tax-free relationship

excerpts from gorilla, my love - short stories by toni cade bambara

"what happened was this, to make a long story short. not only had he called cool, but he'd also put up bail a couple of times for some of the star pupils miss ruby called herself rehabilitating. one of these stars split, but punjab didnt go after him. not only that, punjab had also stomped a few heads by the subway garage on account of them staring too hard at miss ruby's hips and saying things. all in all, miss ruby was making puppy tracks in punjab's books. so that fall when she was knowing everybody out to set up an election to pick community leaders to represent us on the poverty council and all over the place, we figured punjab for a natural. we figured he was going to get paid off finally. hell, let's face it, anybody in position to be calling themself doing good is always doing well, if you know what i mean. and there was a whole lotta long bread coming into our area." -from "playing with punjab"

"she had wanted to speak of other things, things one spoke of in the kitchen while getting your hair braided, while someone made biscuits and commented from time to time, while the radio was on 'wings over jordan' and the conversation was put on hold when one of your favorites came on. but family ties no longer knitted close and there was no one to say let's get our wagons in a circle when someone was in crisis. so she'd come to m'dear, miss candy, the last of that generation who believed in sustaining, and come to speak about this man and his distances. she wanted to tell her about the years of penance as he forgave piece by piece

lying there sweaty, her legs still in a tremble, the nipples still erect, she felt him moving away, traveling great distances. when just moments before they'd jumped the waves, and no undertow, no drowning, no dangers on release. for the first time in a long time he was not dying or forgiving or withholding, but loving her and giving himself over to pleasure. just a split second ago she had felt him against her again and touched him then felt him retreating, the arm muscle flexed under her back, alert for ambush, then flabby, then gone. he rolled over and switched on the radio and disappeared into the music. she snuggled against his back and tried to tangle her legs in his. and he became a chinese box" - from "the survivor"

"bound and gagged she struggled through the scene and when he called finish, disgusted, she had ripped off the dress right on the spot, trying to explain about the tyranny of the cloth she'd been forced to wear as though it were the dressmaker's fault her spine was paralyzed and the several layers of splendid costumes just beneath the skin were being shredded. of course she had gone on much too long about it. and he had laughed that laugh. the laugh they all laughed which meant if you weren't careful you would be destroyed. then he told her her pacing was off, erratic, lousy. and she'd answered that pacing was a director's duty and the editor's craft. that's what triggered off the argument in the car. and why she was in the back seat (thinking on this rhythm, for the past few months she was being propelled by a rhythm other than her own. as if a malaria parasite was clocking her body to its own reproductive cycles. and she'd been dumb enough to think this out with the mouth open. and he had told her that he'd been right in the first place. she should've gotten rid of the kid in the beginning. it was driving her crazier than she already was and it was ruining his work). which is why he hadn't kept his eyes on the road." - from "the survivor"

"inez lean way back in the chair and cover her eyes like she thinkin on this pressure and maybe rejectin the motion. cause she always maintainin that she offers a tax-free relationship - no demands, no pressure, no games, no jumpin up and down with ultimatums. and it's usually gail that spews steam at that juncture, pointing out that this is the heaviest damn pressure of all. and inez sayin 'sheeeet' and goin on about her business." - from "the johnson girls"

a transparent envelope

from swann's way by marcel proust

"but then, even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is a creation of the thoughts of other people. even the simplest act which we describe as 'seeing someone we know' is to some extent an intellectual process. we pack the physical outline of the person we see with all the notions we have already formed about him, and in the total picture of him which we compose in our minds those notions have certainly the principal place. in the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice as if it were no more than a transparent envelope, that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is these notions which we recognise and to which we listen."

". . .'she's only an actress, if you like, but you know i don't believe very much in the 'hierarchy' of the arts.' (as he spoke i noticed, what had often struck me before in his conversations with my grandmother's sisters, that whenever he spoke of serious matters, whenever he used an expression which seemed to imply a definite opinion upon some important subject, he would take care to isolate, to sterilise it by using a special intonation, mechanical and ironic, as though he had put the phrase or word between inverted commas, and was anxious to disclaim any personal responsibility for it; as who should say "the 'hierarchy,' don't you know, as silly people call it." but then, if it was so absurd, why did he use the word?)"

"i loved her; i was sorry not to have had the time and the inspiration to insult her, to hurt her, to force her to keep some memory of me. i thought her so beautiful that i should have liked to be able to retrace my steps so as to shake my fist at her and shout, 'i think you're hideous, grotesque; how i loathe you!'"

summer night

by louise gluck from the seven ages

orderly, and out of long habit, my heart continues to beat.

i hear it, nights when i wake, over the mild sound of the air conditioner.

as i used to hear it over the beloved’s heart, or

variety of hearts, owing to there having been several.

and as it beats, it continues to drum up ridiculous emotion.

so many passionate letters never sent!

so many urgent journeys conceived of on summer nights,

surprise visits to men who were nearly complete strangers.

the tickets never bought, the letters never stamped.

and pride spared. and the life, in a sense, never completely lived.

and the art always in some danger of growing repetitious.

why not? why not? why should my poems not imitate my life?

whose lesson is not the apotheosis but the pattern, whose meaning

is not in the gesture but in the inertia, the reverie.

desire, loneliness, wind in the flowering almond --

surely these are the great, the inexhaustible subjects

to which my predecessors apprenticed themselves.

i hear them echo in my own heart, disguised as convention.

balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary,

imperial joy and sorrow of human existence,

the dreamed as well as the lived ---

what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death?

that thing we want to name but can't

from there there by tommy orange

"dene walks to the next train car. he stands at the doors and looks out the window. the train floats alongside the freeway next to cars. each of their speeds is different: the speed of the cars is short, disconnected, sporadic. dene and the train slither along the tracks as one movement and speed. there's something cinematic about their variable speeds, like a moment in a movie that makes you feel something for reasons you can't explain. something too big to feel, underneath, and inside, too familiar to recognize, right there in front of you at all times. dene puts his headphones on, shuffles the music on his phone, skips several songs and stays on 'there there,' by radiohead. the hook is 'just 'cause you feel it doesn't mean it's there.'"

"the trouble with believing is you have to believe that believing will work, you have to believe in belief. i've scraped out the little bowl of faith i keep by the open window my mind has become ever since the internet got inside it, made me a part of it. i'm not joking. i feel as if i am going through withdrawal. i've read about residential internet rehab facilities in pennsylvania. they have digital-detox retreats and underground desert compounds in arizona. my problem hasn't just been with gambling. or gambling. or incessantly scrolling down and refreshing my social media pages. or the endless search to find good new music. it's all of it. . .

this edwin black, me here on the toilet, can't get there, on the internet, because yesterday i dropped my phone in the toilet, and my computer froze, same fucking day it just stopped, not even the mouse cursor moved, no spinning wheels of promised load. no reboot after unplug, just a sudden and mute black screen - my face reflected in it, staring first in horror at the computer dying, then at my face reacting to seeing my face react to the computer dying. a little part of me died then, seeing my face, thinking about this sick addiction, all this time i've spent doing almost nothing. four years of sitting, staring into my computer at the internet. i guess if you don't count sleep, it's three, if you don't count the dreaming, but i dream of the internet, of keyword search phrases that make complete sense in the dream, are the key to the dream's meaning, but which make no sense in the morning, like all the dreams i've ever had."

"i type 'the brain and constipation' and hit enter. i click on several links, scroll through several pages. i read a lot and come away with nothing. this is how time skips. links just lead to links that can lead you all the way back to the twelfth century. this is how it can all of a sudden be six in the morning, with my mom knocking on the door before she goes to work at the indian center -- where she keeps trying to get me to apply for a job. . .

lately i've become a little obsessed with the brain. with trying to find explanations for everything as it relates to the brain and its parts. there's almost too much information out there. the internet is like a brain trying to figure out a brain. i depend on the internet for recall now. there's no reason to remember when it's always just right there, like the way everyone used to know phone numbers by heart and now can't even remember their own. remembering itself is becoming old-fashioned."

