colonist

excerpts from "the resident" by carmen maria machado - from the short story collection her body and other parties


i crossed paths with the others at breakfast, sometimes. one morning, diego told me about the previous day's social engagements-- which i had ignored in favor of lucille's social engagements near my novel's climax -- and in doing so he said a curious word: colonist.

"colonist?" i said.

"we're at an artist colony," he said. "so we're colonists, right? like columbus." he drained his orange juice and stood up from the table.

i suppose he meant it to be funny, but i was horrified. resident had seemed such a rich and appropriate term, an umbrella i would have been content to carry all of my days. but now the word colonist settled down next to me, with teeth. what were we colonizing? each other's space? the wilderness? our own minds? this last thought was a troubling one, even though it was not very different from my conception of being allowed to be a resident in your own mind. resident suggests a door hatch in the front of your brain, propped open to allow for introspection, and when you enter, you are faced with objects that you'd previously forgotten about. "i remember this!" you might say, holding up a small wooden frog, or a floppy rag doll with no face, or a picture book whose sensory impressions flood back to you as you turn the pages -- a toadstool with a wedge missing from its cap; a flurry of luminous autumn leaves; a summer breeze dancing with milkweed. in contrast, colonist sounds monstrous, as if you have kicked down the door hatch of your mind and inside you find a strange family eating supper.

now when i worked, i felt strange around the entrance to my own interiority. was i actually just an invader, bearing smallpox-ridden blankets and lies? what secrets and mysteries lay undiscovered in there?

*           *           *

in my cabin, i tried hard to focus. i stood out on my balcony and strained to see the lake, but i could not. exhausted by the weather, i lay down on the floor. from there, the room changed, utterly. i felt stuck to the ceiling by a force equivalent to, though the opposite of, gravity, and from here i could see the hidden spaces beneath the furniture: a mouse's nest, a stranger's index card, a lone, bone-white button tilted on an axis.

i was reminded, for the umpteenth time, of viktor shklovsky's idea of defamiliarization; of zooming in so close to something, and observing it so slowly, that it begins to warp, and change, and acquire new meaning. when i'd first begun to experience this phenomenon, i'd been too young to understand what it was; certainly too young to consult a reference book. the first time, i lay down on the floor examining the metal-and-rubber foot of our family refrigerator, wreathed in dust and human hair, and from this reference point all other objects began to change. the foot, instead of being insignificant, one of four, et cetera, suddenly became everything: a stoic little home at the base of a large mountain, from which one could see a tiny curl of smoke and glinting, illuminated windows, a home from which a hero would emerge, eventually. every nick on the foot was a balcony or a door. the detritus beneath the fridge became a wrecked, ravaged landscape, the expanse of kitchen tile a rambling kingdom waiting for salvation. this was how my mother found me: staring at the foot of the refrigerator so intensely my eyes were slightly crossed, my body curled up, my lips moving almost imperceptibly.

*         *           *

in the realm of sense and reason it seemed logical for something to make sense for no reason (natural order) or not make sense for some reason (the deliberate design of deception) but it seemed perverse to have things make no sense for no reason. what if you colonize your own mind and when you get inside, the furniture is attached to the ceiling? what if you step inside and when you touch the furniture, you realize it's all just cardboard cutouts and it all collapses beneath the pressure of your finger? what if you get inside and there's no furniture? what if you get inside and it's just you in there, sitting in a chair, rolling figs and eggs around in the basket of your lap and humming a little tune? what if you get inside and there's nothing there, and then the door hatch closes and locks?

what is worse: being locked outside of your own mind, or being locked inside of it?

what is worse: writing a trope or being one? what about being more than one?

i walked to my cabin for the last time. i finally added my name to the tablet above my desk. C----- M----, i scrawled. resident colonist & colonizing resident & madwoman in her own attic.

i threw my novel notes and laptop into the lake. after the plush splash subsided, i heard the sound of girls, laughing. or maybe it was just the birds.

countermoves

quotes from the dance of anger by harriet lerner

"our anger may be a signal that we are doing more and giving more than we can comfortably do or give. or our anger may warn us that others are doing too much for us, at the expense of our own competence and growth."

"if feeling angry signals a problem, venting anger does not solve it. venting anger may serve to maintain, and even rigidify, the old rules and patterns in a relationship, thus ensuring that change does not occur."

