’ll mostly never see again and possibly never talk to again. And yet when I think back on those things about Seattle, the places I bid my hasta luegos to, I do not feel homesick for them. Not exactly. I feel, if anything, more homesick for myself, mourning that I don’t love Seattle enough to miss it. It’s like this: almost everyone wants to be in love. You can’t make yourself be in love, even with a place you know very well.

I don’t dislike Seattle, but I don’t know that I’m ready to go back to it. At the same time, I kind of long to be in one place and retreat and sit down and write for awhile and not be afraid I’m wasting my time just sitting.

I will get there.”

—from a letter I sent from Philadelphia

I think this will always be about more than Seattle. 

beside a yucca in new mexico, july 14th

I am
finally letting myself hear
that God
in the quiet.
It is like two friends sitting
in silence
yet still
sharing heart.
The greatest teachers have tried to tell me
that God
is in the still small voice, in the wind,
yet crying,
“Wind, where are you?“
the only wind I heard
was my own.
It is good to watch your breath
blow through the trees,
but where does
that breath
come from?
Today I heard the wind
say what she has been saying
all her life:

“Here I am.”

I’m going to be inflammatory for once, but I’m going to be myself: free-written thoughts and questions about the Occupy encampment

I say this with the utmost humility, admitting that I have not yet camped out a full night at the Occupation. I wavered at first on my feelings regarding the movement, and though I’ve fully resolved to stand/sit in support, I still have my criticisms and skepticism (as I tend to with most things). Yet even though I’ve been involved with the movement in other ways (and even if I were involved in that way), I have not heard every story. Not to mention, I wrote this in one sitting, propelled by emotions and questions more than a well thought-out, methodical examination. Take what I say (take what everyone says) with a grain of salt.

That all said, I want to remind you: We’re a baby movement.

This whole shabang has only been going on for two months. And maybe the dramatic eviction in NYC (as well as the continual eviction attempts in other cities) should be taken as a hint to move into the next step.

In other words, do we need to camp? Maybe it’s time to focus on listening, direct actions, and everything else that’s a part of the movement, instead of making the camp our image. Don’t get caught up in the two-month solution: keep looking at the 40(plus)-year problem and listen for the best response.

I also write this as an invitation to thoughtful explanations for the necessity of the camp. I’ll present my skepticism, but I’m thoroughly willing to hear you out about why the camp matters.

Is it symbolic? Yes. It’s the public reclaiming public space, and it models an alternative society developed around people and by people off of independent community resources.

But it doesn’t have to be the center of our speech. The movement is about much more than the space.

If it were about creating a safe space and a listening community and supportive solidarity for the people who’ve been sleeping outside much longer than two months, it would make more sense to me, but from what I’ve observed, this isn’t always/often the case. If it were about keeping vigil and showing our faces to banks and corporations and lawmakers, or if it were about creating a visual presence that would call the attention of those in the 99% who are less inclined to rabblerouse, I might dig that, but in that case I’m not sure if it’s that successful anymore, especially now that many occupations are moving away from financial centers in order to be safe.

Right now, unfortunately, I see the camp creating more distance, more distrust, more drama within the movement. People see the camp on the TV news and think it’s just a bunch of rabblerousers and distance themselves from it; the reality is, there are people in the 99% who watch TV or read the local paper, who claim opposition to the movement because it seems so extreme and exclusive. It doesn’t have to seem that way. It’s not necessarily our fault the media sucks, but the media’s a reality, and it makes us look bad. People want their parks back, people want the money that the government’s been spending on police forces back, and camp drama detracts from organizing. It’s important to have solidarity and conviction, but I’m afraid we might be misplacing our tenacity.

I kind of want to believe in the camp, honestly, but I think we can do better.

What also holds a great deal of weight for me, though, is this: Much ruckus has already been raised around the choice of the name “Occupy.” Anyone with colonial baggage, anyone who has seen the bitter end of war should be stung by this word choice. Seattle’s General Assembly among others cities’ (Austin, Vancouver) voted to rename the movement Decolonize/Occupy Seattle—not that most of us actually consistently use the term.

But the truth is, when I look at this morning’s Zuccotti Park eviction, I am chilled thinking of our colonial history. First of all, I see few in the movement paying sufficient attention to whose land this really was in the first place. That aside, even, the police violence is a reminder of the brusque brutality that wiped out indigenous peoples, but the stubbornness of people who descended on those parks two months ago almost echoes the same colonial mentality. I hate to say it, I honestly do, but it is preventing other members of the public from using public space.

Does that justify banning the press, dumpstering books, shooing away the public from watching, cutting down trees(???), and bringing in a hose and bulldozer to clear Zuccotti Park? Hell no. If we want to talk about colonialism and dystopia, I’m pretty sure silencing the media and taking away books is early on the checklist for Classic Ways to Dumb Down a “Free” Society. Read any of the terrifying sci-fi novels you were assigned in high school English classes.

