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."

if it was the truth

from m archive by alexis pauline gumbs


that was the challenge. to create oneself anew on a regular basis. it started with every seven years (also called the new cell cycle) and accelerated for the talented. to every three years, every year, every season, every month, every day until the prestige came from re-creating a self unrecognizable (to both your former self and the expectations of others) multiple times in any given day. they said it was towards the evolution of the community. a community that could not depend on previous expectations would have to evolve new needs. their individual shapeshifting was towards less collective dependence on a former world. let the new world meet us faster where we are! the people sometimes said to affirm a particularly brave reinvention.

they went from mostly not knowing their neighbors to perpetually not knowing themselves. which seemed more useful. and like the rare urban neighbor with the time to watch their transforming neighbors walk in and out their doors differently every day, the social media applications were even more useful for creating narrative out of the random moments of self-documentation offered by the digitally literate.

maybe that's where they went wrong. the watching. because at some point the point changed from transforming need and evolving skills to performing further and further newness. as if novelty itself was the measure and the outcome and the point again. and eventually it distilled down to the same people looking different every day and going to the same places they always went just to provoke contrast and doing the same things they always did (eventually just the work of looking for and financing new costumes). so the challenge was called off around the time when it got most boring.

it wasn't worth the use of fossil fuels.


*                                   *                               *                                *

but that was before. i am trying to describe to you what it was like when the doers decided to rest. when they carefully placed what they knew in the easiest places to find it and sat down. i don't know if wind systems really take deep breaths on their own, but it felt like it. the stillness was profound. and for a while all the talkers could hear were their own voices resounding like always, but pretty soon they had to listen for the source of this strange silence where the rhythm of other people's doing had been. it was the sound of a voice bouncing with nothing to take credit for. nothing left, finally, to steal. it was hollow and horrifying from that perspective.

and the former doers retained their restraint. some of them shaking in their seats. some of them repeating mantras and biting the insides of their cheeks, but quite a few of them just honestly passed out in the deeply earned and dreamless sleep of the overused.

you should have been there. you had to be there to really feel the contrast. all that frantic energy, all that back-and-forth friction and the robust remarking that tried to drown it all out. and then the moment it just stopped. and if it was truth you wanted, you could find it on the floor, in the kitchen, lying on the street just so. if it was truth you wanted, here it was. i mean make yourself at home already.

the third commitment

quotes from living beautifully with uncertainty and change by pema chodron

the three commitments:

1- committing to not cause harm
2- committing to take care of one another
3- committing to embrace the world just as it is

"it's only when the fearful 'i' is not pushing and pulling at life, freaking out and grasping at it, that full engagement is possible. we become more fully engaged in our lives when we become less self-absorbed. as we have less and less allegiance to our small, egocentric self, less and less allegiance to a fixed notion of who we are or what we're capable of doing, we find we also have less and less fear of embracing the world just as it is."

"in the charnel ground, we meet both wretchedness and splendidness -- the totality of our experience as human beings -- and discover that we need both to be a genuine warrior. the splendidness of life lifts our spirits, and we go forward with enthusiasm. when we hear pleasant news or meet with inspiring teachers, when we enjoy the company of good friends or find ourselves in beautiful places, when we feel that everything is ideal and hunky-dory, then naturally we feel joyful and at ease. but should all of this good fortune make us arrogant or complacent or indifferent to the suffering of others, wretchedness humbles us. it cuts through any sense of superiority or entitlement, through any delusions that comfort is somehow our birthright. on the other hand, if there is too much wretchedness - too much misery and despair - it makes us want to collapse and never get out of bed. so the sweetness of life and the harshness of life complement each other. splendidness provides vision, and wretchedness grounds us. just when we're ready to give up, a kind word or the sight of the ocean or the sound of beautiful music can save the day. just when we're riding high and becoming arrogant, a sudden misfortune or bad news from the doctor or the unexpected death of a loved one can abruptly bring us down to earth and reconnect us with our tender heart.

when life is uncomfortable, when we're highly agitated and don't know where to turn, that's the most difficult time to stay present. but that's also the time when doing so can be the most rewarding. it's a challenge to practice staying present when we're despondent or distressed or overwhelmed, when our backs are against the wall. but right then, when we're in a tight spot, we have the ideal situation for practice. we can do something radical: accept suffering as part of our home ground, part of our enlightened mandala, and relate to it straightforwardly. we don't awaken in some paradise where the circumstances are made to order. we awaken in the charnel ground."