"for how many years had i been dying to find out what the other half of me was? how many tribes had i made up when asked in the meantime? i'd gotten through four years as a native american studies major. dissecting tribal histories, looking for signs, something that might resemble me, something that felt familiar. i'd made it through two years of grad school, studying comparative literature with an emphasis on native american literature. i wrote my thesis on the inevitable influence of blood quantum policies on modern native identity and the literature written by mixed-blood native authors that influenced identity in native cultures. all without knowing my tribe. always defending myself. like i'm not native enough. i'm as native as obama is black. it's different though. for natives. i know. i don't know how to be. every possible way i think that it might look for me to say i'm native seems wrong."

"'what i'm here to talk about is how our whole approach since day one has been like this: kids are jumping out the windows of burning buildings, falling to their deaths. and we think the problem is that they're jumping. this is what we've done: we've tried to find ways to get them to stop jumping. convince them that burning alive is better than leaving when the shit gets too hot for them to take. we've boarded up windows and made better nets to catch them, found more convincing ways to tell them not to jump. they're making the decision that it's better to be dead and gone than to be alive in what we have here, this life, the one we made for them, the one they've inherited. and we're either involved and have a hand in each one of their deaths, just like i did with my brother, or we're absent, which is still involvement, just like silence is not just silence but is not speaking up. i'm in suicide prevention now. i've had fifteen relatives commit suicide over the course of my life, not counting my brother. i had one community i was working with recently in south dakota tell me they were grieved out. that was after experiencing seventeen suicides in their community in just eight months. but how do we instill in our children the will to live? at these conferences. and in the offices. in the emails and at the community events, there has to be an urgency, a do-whatever-at-any-cost sort of spirit behind what we do. or fuck the programs, maybe we should send the money to the families themselves, who need it and know what to do with it, since we all know what that money goes toward, salaries and conferences like this one. i'm sorry. i get paid outta that shit too, and actually, shit, i'm not sorry, this issue shouldn't be met with politeness or formality. we can't get lost in the career advancements and grant objectives, the day-to-day grind, as if we have to do what we do. we choose what we do, and in that choice comes the community. we are choosing for them. all the time. that's what these kids are feeling. they have no control. guess what kinda control they do have? we need to be about what we're always saying we're about. and if we can't, and we're really just about ourselves, we need to step aside, let somebody else from the community who really cares, who'll really do something, let them come in and help. fuck all the rest.'"

"'getting fucked up seems like the only thing left to do,' harvey went on. 'it's not the alcohol. there's not some special relationship between indians and alcohol. it's just what's cheap, available, legal. it's what we have to go to when it seems like we have nothing else left. i did it too. for a long time. but i stopped telling the story i'd been telling myself, about how that was the only way, because of how hard i had it, and how hard i was, that story about self-medicating against the disease that was my life, my bad lot, history. when we see that the story is the way we live our lives, only then can we start to change, a day at a time. . . i get that shame too. the kind that's made of more years than you know you have left to live. that shame that makes you wanna say fuck it and just go back to drinking as a means to an end. i'm sorry to all the people i hurt all that time i was too fucked up to see what i was doing. there's no excuse. apologies don't even mean as much as just. . . just acknowledging that you fucked up, hurt people, and that you don't wanna do that anymore. not to yourself either. that's sometimes the hardest part.'"

"we are indians and native americans, american indians and native american indians, north american indians, natives, ndns and ind'ins, status indians and non-status indians, first nations indians and indians so indian we either think about the fact of it every single day or we never think about it at all. we are urban indians and indigenous indians, rez indians and indians from mexico and central and south america. we are alaskan native indians, native hawaiians, and european expatriate indians, indians from eight different tribes with quarter-blood quantum requirements and so not federally recognized indian kinds of indians. we are enrolled members of tribes and disenrolled members, ineligible members and tribal council members. we are full-blood, half-breed, quadroon, eighths, sixteenths, thirty-seconds. undoable math. insignificant remainders."

 "dene convinced blue to let calvin do his interview for the storytelling project during work hours. calvin keeps crossing and uncrossing his legs and pulling at his hat by the bill. dene thinks calvin is nervous, but then dene is nervous, he is always nervous, so maybe it's projection. but projection as a concept is a slippery slope because everything could be projection. he is regularly subject to solipsism's recursive, drowning affect."

*                                *                                  *

"'long time ago they didn't have a name for the sun.' she pointed up to the sun, which was in front of us. 'they couldn't decide if it was a man or a woman or what. all the animals met about it, and a badger came out of a hole in the ground and called out the name, but as soon as he did, he ran. the other animals came after him. that badger went underground and stayed there. he was afraid they would punish him for naming it.' fina flipped on her blinker and switched lanes to pass a slow truck in the right lane. 'some of us got this feeling stuck inside, all the time, like we've done something wrong. like we ourselves are something wrong. like who we are deep inside, that thing we want to name but can't, it's like we're afraid we'll be punished for it. so we hide. we drink alcohol because it helps us feel like we can be ourselves and not be afraid. but we punish ourselves with it. the thing we most don't want has a way of landing right on top of us. that badger's medicine's the only thing that stands a chance at helping. you gotta learn how to stay down there. way deep down inside yourself, unafraid.'

i turned my head. looked down at the gray streak of road. it hit me somewhere in the middle of my chest. all that she'd said was true. it hit me in the middle, where it all comes together like a knot. . .

'so? we all fuck up. it's how we come back from it that matters.'

'i don't know what the fuck i'm supposed to do then. i can't get him back, i can't get them back. i don't know what the fuck any of this is about.'

'you're not supposed to,' she said. 'you're not ever supposed to know. not all the way. that's what makes the whole thing work the way it does. we can't know. that's what makes us keep going.'"

to use life

from on the shortness of life by seneca

"people are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy."

"how stupid to forget our mortality, and put off sensible plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth years, aiming to begin life from a point at which few have arrived!"

"finally, it is generally agreed that no activity can be successfully pursued by an individual who is preoccupied - not rhetoric or liberal studies - since the mind when distracted absorbs nothing deeply, but rejects everything which is, so to speak, crammed into it."

"the greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today."

"it used to be a greek failing to want to know how many oarsmen ulysses had, whether the iliad or the odyssey was written first, and whether too they were by the same author, and other questions of this kind, which if you keep them to yourself in no way enhance your private knowledge, and if you publish them make you appear more a bore than a scholar. but now the romans too have been afflicted by the pointless enthusiasm for useless knowledge. recently i heard somebody reporting which roman general first did this or that: duilius first won a naval battle; curius dentatus first included elephants in a triumph. so far these facts, even if they do not contribute to real glory, at least are concerned with exemplary services to the state: such knowledge will not do us any good, but it interests us because of the appeal of these pointless facts."

"even their pleasures are uneasy and made anxious by various fears, and at the very height of their rejoicing the worrying thought steals over them: 'how long will this last?' this feeling has caused kings to bewail their power, and they were not so much delighted by the greatness of their fortune as terrified by the thought of its inevitable end."

"so it is inevitable that life will be not just very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil. they achieve what they want laboriously; they possess what they have achieved anxiously; and meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return. new preoccupations take the place of the old, hope excites more hope and ambition more ambition. they do not look for an end to their misery, but simply change the reason for it."

"there will always be causes for anxiety, whether due to prosperity or to wretchedness. life will be driven on through a succession of preoccupations: we shall always long for leisure, but never enjoy it."

"every great and overpowering grief must take away the capacity to choose words, since it often stifles the voice itself."

"the body's needs are few: it wants to be free from cold, to banish hunger and thirst with nourishment; if we long for anything more we are exerting ourselves to serve our vices, not our needs."

"for to be afflicted with endless sorrow at the loss of someone very dear is foolish self-indulgence, and to feel none is inhuman callousness."

"he will live badly who does not know how to die well."

"inevitably the mind can cope more easily with the distress arising from disappointed longings if you have not promised it certain success."