"feelings of depression, low self-esteem, self-betrayal, and even self-hatred are inevitable when we fight but continue to submit to unfair circumstances, when we complain but live in a way that betrays our hopes, values and potentials, or when we find ourselves fulfilling society's stereotype of the bitchy, nagging, bitter, or destructive woman."

"our society cultivates guilt feelings in women such that many of us still feel guilty if we are anything less than an emotional service station to others."

"the negative words and images that depict women who do speak out are more than just cruel sexist stereotypes; they also hint at a painful reality. words like 'nagging,' 'complaining,' and 'bitching' are words of helplessness and powerlessness, which do not imply even the possibility of change. they are words that reflect the 'stuck' position that characterizes our lives when a great deal of emotion is flying around and nothing is really changing."

"it is those closest to us who often have the greatest investment in our staying the same, despite whatever criticisms and complaints they may openly voice."

"de-selfing means that too much of one's self (including one's thoughts, wants, beliefs, and ambitions) is 'negotiable' under pressures from the relationship. . . the partner who is doing the most sacrificing of self stores up the most repressed anger and is especially vulnerable to becoming depressed."

"it is the underfunctioning of one individual that allows for the overfunctioning of the other. . . underfunctioners and overfunctioners provoke and reinforce each other's behavior, so that the seesaw becomes increasingly hard to balance over time. the more [one person] avoids sharing their own weaknesses, neediness, and vulnerability, [the other] may experience and express more than their share. the more [one person] avoids showing their competence and strength, the more [the other] will have an inflated sense of their own. and if the underfunctioning partner starts looking better, the overfunctioning partner will start looking worse."

"whenever one person makes a move to rebalance the seesaw, there is a countermove by the other party."

"we are good at anticipating other people's reactions, and we are experts at protecting others from uncomfortable feelings. this is a highly developed social skill that is all too frequently absent in men. if only we could take this very same skill and redirect it inward in order to become experts on our own selves."

"when the 'togetherness force' is overriding, a lot of energy goes into trying to 'be for' the other person, and trying to make the other person think or behave differently. instead of taking responsibility for our own selves, we tend to feel responsible for the emotional well-being of the other person and hold the other person responsible for ours."

"we all need to have both an 'i' and a 'we' that nourish and give meaning to each other. there is no formula for the 'right' amount of separateness and togetherness for all couples or even for the same couple over time. each member of a couple is constantly monitoring the balance of these two forces, automatically and unconsciously making moves to restore more separateness (when anxiety about fusion sets in) or more togetherness (when anxiety about unrelatedness sets in). the balance of these two forces is constantly in motion in every couple. one common 'solution' or 'division of labor' that couples unconsciously arrange is that [one] will express the wish for 'togetherness'; [the other], the wish for 'separateness.'"

"the dilemma is that we may unconsciously be convinced that our important relationships can survive only if we continue to remain one down. to do better -- to become clearer, to act stronger, to be more separate, to take action on our own behalf -- may be unconsciously equated with a destructive act that will diminish and threaten our partner, who might then retaliate or leave."

"fighting and blaming is sometimes a way both to protest and to protect the status quo when we are not quite ready to make a move in one direction or another."

"most of us want the impossible. we want to control not only our own decisions and choices but also the other person's reactions to them."

"repeating the same old fights protects us from the anxieties we are bound to experience when we make a change. ineffective fighting allows us to stop the clock when our efforts to achieve greater clarity become too threatening. sometimes staying stuck is what we need to do until the time comes when we are confident that it is safe to get unstuck."

"emotional pursuers are persons who reduce their anxiety by sharing feelings and seeking close emotional contact. emotional distancers are persons who reduce their anxiety by intellectualizing and withdrawing. . . what is the common outcome of this classic scenario? after this escalating dance of pursuit and withdrawal proceeds for some time, [the pursuer] goes into what therapists call 'reactive distance.' feeling rejected and fed up, they at last proceed to go about their own business. [the distancer] now has even more space than they are comfortable with, and in time moves closer to the other in the hope of making contact. but it is too late. "where were you when i needed you!" the [pursuer] says angrily. at this point, distancer and pursuer might even reverse their roles for a while.

emotional pursuers protect emotional distancers. by doing the work of expressing the neediness, clingingness, and wish for closeness for both partners, pursuers make it possible for distancers to avoid confronting their own dependency wishes and insecurities. as long as one person is pursuing, the other has the luxury of experiencing a cool independence and a need for space."