"wanting to escape pain is the reason that many people start on a spiritual path. it can be a good motivator, because it drives us to look for answers. the problem is, most of us spend our entire life going from one promise of relief to another, never staying with the pain long enough to learn anything from it.

but sooner or later, we all encounter intense emotion that we can't outrun. it may be fear that arises in a truly disturbing situation or the feeling of being very hooked and about to be swept away. one sign that you've already started charnel-ground practice, whether you realize it or not, is if you perk up when strong feelings come alone and then, instead of trying to get rid of them, you move toward them and get curious. when you're open to inviting difficult emotions to stick around long enough to teach you something, then you're already in the frame of mind to do this practice."

"if we're doing this practice in earnest, the emotions and habitual patterns we're working with can hit us with such force that it takes everything in us not to run. sometimes i felt like odysseus, lashed to the mast so i wouldn't follow the sirens' song. it was as if a giant magnet were trying to drag me away from staying present. i would just begin to sit with an intense feeling when a little voice in my head would start saying things like 'you'd better check to see if you turned off the stove' and 'maybe this is bad for your heart.' our old habits are worthy opponents. even if we're eager to have everything fall apart so we can do charnel-ground practice, when we actually do it, it puts us through a lot. we need strong motivation to stick with it because the desire to escape is so compelling."

the second commitment

quotes from living beautifully with uncertainty and change by pema chodron

the three commitments:

1- committing to not cause harm
2- committing to take care of one another
3- committing to embrace the world just as it is

"taking the . . . vow to help others implies that instead of holding our own individual territory and defending it tooth and nail, we become open to the world that we are living in. it means we are willing to take on greater responsibility, immense responsibility. in fact, it means taking a big chance."- chogyam trungpa rinpoche

"compassion is threatening to the ego. we might think of it as something warm and soothing, but actually it's very raw. when we set out to support other beings, when we go so far as to stand in their shoes, when we aspire to never close down to anyone, we quickly find ourselves in the uncomfortable territory of 'life not on my terms.'"

"opening the door reflects our intention to remove our armor, to take off our mask, to face our fears. it is only to the degree that we become willing to face our own feelings that we can really help others. so we make a commitment that for the rest of our lives, we'll train in freeing ourselves from the tyranny of our own reactivity, our own survival mechanisms, our own propensities to be hooked."

"we probably learn more from our mistakes than from our successes. we have to recognize when something doesn't work and - this is important - not take it personally. instead, we can follow chogyam trungpa's suggestion: live your life as an experiment. adopt an attitude of 'i'm not sure what will help in this situation, but i'm going to experiment and try this.'"

"the ending of a previously close relationship throws us right into the midst of fundamental uncertainty - and that definitely hurts. we've met our edge. we find ourselves caught up in behaviors we assumed we had outgrown years ago. sometimes just the thought of the person makes us close down. but often it is a seemingly irresolvable relationship that teaches us the most, once we're willing to be vulnerable and honest, once we're willing to connect with what chogyam trungpa called 'the genuine heart of sadness.'"

the first commitment

quotes from living beautifully with uncertainty and change by pema chodron

the three commitments:

1- committing to not cause harm
2- committing to take care of one another
3- committing to embrace the world just as it is

"the first commitment is about refraining from speech and actions that are harmful to ourselves and others. it liberates us by making us far more aware of what we're feeling, so that whenever the urge to lie or slander or take something that isn't given to us comes up - whenever we have the urge to act out our desires or aggression, or escape in any form - we refrain."

"refraining from harmful speech and action is outer renunciation; choosing not to escape the underlying feelings is inner renunciation. the precepts are a device to put us in touch with the underlying uneasiness, the fundamental quality of being alive. working with this feeling and the neurosis it triggers is inner renunciation."