"there is also another not inconsiderable source of anxieties, if you are too concerned to assume a pose and do not reveal yourself openly to anyone, like many people whose lives are false and aimed only at outward show. for it is agonizing always to be watching yourself in fear of being caught when your usual mask has slipped. nor can we ever be carefree when we think that whenever we are observed we are appraised; for many things happen to strip us of our pretensions against our will, and even if all this attention to oneself succeeds, yet the life of those who always live behind a mask is not pleasant or free from care. on the contrary, how full of pleasure is that honest and naturally unadorned simplicity that in no way hides its disposition! yet this life too runs a risk of being scorned if everything is revealed to everybody; for with some people familiarity breeds contempt. but there is no danger of virtue being held cheap as a result of close observation, and it is better to be despised for simplicity than to suffer agonies from everlasting pretence. still, let us use moderation here: there is a big difference between living simply and living carelessly."

hybridity

from new world border by guillermo gomez-peña

"i also oppose the old colonial dichotomy of first world / third world with the more pertinent notion of the fourth world -- a conceptual place where the indigenous peoples meet with the diasporic communities. in the fourth world, there is very little place for static identities, fixed nationalities, 'pure' languages, or sacred cultural traditions. the members of the fourth world live between and across various cultures, communities, and countries. and our identities are constantly being reshaped by this kaleidoscopic experience. the artists and writers who inhabit the fourth world have a very important role: to elaborate the new set of myths, metaphors, and symbols that will locate us within all of these fluctuating cartographies."

"people with social, racial, or economic privilege have an easier time crossing physical borders, but they have a much harder time negotiating the invisible borders of culture and race."

"in reaction to the transculture imposed from above, a new essentialist culture is emerging, one that advocates national, ethnic, and gender separatism in the quest for cultural autonomy, 'bio-regional identity,' and 'traditional values.' this tendency to overstate difference, and the unwillingness to change or exchange, is a product of communities in turmoil who, as an antidote to the present confusion, have chosen to retreat to the fictional womb of their own separate histories. even our so-called 'progressive' communities are retrenching to a fundamentalist stance."

"my version of the hybrid is cross-racial, polylinguistic, and multicontextual. from a disadvantaged position, the hybrid expropriates elements from all sides to create more open and fluid systems. hybrid culture is community-based yet experimental, radical but not static or dogmatic. it fuses 'low' and 'high' art, primitive and high-tech, the problematic notions of self and other, the liquid entities of north and south, east and west."

"the artist who understands and practices hybridity in this way can be at the same time an insider and an outsider, an expert in border crossings, a temporary member of multiple communities, a citizen of two or more nations. . . s/he assumes the role of nomadic chronicler, intercultural translator, or political trickster. s/he speaks from more than one perspective, to more than one community, about more than one reality. [their] job is to trespass, bridge, interconnect, reinterpret, remap, and redefine; to find the outer limits of [their] culture and cross them.

the presence of the hybrid denounces the faults, prejudices, and fears manufactured by the self-proclaimed center, and threatens the very raison d'etre of any monoculture, official or not."

"the borders keep multiplying. it just doesn't cut it anymore to pretend that the enemy is always outside. the separatist, sexist, racist, and authoritarian tendencies that we condemn others for perpetuating also exist within our own communities and within our own individual selves. we can't continue to hide behind the pretext that 'straight, white men,' or the all purpose 'dominant culture' are the source of all our problems. every community must face this fact: dominance is contextual. we all, at different times and in different contexts, enjoy some privileges over other people and perform the ever-changing roles of victim and victimizer, exploited and exploiter, colonizer and colonized."

"the absurd premise behind this belief is that if we are truly committed to our communities, we must be marginal, poor, angry, and anti-intellectual. . . this is contemporary america: a land of diversity where no one tolerates difference; a land of bizarre eclecticism where everyone must know their place."

"spanglish poetry reading in a public bathroom (cal arts, 1979)
this piece was another attempt to bring performance and language into unusual contexts, and to disrupt people's sense of the quotidian. for twenty-four hours, i sat on a toilet and read aloud epic poetry describing my journey to the united states. whoever happened to come into the bathroom - for whatever reason - experienced the piece. through this and other experiments of its kind, i became interested in the notion of performing for 'involuntary audiences.'"

"performing for the media: the cruci-fiction project (1994)
in early '94, roberto and i crucified ourselves for three hours on sixteen-foot-high crosses at rodeo beach (in front of san francisco's golden gate bridge). the piece was designed for the media, as a symbolic protest against the xenophobic immigration policies of california's governor pete wilson. inspired by the biblical myth of dimas and gestas (two petty thieves who were crucified alongside of jesus), roberto and i decided to dress as 'two contemporary public enemies of california': i was an 'undocumented bandido,' crucified by the INS [immigration and naturalization service], and roberto was a generic 'gang member,' crucified by the LAPD.

our audience of over 300 people each received a handout, asking them to 'free us from our martyrdom as a gesture of political commitment.' however, we had miscalculated their response. paralyzed by the melancholia of the image, it took them over three hours to figure out how to get us down. by then, my right shoulder had become dislocated and roberto had passed out. we were carried to a nearby bonfire and nurtured back to reality, while some people in the crowd rebuked those who were trying to help us, saying, 'let them die!'"

everywhere or nowhere

from there there by tommy orange

"in 1621, colonists invited massasoit, the chief of the wampanoags, to a feast after a recent land deal. massasoit came with ninety of his men. that meal is why we still eat a meal together in november. celebrate it as a nation. but that wasn't a thanksgiving meal. it was a land-deal meal. two years later there was another, similar meal meant to symbolize eternal friendship. two hundred indians dropped dead that night from an unknown poison. . .

in 1637, anywhere from four to seven hundred pequot gathered for their annual green corn dance. colonists surrounded their village, set it on fire, and shot any pequot who tried to escape. the next day the massachusetts bay colony had a feast in celebration, and the governor declared it a day of thanksgiving. thanksgivings like these happened everywhere, whenever there were what we have to call 'successful massacres.' at one such celebration in manhattan, people were said to have celebrated by kicking the heads of pequot people through the streets like soccer balls."

"getting us to cities was supposed to be the final, necessary step in our assimilation, absorption, erasure, the completion of a five-hundred-year-old genocidal campaign. but the city made us new, and we made it ours. we didn't get lost amid the sprawl of tall buildings, the stream of anonymous masses, the ceaseless din of traffic. we found one another, started up indian centers, brought out our families and powwows, our dances, our songs, our beadwork. we bought and rented homes, slept on the streets, under freeways; we went to school, joined the armed forces, populated indian bars in the fruitvale in oakland and in the mission in san francisco. we lived in boxcar villages in richmond. we made art and we made babies and we made way for our people to go back and forth between reservation and city. we did not move to cities to die. the sidewalks and streets, the concrete, absorbed our heaviness. the glass, metal, rubber, and wires, the speed, the hurtling masses -- the city took us in. we were not urban indians then. this was part of the indian relocation act, which was part of the indian termination policy, which was and is exactly what it sounds like. make them look and act like us. become us. and so disappear. but it wasn't just like that. plenty of us came by choice, to start over, to make money, or for a new experience. some of us came to cities to escape the reservation. we stayed after fighting in the second world war. after vietnam too. we stayed because the city sounds like a war, and you can't leave a war once you've been, you can only keep it at bay -- which is easier when you can see and hear it near you, that fast metal, that constant firing around you, cars up and down the streets and freeways like bullets. the quiet of the reservation, the side-of-the-highway towns, rural communities, that kind of silence just makes the sound of your brain on fire that much more pronounced.

plenty of us are urban now. if not because we live in cities, then because we live on the internet. inside the high-rise of multiple browser windows. they used to call us sidewalk indians. called us citified, superficial, inauthentic, cultureless refugees, apples."