I want to see an alternative society in action, but the reality is we’ve reached a turning point and conflict: the movement got big. Thank God the movement got big. If I may introduce an ecclesiological (churchy) analogy that I’m obsessed with, it’s like this: the early followers of Jesus practiced in house churches where they could all sit around the table of communion in a circle, look at each others’ faces, hear each others’ voices from all over the room, share a meal together. Then the Good News spread and things got too big for a living room, which was cool, but which also led to big church buildings. Unfortunately these big church buildings made it a little harder to hear who was speaking, thus we had to put the speaker (turned bishop) in the front next to the table and create a divide between leaders and congregation which led to a hierarchical system which led to an institutionalized church…all because things got too big.

Not to mention, if everyone’s in one building and the building crumbles, then what?

The movement is now too large for our living rooms. Decolonize. Don’t give into the temptation of cramming into our own isolated, institutionalized space; remember what’s at the root and get creative.

So what am I suggesting? I don’t know. I’ll keep pulling out of my bum and start here: If you want your symbolic action (and I know I do) and your martyr-esque arrest (my mom’s reading this), then we can use more prophetic imagination than this. Let’s have more Break Up With Your Bank Days. Link your arms outside of Chase Bank like Seattle protestors did on November 2 if that’s what you’re feeling. Keep running the library and the teach-ins. Sit in on foreclosure auctions. CAUSE SOME RUCKUS PLEASE. But choose your battles wisely.

If we’re not trying to make this accessible and visible to the rest of the 99% who aren’t camping and who aren’t already active, then it’s not solidarity. We need more voices, and we need to challenge our own system.

Light Railing (or We Think It’s Seedy Because Our Lives Have Been Sitting on Shelves)

I (mostly) wrote this on an airplane way too early in the morning three days ago. Hence, it is all rage and no artistry. Begin:

This morning I was talking to a man while waiting for the light rail, and I kind of remember some of the things he said, but what I most remember was when I had told him I was a barista and he said his friend works at Starbucks in the Columbia Tower.* I oohed at what it might be like to get the nice view from the Starbucks on the 45th floor. He clarified that she actually works at the one in the lobby, which largely entails “COCKBLOCKING THE HOMELESS.”

Emphasis mine, obviously.

I don’t know how I really reacted, but whatever it was wasn’t as strongly as I should’ve.

The usual furious questions came up in my mind but didn’t make it out of my mouth: Why is it that I, having no business in the Columbia Tower myself, can go to either Starbucks counter and get a cup of coffee without being seen as an enemy to be “cockblocked.”

(Not to mention, why do we need two Starbucks in one building?)

What was also frustrating was this:

“Did you hear about the taxi driver who got fired for honking in support of the [Occupy Seattle] protests? I guess the cops pulled him over, for honking or whatever, and gave him a $140 ticket. But then some of the protestors came together and paid his ticket. I always thought Yellow Cab was good for nothing, but I guess there’s one good driver.”

There’s a lot going on here that I should’ve engaged. For instance, what’s your problem with taxis or your assumption about taxi drivers? More fascinating to me was (and always is) that he could (at least mildly) support Occupy Seattle and still talk about 23rd & Jackson or Beacon Hill as “seedy” and talk about cockblocking the homeless. I have this problem of tending to assume that anyone with whom I agree about one thing I must agree with about a wide cluster of other things. This is presumptuous, underexplained, and even contradictory, but it seems to me that I tend to assume more sameness than true, where this man perhaps assumes more difference than true.

Because I am always thinking about this and I am in the mood to take things farther than I usually do and farther than maybe I should, I’m going to point out that 23rd & Jackson and Beacon Hill are both ethnically diverse parts of Seattle (the latter particularly a popular area for immigrants) and that I’ve never ridden a cab with a Euro-white driver.

It is also worth clarifying and exploring that, in spite of the way I’m portraying him now, the man was actually pretty friendly; after all, it’s not often that strangers actually strike up a conversation in Seattle. He works for a green small business I like, he takes public transportation, and like I said, he had at least some respect or appreciation for the Occupy movement, things that are traditionally more attractive to liberals and earn good points in Seattle.

My point is, though, bigotry doesn’t just come in the form of Crotchety Old Man from the South like we so often imagine and assume (and, on the flip, my interactions with old men, southerners, and old southern men have been more fabulous than otherwise). And ignorant statements don’t always come couched in long tirades at high decibel levels under pointed brows. Just as often they come from left-leaning, news-reading, young adults, passingly tossed into conversational lite fare.

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*a downtown skyscraper, for those of you out-of-Seattle folk

How I Spent My Summer Vacation: Chapter Two

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You may or may not be here because you’re still curious about my summer journeys. So now that it’s autumn, let me explain a different way.

Speaking of explaining a different way, if you know what this blog and this pilgrimage were all about, you’ll know that there are a lot of stories left untold and unposted. For instance, I’ve hardly described the communities I visited; most of these entries focus on my internal murmurings. But what is also untold, what I find most strange and beautiful, are the lessons and whispers from this summer that keep revealing themselves and popping up in my life as I carry on in Seattle, stories haven’t even been told to me. I am still trying to figure out how to tell both types of stories and where I should keep them. In the meantime, I’ll explain what this hubbub’s about in the first place.