miniature secrets

quotes from atonement by ian mcewan

"a taste for the miniature was one aspect of an orderly spirit. another was a passion for secrets: in a prized varnished cabinet, a secret drawer was opened by pushing against the grain of a cleverly turned dovetail joint, and here she kept a diary locked by a clasp, and a notebook written in a code of her own invention. in a toy safe opened by six secret numbers she stored letters and postcards. an old tin petty cash box was hidden under a removable floorboard beneath her bed. in the box were treasures that dated back four years, to her ninth birthday when she began collecting: a mutant double acorn, fool's gold, a rainmaking spell bought at a funfair, a squirrel's skull as light as a leaf.

but hidden drawers, lockable diaries and cryptographic systems could not conceal from briony the simple truth: she had no secrets. her wish for a harmonious, organized world denied her the reckless possibilities of wrongdoing. mayhem and destruction were too chaotic for her tastes, and she did not have it in her to be cruel."

"for this was the point, surely: he would be a better doctor for having read literature. what deep readings his modified sensibility might make of human suffering, of the self-destructive folly or sheer bad luck that drive men toward ill health! birth, death, and frailty in between. rise and fall -- this was the doctor's business, and it was literature's too."

"soon there were only the sounds of steady breathing and snores. beneath him the floor still seemed to list, then switch to the rhythm of a steady march, and once again turner found himself too afflicted by impressions, too fevered, too exhausted to sleep. through the material of his coat he felt for the bundle of her letters. i'll wait for you. come back. the words were not meaningless, but they didn't touch him now. it was clear enough -- one person waiting for another was like an arithmetical sum, and just as empty of emotion. waiting. simply one person doing nothing, over time, while another approached. waiting was a heavy word. he felt it pressing down, heavy as a greatcoat. everyone in the cellar was waiting, everyone on the beach. she was waiting, yes, but then what? he tried to make her voice say the words, but it was his own he heard, just below the tread of his heart. he could not even form her face. he forced his thoughts toward the new situation, the one that was supposed to make him happy. the intricacies were lost to him, the urgency had died. briony would change her evidence, she would rewrite the past so that the guilty became the innocent. but what was guilt these days? it was cheap. everyone was guilty, and no one was. no one would be redeemed by a change of evidence, for there weren't enough people, enough paper and pens, enough patience and peace, to take down the statements of all the witnesses and gather in the facts. the witnesses were guilty too. all day we've witnessed each other's crimes. you killed no one today? but how many did you leave to die?"

the three lords

excerpt from cutting through spiritual materialism by chogyam trungpa

the lord of form refers to the neurotic pursuit of physical comfort, security and pleasure. our highly organized and technological society reflects our preoccupation with manipulating physical surroundings so as to shield ourselves from the irritations of the raw, rugged, unpredictable aspects of life. push-button elevators, pre-packaged meat, air conditioning, flush toilets, private funerals, retirement programs, mass production, weather satellites, bulldozers, fluorescent lighting, nine-to-five jobs, television -- all are attempts to create a manageable, safe, predictable, pleasurable world.

the lord of form does not signify the physically rich and secure life-situations we create per se. rather it refers to the neurotic preoccupation that drives us to create them, to try to control nature. it is the ego's ambition to secure and entertain itself, trying to avoid all irritation. so we cling to our pleasures and possessions, we fear change or force change, we try to create a nest or playground.

the lord of speech refers to the use of intellect in relating to our world. we adopt sets of categories which serve as handles, as ways of managing phenomena. the most fully developed products of this tendency are ideologies, the systems of ideas that rationalize, justify, and sanctify our lives. nationalism, communism, existentialism, christianity, buddhism -- all provide us with identities, rules of action, and interpretations of how and why things happen as they do.

again, the use of intellect is not in itself the lord of speech. the lord of speech refers to the inclination on the part of ego to interpret anything that is threatening or irritating in such a way as to neutralize the threat or turn it into something "positive" from ego's point of view. the lord of speech refers to the use of concepts as filters to screen us from a direct perception of what is. the concepts are taken too seriously; they are used as tools to solidify our world and ourselves. if a world of nameable things exists, then "i" as one of the nameable things exists as well. we wish not to leave any room for threatening doubt, uncertainty or confusion.