"urban indians were the generation born in the city. we've been moving for a long time, but the land moves with you like memory. an urban indian belongs to the city, and cities belong to the earth. everything here is formed in relation to every other living and nonliving thing from the earth. all our relations. the process that brings anything to its current form - chemical, synthetic, technological, or otherwise - doesn't make the product not a product of the living earth. buildings, freeways, care -- are those not of the earth? were they shipped in from mars, the moon? is it because they're processed, manufactured, or that we handle them? are we so different? were we at one time not something else entirely, homo sapiens, single-celled organisms, space dust, unidentifiable pre-bang quantum theory? cities form in the same way as galaxies. urban indians feel at home walking in the shadow of a downtown building. we came to know the downtown oakland skyline better than we did any sacred mountain range, the redwoods in the oakland hills better than any other deep wild forest. we know the sound of the freeway better than we do rivers, the howl of distant trains better than wolf howls, we know the smell of gas and freshly wet concrete and burned rubber better than we do the smell of cedar or sage or even fry bread -- which isn't traditional, like reservations aren't traditional, but nothing is original, everything comes from something that came before, which was once nothing. everything is new and doomed. we ride buses, trains, and cars across, over, and under concrete plains. being indian has never been about returning to the land. the land is everywhere or nowhere."

"'how can i not know today your face tomorrow, the face that is there already or is being forged beneath the face you show me or beneath the mask you are wearing, and which you will only show me when i am least expecting it?' - javier marías"

"one time she used the word devastating after i finished reading a passage from her favorite author - louise erdrich. it was something about how life will break you. how that's the reason we're here, and to go sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples fall and pile around you, wasting all that sweetness."

giving and taking

quotes from sadness love openness by chokyi nyima rinpoche

"whenever we don't feel like sharing with others, we are narrowing the scope of our minds. stinginess makes us feel tense and unnatural. it's painful to be that way; our lives become rigid. on the other hand, whenever we are able to share with others or give something away, this immediately frees the mind. it's almost like magic. sharing and giving create an immediate sense of spaciousness, joy, and freedom. in fact, the mere intention to share is as powerful as the act itself.

there is a meditation practice known as giving and taking. in this meditation, we mentally give away all our most cherished possessions and accomplishments, offering them to all beings. at the same time, we take upon ourselves all their problems -- all their sadness, confusion, and suffering. this is a very powerful practice. if we engage in it sincerely and with an open mind, we naturally develop all the wonderful qualities that come with being generous. training in that kind of exchange will enable us to realize the nature of reality and the wisdom that lies at the core of our being."

"if we can avoid causing other beings any kind of pain or distress, then we are keeping the vows of the foundational vehicle, which are focused on achieving freedom for ourselves. next, if we not only avoid hurting others but also work for their benefit and happiness, then we are keeping the vows of the great vehicle, which is committed to bringing all beings to the awakened state. finally, if we additionally acknowledge the fundamental purity of all things and if we are capable of living in accord with that realization, then we are keeping the vows of the vajra vehicle that bring complete awakening in this very life."

"the buddha tells us that we shouldn't accept his words just because they are his. this sets buddhism apart from many other religions. some religions consider it a sin to question anything at all that is taught in their holy scriptures. other religions may encourage their followers to investigate things a bit more closely, but only up to a point. and if we happen to cross the line, we'll soon find out. . .

however, in buddhism there is no limit to what we may question. there are no dogmas that must remain unchallenged. this is a special feature of the buddhist teaching and the buddhist path. practicing the dharma is a hands-on, concrete activity that begins by observing the world and ourselves."

"news comes to us about people falling ill and dying. we learn that suddenly people can't seem to get along. we find that things have been destroyed, broken, and torn apart. in such cases, the underlying reason is always impermanence. and impermanence hurts. but we need to recognize life for what it is. that's the only way we can develop an approach to life that is realistic as well as constructive. in fact, if all the pain and sorrow seem paralyzing, we haven't quite gotten it yet. getting stuck is getting it wrong. getting stuck means getting depressed, and becoming depressed just makes a tough situation worse. so, we need an approach that recognizes the fact of impermanence but uses it as an opportunity to develop the qualities of love and insight."

"we'd rather not consider or talk about impermanence. we'd prefer to forget all about it as soon as possible. we certainly don't want to look at death, deal with death, or talk about death! when something is unpleasant and painful, we want it to disappear instantly. nobody wants to hold on to a source of pain. on the other hand, whenever we find something that is enjoyable and gives us pleasure, we want to keep it as long as possible, preferably forever. we pick flowers and arrange them in a vase, but when they are no longer fresh and beautiful, we throw them away because their ugliness turns us off. we wish only to enjoy their beauty and lovely scent. but ugliness doesn't suddenly descend onto the flowers. ugliness, decay, and the smell of rot are just as intrinsic to the flowers as their beauty. all are equally the results of impermanence."

"people who are not religious often regard religious beliefs and convictions as mere superstitions, and they feel a kind of pity for those who subscribe to them. meanwhile religious people pity nonbelievers, thinking of them as lost souls. so, everybody pities each other, back and forth.

faith in a buddhist context lies between these two positions. buddhist faith arises through understanding, and what we need to understand is dependent origination and impermanence. it can be very simply put: buddhist faith arises as one becomes clear about the links that constitute these processes."

"six aspects of bodhisattva training -

1. generosity: generosity is the practice of giving. it's the training in being generous with things, food, money, protection, and care. generosity is born from love. we are already generous toward the ones we love, so generosity is a natural expression of love. but unlike ordinary people, a bodhisattva is generous toward everybody.

2. discipline: discipline is the next quality, but what is discipline for a bodhisattva? it means living in accord with the wish not to harm anyone, and to do all that one can to be of benefit. that kind of discipline also springs from love. all excellent qualities blossom when a bodhisattva maintains this discipline in thought, word, and deed.

3. patience: love is patient, and the love of a bodhisattva endures all hardships, disappointments, pain, and hurt. patience is the ability to accept adversity and not be discouraged. patience opens our minds to the dharma.

4. enthusiasm: enthusiasm is the joy of doing good deeds. a bodhisattva is deeply engaged in developing the qualities that are essential to the spiritual path -- the wish to be free, loving-kindness, and insight. that process is fueled by great joy.

5. concentration: concentration refers to training the mind through meditation. bodhisattvas have a balanced and composed mind. when the mind is calm and at ease, it also becomes agile and capable of wonderful achievements.

6. insight: insight arises from training in the first five qualities: generosity, discipline, patience, enthusiasm, and concentration. insight is twofold: awareness of things as they appear and awareness of things as they really are. insight dawns when the mind has achieved composure and agility by means of practice."

"all sights are visible emptiness.
all sounds are audible emptiness.
all sensations are blissful emptiness.
all concepts are thought-free wakefulness."

"produce nothing, suppress nothing. just let your mind be, exactly as it is, right now, in this very moment, completely free from hopes or expectations."

side of the road

hadn't listened to lucinda williams for years... but shoog and nell brought her back this spring 💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚
my favorite song of hers, covered by first aid kit

craving and clinging

from be an island by ayya khema

"having a self-image is detrimental to insight, because it is based on the illusion of permanence. everything constantly changes, including ourselves, while a self-image presupposes stability. one moment we may be a sensual being, the next moment an irritable one. sometimes we are at ease, at other times we are restless. who are we? any permanent image of ourselves can never have a basis in fact. such an image will block our insight into the underlying tendencies, blinding us to those that do not fit."

"next we come to clinging to existence (bhavaraga). that is our survival syndrome. we cling to being here, unwilling to give up, not ready to die today. we must learn to be ready to die now -- which does not mean wishing to die but rather accepting death as an ever present possibility. wishing to die is the other side of the coin of clinging to existence. it is trying to get rid of 'me' because life is too difficult. but being ready to die now means seeing the fallacy in clinging to being someone, and abandoning it.

clinging to existence leads us into dependency. we want everything to work out well for us, and we resent it if that does not happen. this creates irritation and sensuality. we often forget that we are only guests here on this planet. our visit is limited and can be over at any time. clinging to being alive projects us into the future, so that we cannot attend to the present. there is no life in the future, it is all ideation, conjecture, a hope, and a prayer. if we really want to be alive and experience things as they are, we have to be here now, attending to each moment. this entails letting go of clinging to what will happen to us in the future, particularly the question of whether we will continue to exist. existing in this moment is enough. then there will be strong mindfulness, real attention, and clear knowing."