"there's a practice in buddhism called sojong that gives us an opportunity to reflect on where we are in terms of refraining and, when we feel that we've really made a mess of things, to put that behind us and start anew. traditionally, sojong takes place twice a month, on the full and new moon days. the day before, each person reviews the preceding two weeks and reflects: what have i done with my body? what have i done with my speech? what about my mind: is it steady or all over the place and never present? as much as possible, we explore these questions without self-criticism or blame. . .

sojong itself is a little like the fourth and fifth steps in a twelve step program, which call for making 'a searching and fearless' self-inventory, recognizing where we've gone off course, then sharing this with another person. sojong is a kind of antiguilt process that allows us to assess ourselves honestly, acknowledge what we've done and where we are, then let go of self-judgment and move on. . .

you don't have to say this aloud to a group or another person, but most people find it easier to let go of self-judgment if they share their observations with someone else - a friend, perhaps, or a spiritual adviser. however you do it, the aim is to be fully honest and, at the same time, to shed feelings of guilt."

"nobody's perfect in keeping the commitment to not harm. but still, students often ask me, 'how can i make this vow with any integrity? if i'm going to break it at all, then what's the point?' patrul rinpoche, a buddhist master who lived in the eighteenth century, basically said there is no way to escape harming. he devotes an entire section of his book the words of my perfect teacher to all the ways we cause harm: countless being suffer from making the clothes we wear, from bringing us the food we eat. beings suffer even when we walk. 'who is not guilt of having crushed countless tiny insects underfoot?' he asks. our situation is inescapable because of our interconnectedness with all things. what makes the difference is our intention to not harm. on an everyday level, the intention to not harm means using our body, our speech, and our mind in such a way that we don't knowingly hurt people, animals, birds, insects - any being - with our actions or words."

"sakyong mipham recommends that as we sit down to meditate, we contemplate our intention for the session. our intention might be to strengthen the natural stability of mind by training in continually coming back to the body, to our mood right now, and to our environment. or our intention might be to make friends with ourselves, to be less stern and judgmental as we meditate, so we might train in noticing our tone of voice when we label and lightening up and not being too tight or goal oriented in our practice."

"it's a tricky business - not rejecting any part of yourself at the same time that you're becoming acutely aware of how embarrassing or painful some of those parts are. what most of us have been doing is gearing our lives toward avoiding unpleasant feelings while clinging to whatever we think will make us feel good and feel secure. from a conventional point of view, this makes perfect sense. but from the vantage point of remaining with our direct experience, the vantage point of opening to the tentativeness of life, this strategy is self-defeating, the very thing that keeps us stuck.

there's an exercise that can help us reflect on this knee-jerk tendency to cling to what makes us feel good and push away what makes us feel bad:

sit quietly for a few minutes and become mindful of your breath as it goes in and out. then contemplate what you do when you're unhappy or dissatisfied and want to feel better. even make a list if you want to. then ask yourself: does it work? has it ever worked? does it soothe the pain? does it escalate the pain? if you're really honest, you'll come up with some pretty interesting observations."

"pleasure and pain drive us all the time. the attraction is simple: we want pleasure; we don't want pain. our attachment to them is very strong, very visceral at either extreme. we can get that clenching-in-the-gut feeling of being hooked both when we crave something - when we're consumed with wanting or needing - and when we're averse to something and try to push it away."

"this has been going on through the ages. they criticize the silent ones. they criticize the talkative ones. they criticize the moderate ones. there is no one in the world that escapes criticism. there never was and never will be, nor is there now, the wholly criticized or the wholly approved." [shakyamuni buddha]

resurrection

excerpt from freshwater by akwaeke emezi

the ada's surgery happened the spring after asughara's failed attempt, just five months later. before then, we used to think of the body as belonging truly to the ada, as something that we were only guests in, something that the beastself could borrow. but now that we had been spurned from the gates, now that we were sentenced to meat, it was time to accept that this body was ours too.

. . .

when ewan left and asughara allowed saint vincent to take the ada's body and start binding her chest -- all of these things were in preparation for a shedding, the skin splitting in long seams. the first time the ada wore the binder, she turned sideways in a mirror and saint vincent laughed out loud in relief, in joy, in the rightness of the absence. the ada was wearing faded purple jeans, and the soft of her belly swelled out from under the cutting bottom edge of the vest. but she could endure that, even the sharpness around her armpits. the flatness was worth it. the ada pulled a short-sleeved t-shirt over the vest and ran her hands up and down the mild curve. it felt like armor, like we were bulletproof, like saint vincent was being built up in layers of determined fiber. the ada wore the binder every day and washed it by hand in her small bathroom sink. once, she made the mistake of putting it in the dryer, weakening the elastic. saint vincent suffered with each fraction of looseness she had caused, so she was more careful after that.