the lord of mind refers to the effort of consciousness to maintain awareness of itself. the lord of mind rules when we use spiritual and psychological disciplines as the means of maintaining our self-consciousness, of holding onto our sense of self. drugs, yoga, prayer, meditation, trances, various psychotherapies -- all can be used in this way.

ego is able to convert everything to its own use, even spirituality. for example, if you have learned of a particularly beneficial mediation technique of spiritual practice, then ego's attitude is, first to regard it as an object of fascination and, second to examine it. finally, since ego is seeming solid and cannot really absorb anything, it can only mimic. thus ego tries to examine and imitate the practice of meditation and the meditative way of life. when we have learned all the tricks and answers of the spiritual game, we automatically try to imitate spirituality, since real involvement would require the complete elimination of ego, and actually the last thing we want to do is to give up the ego completely. however, we cannot experience that which we are trying to imitate; we can only find some area within the bounds of ego that seems to be the same thing. ego translates everything in terms of its own state of health, its own inherent qualities. it feels a sense of great accomplishment and excitement at having been able to create such a pattern. at last it has created a tangible accomplishment, a confirmation of its own individuality.

if we become successful at maintaining our self-consciousness through spiritual techniques, then genuine spiritual development is highly unlikely. our mental habits become so strong as to be hard to penetrate. we may even go so far as to achieve the totally demonic state of complete "egohood."

even though the lord of mind is the most powerful in subverting spirituality, still the other two lords can also rule the spiritual practice. retreat to nature, isolation, simple, quiet, high people -- all can be ways of shielding oneself from irritation, all can be expressions of the lord of form. or perhaps religion may provide us with a rationalization for creating a secure nest, a simple but comfortable home, for acquiring an amiable mate, and a stable, easy job.

the lord of speech is involved in spiritual practice as well. in following a spiritual path we may substitute a new religious ideology for our former beliefs, but continue to use it in the old neurotic way. regardless of how sublime our ideas may be, if we take them too seriously and use them to maintain our ego, we are still being ruled by the lord of speech.

most of us, if we examine our actions, would probably agree that we are ruled by one or more of the three lords. "but," we might ask, "so what? this is simply a description of the human condition. yes, we know that our technology cannot shield us from war, crime, illness, economic insecurity, laborious work, old age and death; nor can our ideologies shield us from doubt, uncertainty, confusion and disorientation; nor can our therapies protect us from the dissolution of the high states of consciousness that we may temporarily achieve and the disillusionment and anguish that follow. but else are we to do? the three lords seem too powerful to overthrow, and we don't know what to replace them with."

the buddha, troubled by these questions, examined the process by which the three lords rule. he questioned why our minds follow them and whether there is another way. he discovered that the three lords seduce us by creating a fundamental myth: that we are solid beings. but ultimately the myth is false, a huge hoax, a gigantic fraud, and it is the root of our suffering. in order to make this discovery he had to break through very elaborate defenses erected by the three lords to prevent their subjects from discovering the fundamental deception which is the source of their power. we cannot in any way free ourselves from the domination of the three lords unless we too cut through, layer by layer, the elaborate defenses of these lords.

the lords' defenses are created out of the material of our minds. this material of mind is used by the lords in such a way as to maintain the basic myth of solidity. in order to see for ourselves how this process works we must examine our own experience. "but how," we might ask, "are we to conduct the examination? what method or tool are we to use?" the method that the buddha discovered is meditation. he discovered that struggling to find answers did not work. it was only when there were gaps in his struggle that insights came to him. he began to realize that there was a sane, awake quality within him which manifested only in the absence of struggle. so the practice of meditation involves "letting be."

. . .

such practice is necessary generally because our thinking pattern, our conceptualized way of conducting our life in the world, is either too manipulative, imposing itself upon the world, or else runs completely wild and uncontrolled. therefore, our meditation practice must begin with ego's outermost layer, the discursive thoughts which continually run through our minds, our mental gossip. the lords use discursive thought as their first line of defense, as the pawns in their effort to deceive us. the more we generate thoughts, the busier we are mentally and the more convinced we are of our existence. so the lords are constantly trying to activate these thoughts, trying to create a constant overlapping of thoughts so that nothing can be seen beyond them. in true meditation there is no ambition to stir up thoughts, nor is there an ambition to suppress them. they are just allowed to occur spontaneously and become an expression of basic sanity. they become the expression of the precision and the clarity of the awakened state of mind.