"there is no way that a relationship can work unless heart and mind are both involved. there must be a loving feeling and an understanding. unless both arise in meditation, real concentration cannot happen. we may sit on the cushion year after year, yet our practice will not flourish. the deliberate mind movement of giving up has to precede the meditation. otherwise ego will get in the way. it will rear its ugly head and say, 'i know better. there are other ways to meditate.' the ego will insist on comfort: 'i don't feel comfortable, so this must not be right. i'd like something more pleasant.'

unless we learn to renounce all wanting and resistance every time we sit on the cushion, the spiritual path will remain an utter mystery. the buddha's teaching leads in one direction only -- the total elimination of self-delusion. to get there, we have to work on ourselves, little by little, all the time.

renunciation means letting go of ideation, letting go of the mind-stuff that claims to be the one who knows."

"but rites and rituals are not confined only to religious activities. in our relationships we have certain prescribed ways of acting towards our parents, our children, our partners. how we relate to coworkers, friends, and strangers, how we want to be affirmed by others -- all are connected to preconceived ideas of what is right and proper in a certain culture and tradition. none of them contain any basic truth, all are mind-made. the more ideas we have, the less we can see reality. the more we believe in customary, traditional behavior, the harder it is to abandon it when it is not skillful. if we imagine ourselves to be a certain kind of person, we relate to all situations in that way. so ritual is not solely about the way we put flowers on a shrine. it can also dictate how we greet people, if we do so in a certain stereotyped manner rather than simply with an open heart and mind."

******

"freedom is often misunderstood as the ability to do anything we want. we have probably tried that already and found that it doesn't work. even if we were to follow only our desires, we would soon be satiated and then feel unfulfilled.

freedom means nonattachment, which is not indifference but rather the penetration of absolute truth. to see that clearly, we let go for one moment of anything that we call our own, anything that we like or consider important. we examine it until its fleeting nature has become quite apparent. then the moment comes when we can say, 'i don't have to have that, i can do without it.' that is a moment of truth. having a moment of truth is always possible, but such moments don't come automatically. we have to inquire into our clinging and work at loosening it. letting go sounds easy, and it is, but only after it has happened. before that, it entails much self-examination.

a moment of signless liberation can be experienced in another way. suppose, for instance, there is an unpleasant feeling in the body that creates a reaction of 'i don't want it. go away now!' when we really penetrate into the impermanence of that feeling -- when we see how it has no basic reality or significance and, for just a moment, let go of our rejection and say, 'it's all right, it is only a feeling' -- we get a taste of signless liberation. when we see that there is nothing that really lasts, that all is fleeting, flowing, moving, and changing from one moment to the next, we have a moment of freedom. we can practice that with our thoughts, our feelings, or our physical sensations.

as a first step we can become aware of our attachment to the body. usually, we are concerned whether the body looks good, is dressed appropriately, feels well, eats right, and is comfortable enough. but when we consider the body's fleeting nature, our attachment may wane. we may experience instead a feeling of equanimity. we have no preference whether this body of ours exists or not. this is a moment of real peace, but it doesn't happen by itself. we have to remember again and again that life is not guaranteed but merely supported by kamma-vipaka (the results of one's intentions) and that it may run out at any time. that's the reason why the buddha recommended the daily recollection 'i am of the nature to die.' we are of this nature all the time, which means right now, not twenty years from now or whenever we feel ready.

everybody knows they are going to die -- there's nothing new about that. the buddha did not teach anything inaccessible. he asked us to investigate the known in a new way, to get a deep-down feeling that this body cannot remain, no matter how hard we try to keep it. it's a foregone conclusion that we are fighting a losing battle. of course this doesn't mean we shouldn't look after our bodies. the body has to be washed, fed, and given medicine. that's all we have to do. and if we can't keep it going indefinitely, that's all right.

one moment of real inner seeing is liberating. the experience of relief and release is totally convincing. it arouses a sense of urgency to practice to the end -- to be deterred no longer by the opinions of others or external situations. liberation is not so difficult that an ordinary person cannot experience it. were that so, the buddha's teaching would be in vain.

to get a glimpse of wishless liberation, we can notice the dissatisfaction - the [suffering] - that arises in the heart and mind whenever we want something. when we drop the wish, we experience relief. the [suffering] does not necessarily arise because we can't fulfill our wish; most likely we can. it's an old axiom that if we want something badly enough, we will get it. the problem is that most people don't know what will bring them happiness. the [suffering], however, lies in the desire itself, which creates tension, a feeling of expectation tinged with worry.

the desire also creates a thought process that is no longer concerned with the here and now, but with the future, with the hope of gratifying the desire. a mind preoccupied with the future cannot attend to the present moment. it lives in the imaginary delusion of what might happen when its desires are fulfilled. of course, the future hardly ever turns out the way we hope, but, since the real [suffering] lies in the wishing itself and not in the outcome, freedom from this kind of wishing is called wishless liberation.

when we deliberately drop our wishes for things, the release and relief generate a feeling of strength. the mind obeys, abandons its old patterns, and a feeling of self-confidence ensues. the more often we drop our wishes, the more powerful the mind becomes. the word 'power' has the connotation of power over other people, but here it means power over ourselves. it explains the sort of vibration that emanated from the buddha and why people flocked to him. we could compare such potential to a powerhouse from which energy can be drawn.

it is useful to aim for a moment of wishless liberation. our wish could be related to eating, to entertaining ourselves, wanting to go somewhere, buying something, getting information, or talking to someone. whatever it may be, we can drop it deliberately, knowing that we don't really need it. letting go of something we want requires willpower. but as soon as the mind has dropped its wishes, we can experience the ease of contentment.

to get an inkling of voidness liberation, we can deliberately empty the mind of all it contains, realizing that it has no absolute significance. the less we carry in the mind, the less tired the mind becomes. usually our minds are full to the brim, which is a great burden for us. voidness liberation means that there is an absence of all formations (thoughts and reactions). when, for a moment, we have let them go, we can notice how relieved we feel, and we get a taste of voidness liberation. then we let thoughts and reactions return and realize the difference. immediately irritation arises, which usually escapes our awareness because we're used to a mind full of formations. we experience the heavy, debilitating, burdensome nature of thoughts only when we are able to compare our usual mind states with momentary emptiness. this may be the first time that we notice the constant sense bombardment we commonly experience.

the most insidious irritations arise through thinking. thought is a constant process with which we identify and then act upon. we can't act upon everything we see or hear. if we see a beautiful sunset or hear some great music, there's nothing to do about it, except to like it. no need for a reaction, which may easily result in new problems. even the most innocuous situations can cause friction if we identify with our thinking process. once we express our views, hopes, and beliefs, the argument starts, and tears start flowing."

ANTI-LOVE POEM

by grace paley from fidelity

sometimes you don’t want to love the person you love

you turn your face away from that face

whose eyes lips might make you give up anger

forget insult    steal sadness of not wanting

to love    turn away then turn away    at breakfast

in the evening    don’t lift your eyes from the paper

to see that face in all its seriousness     a

sweetness of concentration     he holds his book

in his hand     the hard-knuckled winter wood-

scarred fingers    turn away   that’s all you can

do    old as you are to save yourself    from love

names

excerpts from the short story collection sour heart by jenny zhang

(from "the evolution of my brother"):

i look at the poem again and then go through some other files, including one called "fight on dirt," a painting of magenta, lime-green, and teal-blue stick figures on brown mud. i see another file named "power rain," which i remember seeing a long time ago but never opened. i wondered briefly back then what "power rain" was -- massive droplets of rain, each one fat enough to contain an armed soldier ready for combat, hitting the ground, causing tremors in the earth?

i open up the file and realize the full name is actually "power rain jurs." sour tears well up in my eyes and fall into my mouth. i feel self-conscious and stupid crying for myself -- for my shame, for my regrets, for how quickly a childhood happens. i wish i had acted better. i wish i had been the kind of sister who was patient enough to show my brother the proper spelling for "power rangers."

whenever i'm home for a few days, i start to feel this despair at being back in the place where i had spent so many afternoons dreaming of getting away, so many late nights fantasizing about who i would be once i was allowed to be someone apart from my family, once i was free to commit mistakes on my own. how strange it is to return to a place where my childish notions of freedom are everywhere to be found -- in my journals and my doodles and the corners of the room where i sat fuming for hours, counting down the days until i could leave this place and start my real life. but now that trying to become someone on my own is no longer something to dream about but just my ever-present reality, now that my former conviction that i had been burdened with the responsibility of taking care of this household has been revealed to be untrue, that all along, my responsibilities had been negligible, illusory even, that all along, our parents had been the ones watching over us - me and my brother - and now that i am on my own, the days of resenting my parents for loving me too much and my brother for needing me too intensely have been replaced with the days of feeling bewildered by the prospect of finding some other identity besides "daughter" or "sister." it turns out that this, too, is terrifying, all of it is terrifying. being someone is terrifying. i long to come home, but now, i will always come home to my family as a visitor, and that weighs on me, reverts me back into the teenager i was, but instead of insisting that i want everyone to leave me alone, what i want now is for someone to beg me to stay. me again. memememememememe.