if the strategy of continually creating overlapping thoughts is penetrated, then the lords stir up emotions to distract us. the exciting, colorful, dramatic quality of the emotions captures our attention as if we were watching an absorbing film show. in the practice of meditation we neither encourage emotions nor repress them. by seeing them clearly, by allowing them to be as they are, we no longer permit them to serve as a means of entertaining and distracting us. thus they become the inexhaustible energy which fulfills egoless action.

in the absence of thoughts and emotions the lords bring up a still more powerful weapon, concepts. labeling phenomena creates a feeling of a solid definite world of "things." such a solid world reassures us that we are a solid, continuous thing as well. the world exists, therefore i, the perceiver of the world, exist. meditation involves seeing the transparency of concepts, so that labeling no longer serves as a way of solidifying our world and our image of self.

whereas

excerpts from "whereas" by layli long soldier

WHEREAS a friend senses what she calls cultural emptiness in a poet's work and after a read-
ing she feels bad for feeling bad for the poet she admits. i want to respond the same could be
said for me, some sticky current of Indian emptiness. i feel it not just in my poems but when
i'm on drives, in conversations, or as i lie down to sleep but since this dialogue is about writing
i want to be correct with my languageness. in a note following the entry for Indian an oxford
dictionary warns: do not use Indian or Red Indian to talk about American native peoples, as these 
terms are now outdated; use American Indian instead. so i explain perhaps the same could be
said for my work some burden of American Indian emptiness in my poems how American
Indian emptiness surfaces not just on the page but often on drives, in conversations, or when i
lie down to sleep. but the term American Indian parts our conversation like a hollow bloated
boat that is not ours that neither my friend nor i want to board, knowing it will never take us
anywhere but to rot. if the language of race is ever truly attached to emptiness whatever it is
i feel now has me in the hull, head knees feet curled, i dare say, to fetal position --- but better
stated as the form i resort to inside the jaws of a reference;

.
.
.
WHEREAS my eyes land on the shoreline of "the arrival of Europeans in North America
opened a new chapter in the history of Native Peoples." because in others, i hate the act

of laughing when hurt injured or in cases of danger. that bitter hiding. my daughter picks up
new habits from friends. she'd been running, tripped, slid on knees and palms onto asphalt.

they carried her into the kitchen, she just fell, she's bleeding! deep red streams
down her arms and legs, trails on white tile. i looked at her face. a smile

quivered her. a laugh, a nervous. doing as her friends do, she braved new behavior, feigned
a grin --- i couldn't name it but i could spot it. stop, my girl. if you're hurting, cry.

like that. she let it out, a flood from living room to bathroom. then a soft water pour
i washed carefully light touch clean cotton to bandage. i faced her i reminded,

in our home in our family we are ourselves, real feelings. be true. yet i'm serious
when i say i laugh reading the phrase, "opened a new chapter." i can't help my body.

i shake. the realization that it took this phrase to show. my daughter's quiver isn't new ---
but a deep practice very old she's watching me;

consumption

excerpt from platform by michel houellebecq

she remembered the sales-pitch mnemonic SURE - strategic planning, understanding, response management, execution excellence; she remembered, too, the reality, which was infinitely more simple. but most of the salesgirls were very young - most of them had barely passed their BTS diploma, and it was easier to speak to them in their own language. talking to some of the girls, she realized that jean-louis barma's typology was still being taught in colleges. (the 'technician consumer': product-centered, sensitive to quantitative aspects, attaches great importance to the technical aspects of the product. the 'devout consumer': trusts the salesperson blindly because he does not understand the product. the 'complicit consumer': happy to focus on points he has in common with the salesperson if the latter knows how to establish a good interpersonal relationship. the 'manipulative consumer': a manipulator whose strategy is to deal directly with the supplier and thus get the best deal. the 'developing consumer': attentive to the salesperson, whom he respects, to the product offered, aware of his needs, he communicates easily.)

we had paid so much

excerpt from we need new names by noviolet bulawayo

how hard it was to get to america -- harder than crawling through the anus of a needle. for the visas and passports, we begged, despaired, lied, groveled, promised, charmed, bribed -- anything to get us out of the country. for his passport and travel, tshaka zulu sold all of his father's cows, against the old man's wishes. perserverance had to take his sister netsai out of school. nqo worked the fields of botswana for nine months. nozipho, like primrose and sicelokuhle and maidei, slept with that fat black pig banyile khoza from the passport office. girls flat on their back, banyile between their legs, america on their minds.

to send us off properly, our elders spilled tobacco on the dry earth to summon the spirits of the ancestors for our protection. unlike in years long gone, the spirits did not come dancing from the land beneath. they crawled. they stalled. they were hungry. they wanted blood and meat and millet beer, they wanted sacrifices, they wanted gifts. and, save for a few grains of tobacco, we had nothing to give, absolutely nothing. and so the spirts just gazed at us with eyes milked dry of care. between themselves they whispered: how will these ones ever be whole in that 'melika, as far away from the graves of the ancestors as it is?

do people not like in fear in 'melika, fear of evil?

do they not say it is like a grave in that 'melika, that going there is like burying yourself because your people may never see you again?

is not 'melika also that wretched place where they took looted black sons and daughters those many, many years ago?

we heard all this but we let it enter in one ear and leave through the other, pretended we did not hear. we would not be moved, we would not listen; we were going to america. in the footsteps of those looted black sons and daughters, we were going, yes, we were going. and when we got to america we took our dreams, looked at them tenderly as if they were newly born children, and put them away; we would not be pursuing them. we would never be the things we had wanted to be: doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers. no school for us, even though our visas were school visas. we knew we did not have the money for school to begin with, but we had applied for school visas because that was the only way out.

instead of going to school, we worked. our social security cards said valid for work only with ins authorization, but we gritted our teeth and broke the law and worked; what else could we do? what could we have done? what could anybody have done? and because we were breaking the law, we dropped our heads in shame; we had never broken any laws before. we dropped our heads because we were no longer people; we were now illegals.

when they debated what to do with illegals, we stopped breathing, stopped laughing, stopped everything, and listened. we heard: exporting america, broken borders, war on the middle class, invasion, deportation, illegals, illegals. we bit our tongues till we tasted blood, sat tensely on one butt cheek, afraid to sit on both because how can you sit properly when you don't know about your tomorrow?

and because we were illegal and afraid to be discovered, we mostly kept to ourselves, stuck to our kind and shied away from those who were not like us. we did not know what they would think of us, what they would do about us. we did not want their wrath, we did not want their curiosity, we did not want any attention. we did not meet stares and we avoided gazes. we hid our real names, gave false ones when asked. we built mountains between us and them, we dug rivers, we planted thorns -- we had paid so much to be in america and we did not want to lose it all.

when they talked about employers checking on workers, our hearts sank. we recalled the tatters of our country left behind, barely held together by american dollars, by monies from other countries, and our blood went cold. and when at work they asked for our papers, we scurried like startled hens and flocked to unwanted jobs, where we met the others, many others. others with names like myths, names like puzzles, names we had never heard before: virgilio, balamugunthan, faheem, abdulrahman, aziz, baako, dae-hyun, ousmane, kimatsu. when it was hard to say the many strange names, we called them by their countries.

so how on earth do you do this, sri lanka?

mexico, are you coming or what?

is it really true you sold a kidney to come to america, india?
guys, just give tshaka zulu a break, the guy is old, i'm just saying.
we know you despise this job, sudan, but deal with it, man.
come, ethiopia, move, move, move; israel, kazakhstan, niger, brothers, let's go!

the others spoke languages we did not know, worshipped different gods, ate what we would not dare touch. but like us, they had left their homelands behind. they flipped open their wallets to show us faded photographs of mothers whose faces bore the same creases of worry as our very own mothers, siblings bleak-eyed with dreams unfulfilled like those of our own, fathers forlorn and defeated like ours. we had never seen their countries but we knew about everything in those pictures; we were not altogether strangers. . .

that is how time went. it flew and we did not see it flying. we did not got back home to visit because we did not have the papers for our return, and so we just stayed, knowing that if we went we would not be able to reenter america. we stayed, like prisoners, only we chose to be prisoners and we loved our prison; it was not a bad prison. and when things only got worse in our country, we pulled our shackles even tighter and said, we are not leaving america, no, we are not leaving.