(from "my days and nights of terror"):

my father said they needed "american" names on their resumes when applying for jobs; they had to have names that were pronounceable to white american english speakers because they already had faces that were considered vile to look at and who was going to hire someone with their faces and their names? i thought my mother and my father had beautiful faces but my father corrected me, not in america. we're ugly, and it's that simple. they look at us and think we're cretins. you think they like us going to their schools? you think they're okay with us working in their offices? taking their jobs? you think they're happy to pick up laundry and takeout from businesses we've opened up? you think they want to go to the corner store and see our eyes and our teeth and our skin looking back at them from behind the counter? no! they don't want us here. they don't want to look at us and they sure as hell don't want to have to try to pronounce our chinese names. x-u. q-u-i. they don't want to see that! the more my father went on about how much they hated us, the more i started to suspect maybe he was the one who hated us. on the first day of school in america, i was so frazzled and fearful of everything that i accidentally left off the second e and i became mande with one e and so i started my first day of school in america with a mistake. i was a failure right from the start.

*      *      *    

i had prayed for this kind of soft joy, this kind of contentment, a day like this followed by more days like this, and finally having it was like being born, only instead of not remembering what it was like to be born, i was fully cognizant and participating in my own creation and suddenly it was clear to me why we don't remember what it was like to be born -- because it would give us too much insight into what it will be like to die. to be present for your own birth was suicide. to know the true wonder of suddenly existing was to know the true fear of suddenly ceasing to exist. they had to occur together and there was no prayer for what i knew in my flaky soul -- that there was no way to escape the fear. it would always be there, amplifying joy and stealing from it. still, it was tempting to sink into it, to roll around in its outer rings where occasionally the fear converted to a kind of happiness that turned an entire afternoon into an image that would stay forever, loom forever, return forever.

be nobody

chapter from be an island by ayya khema

being happy also means being peaceful, but quite often people do not really want to direct their attention to that. peacefulness connotes 'not interesting' or 'not enough happening,' the absence of proliferations or excitement. yet peace is very hard to find anywhere. it is difficult to attain, and very few people really work at it. peace seems to negate life, to deny our personal supremacy. only those who practice a spiritual discipline care to direct their mind toward it.

our natural tendency is to cultivate our superiority, which often falls into the other extreme of inferiority. so long as we have our own superiority in mind, we cannot find peace. all we find is a power game: 'anything you can do, i can do better.' or at times when it is quite obvious that this is not so, then it's 'anything you can do, i cannot do as well.' there are moments of truth in everyone's life when one sees quite clearly that one can't do everything as well as the next person, whether it's sweeping a path or writing a book.

a feeling of superiority or inferiority is the opposite of peacefulness. a display of one's abilities, or the lack of them, will produce restlessness. there is always the reaching out, the craving for a result in the form of other people's admiration or their denial of it. when they deny it, there is warfare. when they affirm it, there is victory.

in war there is never a winner, only losers. no matter who signs the peace treaty first, both sides lose. the same applies to a feeling of being victorious, of being the one who knows better or who is stronger or cleverer. battle and peace do not go well together.

one wonders in the end, does anybody really want peace? is anybody really trying to get it? we must inquire into our innermost hearts if peace is what we really want. such an inquiry is difficult. most people have a thick steel door in front of their hearts. they cannot find out what is going on inside. but everyone needs to try to get in as far as possible and check their priorities.

in moments of turmoil, when we are either not getting the supremacy we want or we feel really inferior, then all we desire is peace. when our unrest and feeling of inferiority subside, then what happens? is it really peace we want? or do we want to be somebody special, somebody important or lovable?

a 'somebody' never has peace. there is an interesting simile about a mango tree. a king went riding in the forest and encountered a mango tree laden with fruit. he said to his servants, 'go back in the evening and collect the mangoes,' because he wanted them for the royal dining table. the servants went back to the forest but returned to the palace empty-handed. 'sorry, your majesty,' they told the king, 'the mangoes were all gone, there was not a single mango left on the tree.' the king thought the servants had been too lazy to go back to the forest, so he rode out to see for himself. what he saw instead of a beautiful mango tree laden with fruit was a pitiful, bedraggled tree. someone had broken all the branches to take the fruit. as the king rode a little farther, he came upon another mango tree, beautiful in all its green splendor, but without a single fruit. nobody had wanted to go near it. it bore no fruit, so it was left in peace. the king went back to his palace, gave his royal crown and scepter to his ministers, and said, 'you may now have the kingdom, i am going to live in a hut in the forest.'

when one is nobody and has nothing, there is no danger of warfare or attack, and there is peace. the mango tree laden with fruit did not have a moment's peace; everybody wanted its fruit. if we really want peace, we have to be nobody. neither important, nor clever, nor beautiful, nor famous, nor right, nor in charge of anything. we need to be unobtrusive and have as few attributes as possible. the mango tree with no fruit was standing peacefully in all its splendor, giving shade. to be nobody does not mean doing nothing. it means acting without self-display and without craving for results. the mango tree had shade to give, but it did not display its wares or fret whether anyone wanted its shade. this ability allows for inner peace. it is a rare ability, because most people vacillate from one extreme to another, either doing nothing and thinking, 'let them see how they get along without me,' or being in charge and projecting their views and ideas.

being somebody, it seems, is so much more ingrained and important than having peace. so we need to inquire with great care what we are truly looking for. what is it that we want out of life? if we want to be important, appreciated, and loved, then we have to take their opposites in stride. every positive brings with it a negative, just as the sun throws shadows. if we want one, we must accept the other, without moaning about it.

but if we really want a peaceful heart and mind, inner security, and stability, then we have to give up wanting to be somebody, anybody. body and mind will not disappear because of that; what subsides is the urge to affirm the importance and supremacy of this particular person whom i call 'me.'

every human being considers [themself] important. there are billions of people on this globe, how many will mourn us? count them for a moment. six or eight, or twelve or fifteen, out of all these billions. maybe we have a vastly exaggerated idea of our own importance. the more we understand this, the easier life is.

wanting to be somebody is dangerous. it is like playing with a fire, and it hurts constantly. and other people will not play by our rules. people who really manage to be somebody, like heads of state, invariably need a bodyguard because they are in danger of their lives.

among the countless things in our world -- all the people, animals, and natural and man-made objects -- the only ones we have any jurisdiction over are our own heart and mind. if we really want to be somebody, we could try to be that rare person who is in charge of his own heart and mind. becoming somebody like that is not only very rare, it also brings the most beneficial results. such a person does not fall into the trap of the defilements.

there is a story about achaan cha, a famous meditation master in northeast thailand. he was once accused of having a lot of hatred. achaan cha replied, 'that may be so, but i don't make any use of it.' an answer like this comes from a deep understanding of one's own nature. it is a rare person who will not allow himself defiled thought, speech, or action. such a person is really somebody. he does not have to prove it to anyone else because it is quite obvious, not to mention that he has no desire to prove anything. there is only one abiding interest and that is one's own peace of mind.

when we have peace of mind as our priority, everything in the mind and all speech or action is directed toward it. anything that does not create peace of mind is discarded. we must not confuse this with being right or having the last word, however. others need not agree. peace of mind is our own. we can all find it if we make the effort.

inferiority

excerpts from those who leave and those who stay by elena ferrante

he said only:
"it was predictable that it would end like this."
"why?"
"you remember when i told you that lina scared me?"
"yes."
"it wasn't fear, i understood much later."
"what was it?"
"estrangement and belonging, an effect of distance and closeness at the same time."
"meaning what?"
"it's hard to say: you and i became friends immediately, you i love. with her that always seemed impossible. there was something tremendous about her that made me want to go down on my knees and confess my most secret thoughts."
i said ironically: "great, an almost religious experience."
he remained serious: "no, only an admission of inferiority. but when she helped me study, that was great, yes. she would read the textbook and immediately understand it, then she'd summarize it for me in a simple way. there have been, and still are today, moments when i think: if i had been born a woman i would have wanted to be like her. in fact, in the carracci family we were both alien bodies, neither she nor i could endure. so her faults never mattered to me, i always felt on her side."

*                          *                          *

it happened that around that time mariarosa came to florence to present the book of a university colleague of hers on the madonna del parto. pietro swore he wouldn't miss it, but at the last minute he made an excuse and hid somewhere. my sister-in-law arrived by car, alone this time, a bit tired but affectionate as always and loaded with presents for dede and elsa. she never mentioned my aborted novel, even though adele had surely told her about it. she talked volubly about trips she'd taken, about books, with her usual enthusiasm. she pursued energetically the many novelties of the planet. she would assert one thing, get tired of it, go on to another that a little earlier, out of distraction, blindness, she had rejected. when she spoke about her colleague's book, she immediately gained the admiration of the art historians in the audience. and the evening would have run smoothly along the usual academic tracks if at a certain point, with an abrupt swerve, she hadn't uttered remarks, occasionally vulgar, of this type: children shouldn't be given to any father, least of all god the father, children should be given to themselves; the moment has arrived to study as women and not as men; behind every discipline is the penis and when the penis feels impotent it resorts to the iron bar, the police, the prisons, the army, the concentration camps; and if you don't submit, if, rather, you continue to turn everything upside down, then comes slaughter. shouts of discontent, of agreement: at the end she was surrounded by a dense crowd of women. she called me over with welcoming gestures, proudly showed off dede and elsa to her florentine friends, said nice things about me. some remembered my book, but i avoided it, as if i hadn't written it. the evening was nice, and brought an invitation, from a small, varied group of girls and adult women, to go to the house of one of them, once a week to talk -- they said -- about us.

mariarosa's provocative remarks and the invitation of her friends led me to fish out from under a pile of books those pamphlets adele had given me long before. i carried them around in my purse, i read them outside, under the gray sky of late winter. first, intrigued by the title, i read an essay entitled we spit on hegel. i read it while elsa slept in her carriage and dede, in coat, scarf, and woolen hat, talked to her doll in a low voice. every sentence struck me, every word, and above all the bold freedom of thought. i forcefully underlined many of the sentences, i made exclamation points, vertical strokes. spit on hegel. spit on the culture of men, spit on marx, on engels, on lenin. and on historical materialism. and on freud. and on psychoanalysis and penis envy. and on marriage, on family. and on nazism, on stalinism, on terrorism. and on war. and on the class struggle. and on the dictatorship of the proletariat. and on socialism. and on communism. and on the trap of equality. and on all the manifestations of patriarchal culture. and on all its institutional forms. resist the waste of female intelligence. deculturate. disacculturate, starting with maternity, don't give children to anyone. get rid of the master-slave dialectic. rip inferiority from our brains. restore women to themselves. don't create antitheses. move on another plane in the name of one's own difference. the university doesn't free women but completes their repression. against wisdom. while men devote themselves to undertakings in space, life for women on this planet has yet to begin. woman is the other face of the earth. woman is the unpredictable subject. free oneself from subjection here, now, in this present. the author of those pages was called carla lonzi. how is it possible, i wondered, that a woman knows how to think like that. i worked so hard on books, but i endured them, i never actually used them, i never turned them against themselves. this is thinking. this is thinking against. i -- after so much exertion -- don't know how to think. nor does mariarosa: she's read pages and pages, and she rearranges them with flair, putting on a show. that's it. lila, on the other hand, knows. it's her nature. if she had studied, she would know how to think like this.

that idea became insistent. everything i read in that period ultimately drew lila in, one way or another. i had come upon a female model of thinking that, given the obvious differences, provoked in me the same admiration, the same sense of inferiority that i felt toward her. not only that: i read thinking of her, of fragments of her life, of the sentences she would agree with, of those she would have rejected. afterward, impelled by that reading, i often joined the group of mariarosa's friends, but it wasn't easy: dede asked me continuously when we were leaving, elsa would suddenly let out cries of joy. but it wasn't just my daughters who were the problem. it was that there i found only women who, resembling me, couldn't help me. i was bored when the discussion became a sort of inelegant summary of what i already knew. and it seemed to me i knew well enough what it meant to be born female, i wasn't interested in the work of consciousness-raising. and i had no intention of speaking in public about my relationship with pietro, or with men in general, to provide testimony about what men are, of every class and of every age. and no one knew better than i did what it meant to make your own head masculine so that it would be accepted by the culture of men; i had done it, i was doing it. furthermore i remained completely outside the tensions, the explosions of jealousy, the authoritarian tones, weak, submissive voices, intellectual hierarchies, struggles for primacy in the group that ended in desperate tears. but there was one new fact, which naturally led me to lila. i was fascinated by the way people talked, confronted each other -- explicit to the point of being disagreeable. i didn't like the amenability that yielded to gossip: i had known enough of that since childhood. what seduced me instead was an urge for authenticity that i had never felt and that perhaps was not in my nature. i never said a single word, in that circle, that was equal to that urgency. but i felt that i should do something like that with lila, examine our connection with the same inflexibility, that we should tell each other fully what we had been silent about, starting perhaps from the unaccustomed lament for my mistaken book.

that need was so strong that i imagined going to naples with the children for a while, or asking her to come to me with gennaro, or to write to each other. i talked about it with her once on the phone but it was a fiasco. i told her about the books by women i was reading, about the group i went to . she listened but then she laughed at titles like the clitoral woman and the vaginal woman, and did her best to be vulgar: what the fuck are you talking about, lenu, pleasure, pussy, we've got plenty of problems here already, you're crazy. she wanted to prove that she didn't have the tools to put into words the things that interested me. and in the end she was scornful, she said: work, do the nice things you have to do, don't waste time. she got angry. evidently it's not the right moment, i thought, i'll try again later on. but i never found the time or the courage to try again. i concluded that first of all i had to understand better what i was. investigate my nature as a woman. i had been excessive, i had striven to give myself male capacities. i thought i had to know everything, be concerned with everything. what did i care about politics, about struggles. i wanted to make a good impression on men, be at their level. at the level of what, of their reason, most unreasonable. such persistence in memorizing fashionable jargon, wasted effort. i had been conditioned by my education, which had shaped my mind, my voice. to what secret pacts with myself had i consented, just to excel. and now, after the hard work of learning, what must i unlearn. also, i had been forced by the powerful presence of lila to imagine myself as i was not. i was added to her, and i felt mutilated as soon as i removed myself. not an idea, without lila. not a thought i trusted without the support of her thoughts. not an image. i had to accept myself outside of her. the gist was that. accept that i was an average person. what should i do. try again to write. maybe i didn't have the passion, i merely limited myself to carrying out a task. so don't write anymore. find some job. or act the lady, as my mother said. shut myself up in the family. or turn everything upside down. house. children. husband.

    *                 *                 *

on one of those occasions i told her about my relationship with franco in the days of the normale, and what he had meant to me. i'm grateful to him, i said, i learned so much from him, and i'm sorry that he now treats me and the children coldly. i thought about it for a moment, and continued: maybe there's something mistaken in this desire men have to instruct us; i was young at the time, and i didn't realize that in his wish to transform me was the proof that he didn't like me as i was, he wanted me to be different, or, rather, he didn't want just a woman, he wanted the woman he imagined he himself would be if he were a woman. for franco, i said, i was an opportunity for him to expand into the feminine, to take possession of it: i constituted the proof of his omnipotence, the demonstration that he knew how to be not only a man in the right way but also a woman. and today when he no longer senses me as part of himself, he feels betrayed.