and then our own children were born. we held their american birth certificates tight. we did not name our children after our parents, after ourselves; we feared if we did they would not be able to say their own names, that their friends and teachers would not know how to call them. we gave them names that would make them belong in america, names that did not mean anything to us: aaron, josh, dana, corey, jack, kathleen. when our children were born, we did not bury their umbilical cords under the earth to bind them to the land because we had no land to call ours. we did not hold their heads over smoking herbs to make them strong, did not tie fetishes around their waists to protect them from evil spirits, did not brew beer and spill tobacco on the earth to announce their arrivals to the ancestors, instead, we smiled.

and when our parents reminded us over the phone that it had been a long, long time, and that they were getting old and needed to see us, needed to meet their grandchildren, we said, we are coming, mama, siyabuya baba; we are coming, gogo, tirikuuya sekuru. we did not want to tell them we still had no papers. and when they grew restless and cursed america for being the greedy monster that swallowed their children, swallowed the sons and daughters of other lands and refused to spit them out, we said, we are coming very soon, we are coming next year. and next year came and we said, next year. when next year came we said, next year for sure. and when next year for sure came we said, next year for real. and when next year for real came we said, we are coming, you'll see, just wait. and our parents waited and they saw, saw that we did not come.

they died waiting, clutching in their dried hands pictures of us leaning against the lady liberty, graves of lost sons and daughters in their hearts, old eyes glued to the sky for fulamatshinaz to bring forth lost sons and daughters. we could not attend their funerals because we still had no papers, and so we mourned from afar. we shut ourselves up and turned on the music so we did not raise alarm, writhed on the floor and wailed and wailed and wailed.

tenderness

quotes from great eastern sun by chogyam trungpa

"humility in the shambhala tradition also involves some kind of playfulness, which is a sense of humor. at the beginning, communicating with someone may be somewhat flat, but the sense of humor in the relationship is always lurking around the corner. instead of approaching things flatly, you may have to scan around to the right and the left, to see whether there are any sparky areas where you can communicate. so humility here is slightly different than in the catholic tradition. in most religious traditions, you feel humble because of a fear of punishment, pain, and sin. in the shambhala world, you feel full of it. you feel healthy and good. in fact, you feel proud. therefore, you feel humility. that's one of the shambhala contradictions or, we could say, dichotomies.

real humility is genuineness. it's not even honesty. honesty implies a twist of punishment or negativity -- that you have drawn the card for deception, put it in your pocket, and now you'll draw another card for honesty. but there's only one genuineness, which is being oneself to the fullest level."

"we are talking about how to work with very simple situations, such as talking to your landlord or landlady about the rent, consulting with your bank manager about taking out another loan, depositing money in your checking account, buying another house, doing your grocery shopping at the supermarket, or dealing with your dry cleaner. whatever situations you are working with, you have to be aware that every step you take is very precious. you cannot change this world into the great eastern sun world with a snap of your fingers. it can only change stitch by stitch. what thread you use, what kind of needles you use, and how you sew the fabrics together - that is purely up to you.

you might feel that this is such a small-minded approach that it will have almost no effect at all. particularly if you are gung ho on shambhala vision, you might be so impatient, thinking that this is taking too much time and won't have any effect. but that is not the case. we must go step-by-step, starting from square one. pay attention to your landlord, your grocery store, your bus, every place you go, everything you do habitually. look at them twice, thrice. how you deal with the cockroaches in your apartment, how you vacuum your floor, even how you flush the toilet: any dealings that you have with the outside world, so to speak, have to be witnessed thoroughly and watched very carefully. you do not need a tutor like i had. you have hundreds of tutors around you. all those situations are your tutors, and they will give you the message.

wisdom is not purely the product of intelligence. you have to work on things personally. it's not exactly hard work, but it's taxing in some sense, because you have to be constantly alert, all the time. the notion of wisdom is the same as prajna, or the discriminating awareness that we discussed earlier in the context of renunciation. i am using the word wisdom here because what you are being given is something that can only be taught to you in the form of a hint. having been given the hint, you pick up the message spontaneously. that is wisdom.

wisdom is what joins heaven and earth. you bring your zafu and zabuton, your meditation cushion and your meditation mat, together for the sitting practice of meditation. when the gong rings, you and your cushion are joined together. that is joining heaven and earth. i'm putting it on a very elementary level. joining heaven and earth is not like making a decision. it is the principle of a mirror. you have electricity or daylight, which is heaven. you have your body, your face, your uncombed hair, your beard -- which are all earth. then you have the mirror, which joins together that heaven and earth."