*                       *                      *

. . . i was signora airota, elena airota, a woman depressed by submissiveness who nevertheless, urged by her sister-in-law but also in order to fight discouragement, had begun to study almost in secret the invention of woman by men, mixing the ancient and modern worlds. i didn't have an objective; only to be able to say to mariarosa, to my mother-in-law, to this or that acquaintance: i'm working.

and so i pushed on, in my speculations, from the first and second biblical creations to defoe-flanders, flaubert-bovary, tolstoy-karenina, la derniere mode, rose selavy, and beyond, and still further, in a frenzy of revelation. slowly i began to feel some satisfaction. i discovered everywhere female automatons created by men. there was nothing of ourselves, and the little there was that rose up in protest immediately became material for their manufacturing.

insignificance

from remnants of the first earth by ray a. young bear

"in an earthly realm where the forces of nature are infinitely more powerful than human beings, personal and collective insignificance is a given. in our relatively compact tribal society, there was equal standing among everyone other than the chieftain hierarchy. in the ancien regime our people hunted, fished, gathered food, planted seeds, and harvested crops together, making everyone interdependent.

this philosophical stance of insignificance was reflected in the journals. preceding each passage my grandfathers wrote were such disclaimers: 'now, at this very moment, i will be forthright and say that i do not know much, that i am not exceedingly knowledgeable, but this is what i have been told: whatever you see, you will document that fact, for it will serve as a point from which present and future black eagle childs will have an unobstructed view of our life. this i have done in the same way my other grandfathers did. . . .'"

"it is true what leslie silko says: that if you know how to write, you inevitably deal with those who once lived -- by yourself.

a human presence is forever. even luciano's. even if he didn't quite die. whether in the act of storytelling or fond remembrances. the mere virtue of being alive, permeable and free, rang throughout the physical totality of the person who was luciano bearchild. he sought and was able to experience new ways to see things, to live them and not be complacent."

"listening to grandmother's pleas for william to awaken, i felt the welling of sadness within me. in a tribal society that was historically burdened with obstacles, suppression of emotion became an art form. to cry over the departed was to inflict misery upon their 'shadows.' in death there was a deep-rooted fear that personal grief could bridge the world of the real and the nonreal. whatever our affliction - physical pain, bereavement, sheer loneliness, or embarrassment - being ostentatious was not part of our demeanor."

"edgar bearchild used to preface and summarize stories by saying: 'ma ni tta-i ni-e na ska ki-a ji mo ni. in this direction does the story fall.' bearchild used this phrase to an obsessive degree for any information presented. in this direction being the disclaimer for words spoken in perhaps an unfavorable context, does the story fall being inevitability."

"keep this in mind: to have every facet of life work to one's advantage was seen not as the glorious result of unbounded determination but as the workings of evil. this was - and even today is - the tribal community's mind-set. illiteracy was shared. poverty was blood-ingrained, and like the harmony that held the clans together, having little was inherited. anything that tore through the delicate netting was regrettable, like suicidal indians or those who chose urban relocation, coming home for their own funerals. what a pity! was whispered through cupped hands to respectful, listening ears. a life misled was lamented over sweet rolls and coffee, but luciano's success with money and white women was deemed unnatural.

suffering and bad luck were shared. equally - like commodity surplus foods. luciano's fortune benefited his immediate family and himself. . . amazingly, after luciano's mysterious disappearance, many spoke of him in respectful terms. those who had been jealous enough to become enemies recanted statements he had been an extraterrestrial all along and took part in the search for him."

solitary mind

quotes from be an island by ayya khema

"when we can abandon distracting thoughts while meditating on the breath, we can use the same skill to protect our mind at all times. the more we learn to shut our mind-door to the negativities that disturb our inner peace, the easier our life becomes. peace of mind is not indifference. recognizing and letting go is not suppression. a peaceful mind is a compassionate mind.
[suffering] is self-made and self-perpetuated. if we are sincere in wanting to get rid of it, we have to watch the mind carefully. we have to gain insight into what is really happening within. what triggers us? how do we react? there are innumerable triggers, but only two reactions. one is equanimity, the other craving."

"if there is such a thing as the deathless, and if we recognize that birth is [suffering], then what is left to us other than the path toward the deathless? it is not enough to try meditation tentatively, hoping for some bliss and to learn some of the buddha's teaching to improve our interaction with others. it is enough only when the heart says, 'there are no other choices but to attain the deathless.'
one certain way of reaching that conviction is having sufficient [suffering]. of course, nobody would wish that for anyone else, but the experience of much suffering is often enough to turn the tide. there are many stories from the buddha's lifetime when women in particular were experiencing so much [suffering], losing their families and loved ones, that they had no other choices left. in our society there may be too many alternatives left. . . if we look at any of the alternatives we can conjure up, we recognize each one of them as a sense contact - which is always short-lived. unless that becomes entirely clear, our spiritual growth will always be shaky."

"we need courage to choose the way of the dhamma. if we take the path leading out of [suffering], we have to leave a lot of attachments and support systems behind. that takes courage. we discard much of that which we once believed to bring fulfillment and happiness. we need courage to break with that and begin to stand alone. . . we begin to loosen our attachments, our clinging and belonging. we recognize beyond any doubt that there is nothing more important to be done than treading the path to enlightenment. then all our energies and priorities are geared to this objective."

"a malleable mind is pliable, moves freely, and embraces everything. whenever we notice some inner change in ourselves, we need to recollect it repeatedly so as to make it second nature. one such change is becoming less concerned with comforts, belongings, ideas, hopes, and wishes. we become more and more concerned with what we can give, how we can grow, and whether we are making wholesome karma. investigating further, we can try letting go of being a separate person for a moment and instead feeling part of all that exists. as long as we are caught within the barrier of our own minds and bodies, we cannot find true happiness. . .
giving oneself completely is difficult for most of us, because we think we are losing ourselves. actually we gain everything -- all spiritual teachings are agreed on that. whatever we use as our personal identity constitutes our prison. letting go is freedom. when we do experience a moment of letting go, we mistakenly think that it was due to a certain situation or person. but in reality we experience freedom whenever we let go of what we're clinging to. giving in and giving up are tiny lights at the end of the tunnel that let us know freedom is possible."

"solitude can be fully experienced only when there is inner peace. otherwise loneliness pushes us to remedy feelings of emptiness and loss. 'where is everybody? what can i do without some companionship? i must discuss my problems.' mindfulness is able to take care of all that, because it arises in the present moment and has nothing to do with the future or past. it keeps us totally occupied and saves us from making mistakes. the greater our mindfulness, the fewer the mistakes. errors on the mundane level have repercussions for the spiritual path. when our lack of mindfulness leads us to inflict [suffering] on ourselves, we will try again and again to find someone who is to blame or someone who can distract us.
ideal solitude arises when a person can be alone or with others and retain the same inner calm, not getting caught in someone else's difficulties. we may respond in an appropriate manner, but we are not affected. we all have our own inner life, but we get to know it well only when the mind stops chattering and we can attend to our inner feelings. once we have seen what is happening inside of us, we will want to change some of it. . . our inner stress and lack of peace push us to find someone who will remove our [suffering], but only we can do it.
the solitary mind can have profound and original thoughts, whereas a dependent mind thinks in cliches because it wants approval. a worldly mind that understands only superficialities cannot grasp the profundity of the buddha's teaching."

"depth of understanding makes release from suffering possible. when we go deeper and deeper and find no core, we learn to let go of even deep-seated attachments. whether what we find within us is pure and commendable or impure and unpleasant makes no difference. all mental states that we own and cherish keep us in duality, in midair, in insecurity, and cannot bring an end to suffering. . .
even if we agree with the buddha's words and find them plausible, without the certainty of personal experience they will be of limited assistance. to have direct knowledge, we must sink like a stone, untied to anything, down to the bottom of all our obstructions. to see the truth, we need a powerful mind, a weighty mind. as long as the mind is interested in petty concerns, it will not have sufficient weight to attain deep understanding."