"working with yourself always involves a journey. as part of the journey, every one of us has to go through our own garbage. some of it is real garbage, which should be discarded, and some of it is organic garbage, which can be recycled. one important point is that, when you're going through your garbage and sorting things out, you have to admit to yourself that you are not being a 100 percent ideal student. you improvise, you stick with your own neurosis sometimes, and you are cheating yourself, somewhat. as long as that is acknowledged, it is not regarded as absolutely evil at all. how much of the journey is genuine and how much of it is hypocritical is very hard to sort out. as long as you try to just keep doing it, it's fine. it only becomes problematic if you try to philosophize or rationalize the whole thing.

as far as the shambhala principles are concerned, we don't believe in original sin. you are not fundamentally condemned. in fact, quite the opposite. fundamentally, you are good. in spite of your hypocrisy, you are capable of being good, and what you express will be good as well. it will work out fine.

in discussing know-how, our larger theme is letting go: knowing how to let go, what to let go, and how to relax in our world. in many cases, you've been given guidelines for how to relate with yourself and how to relate with others, but you haven't been given any guidelines for how to experience freedom. the expression of freedom has to come from you. letting go is not being purely carefree in a sloppy style. you have to evaluate what portion of discipline should be maintained in the name of integrity and what portion of discipline should be relaxed. so letting go is still a training process. at the same time, it contains fruition-level logic. . .

the shambhala society is very much concerned with what happens when we depart from the womb and regroup into the products of the womb, so to speak. we are asking people to remain clan-oriented, family-oriented. on the other hand, we're asking you not to hang on to the neurosis or the impetus that exists in being the child of somebody. we have to separate ourselves; at the same time, we have to come together in comradeship, working with human society. that is contradictory in itself, but it is at the same time full of wisdom."

"the third category of letting go is sadness and joy joined together. ordinarily, when you talk about feeling sad, it means that you are so hurt; you feel so bad. when you talk about feeling joyous, it means that you feel so excited and uplifted. here you develop sadness and joy at once. you begin to feel tender -- extremely tender and sad. when you fall in love for the first time, thinking about your lover, you have delightful ideas, but at the same time, you feel somewhat sad. it's not purely that your lover can't be with you or that your lover is long distant, but you feel tender even when you're together. on the spot, sharing the same room or the same bed, when you look at your lover, it feels wonderful. at the same time, it feels very touchy and sad. it is wonderful -- in fact, it is ideal -- that human emotions are expressed that way. when you feel sad, therefore, you feel great. hot and cold, sweet and sour, at once, take place.

according to the shambhala principles, you should feel that way with everything you do. whether you have a good time or a bad time, you should feel sad and delighted at once. that is how to be a real, decent human being, and it is also connected with the buddhist principle of longing, or devotion. longing is the hunger for sacredness. when you begin to feel you're too much in the secular world, you long for the sacred world. therefore, you feel sad, and you open yourself up that way. when you feel so sad and tender, that also brings ideas for how to uplift the rest of the world. joining sadness and joy is the only mechanism that brings the vision of the great eastern sun."

"heaven is anything that is spacious. it includes your lofty ideas, your beliefs, your metaphysics, your wishes, your desires. it is anything you hold as sacred, anything you might put in your safe-deposit box: your jewelry, your birth certificate, your college diploma. earth is related with your personal existence, your car keys, the keys to your apartment, money in your wallet, your husband, your wife, your groceries for the night or for the rest of the week. so heaven is the lofty principle, and earth is what you actually have in your refrigerator or your bank account.

joining them together is challenging. if you think in terms of how a nation might join heaven and earth together, it gets quite complicated. but if you begin with yourself and how you relate personally to joining heaven and earth, that's quite simple and domestic. you might think that your personal heaven and earth are not sacred enough to be joined together. but in the shambhala world, we have fundamental appreciation and respect for whatever we do. every act is a sacred act. with that inspiration, we regard every experience in our life as sacred as well. therefore, we can join heaven and earth together. it could be as mundane as going to the supermarket to buy toilet tissue. you bring it home, then you use it, and you flush it down the toilet. you are joining heaven and earth together. when you buy it, you have heaven. when you use it, you have earth. you join them together, and it's very beautiful. you can accomplish the whole thing."