before asughara put us in the emergency room, we had been searching for doctors to alter the ada, to carve our body into something that we could truly call a home. saachi finally realized, in her panic over the ada's suicide attempt, exactly how much of her daughter actually belonged to her, which was to say, not much at all. the ada was slipping from the human mother to us, to a freedom saachi didn't trust. after all, how could she keep the girl safe if the girl wouldn't listen, wouldn't obey, if the girl was us? we were grateful that saachi had at one time cared for the ada, had kept her alive as a baby and been an excellent guardian as far as she could, but what did she know of graces or beastselves or ugly, unwelcome embodiments or the sacrifices a snake must go through to continue its timeline, the necessity of molting, the graves built of skins? we ignored her as gently as we could -- this body was ours, not hers; this girl was ours, not hers, she had to understand where her jurisdiction ended and how pushing further was blasphemy.

the ada used a therapist to assist with our carving plan and we discovered that humans had medical words - terms for what we were trying to do - that there were procedures, gender reassignment, transitioning. we knew what we were planning was right. even the things that the ada used to dislike about her body had mellowed out once we let saint vincent run. then, the broad shoulders and the way they tapered down to narrow hips and small buttocks finally fit. men's clothes draped properly on this body -- we were handsome. we considered removing the breasts utterly and tattooing the flat of her chestbone, but that decisiveness still felt wrong, one end of the spectrum rocketing unsteadily to the other end -- it wasn't us, not yet. so we chose a reduction instead of a removal; we cut down the C cups of blatant mammary tissue to small As, flat enough to not need brassieres, to not move, to be a stillness. the ada wanted to include her human mother in the carving and we allowed it because, we supposed, vessels are loyal. but saachi was against the surgery -- she called the doctors and threatened them till they pulled out; she fought with the therapists, fought to have us seen as unstable, sick. she called saul, who she never spoke to, not since the divorce, and told him, outed us to him.

"your daughter is trying to cut off her breasts," she said.

the ada was furious but we remained calm. we understood what was necessary -- humans often fail at listening, as if their stubbornness will convince the truth to change, as if they have that kind of power. they do, however, understand forceful things, cruelties -- they obey those. so we terminated saachi's contact with the ada doctors, we excluded her, exiled and excommunicated her. this was when she stopped being an emergency contact; this was why she had no access to the ada's doctors when asughara tried to kill the body. for a woman who looked to drown her loneliness in her children, it was a brutal thing to do, to push her out. but we had to strip her of power, to remind her that a mere human could not thwart us, that she stood no chance. we do not return your children until it suits us, if ever.

when we found the next doctors, the human mother knew nothing about it. the ada brought in pictures of small chests, small enough to where we didn't think of them as breasts, small enough to where we could feel reverted to a time when we weren't capable of biological things, when we were neutral like we should have been.

. . .

saachi arrived the next day and said nothing about the surgery, asked no questions. we approved of her decision. she accompanied the ada to the post-op appointment, to the clean, organized waiting room, then back to the exposed brick of the ada's apartment and her yellow kitchen. she helped the ada change the dressings and caught her arm when the heat from the shower made our body faint. it was a relief; we were grateful for the reprieve, not for us, no, but for the ada. malena was there as well, witness as she always was, and the ada smiled to see her mother share heinekens and dominican cigars with this her saintridden friend. as for us, we were fascinated by the white tape that hid the cuts, by the fine stitching, by the new body. we juggled the ada's chemistry and decided to purify her: we ran through her cells and rejected alcohol, meat, dairy, processed sugars; we made them cramp her stomach, hurt her head, and twist her intestines. this was our body and it would become what we wanted, now that the reconfiguring was done.

before the surgery, the ada had told her friends that she couldn't wait for when she could wear dresses again. they were confused. they stared at her bound chest and boy clothes.

"why would you go more feminine without boobs?" they asked. "most people get it done to be more masculine."

the ada shrugged and we moved in her shoulders. it was simple how we saw ourself, dresses creeping up the thigh, gashing open at the front to show chest bone -- tulle and lace and clouds of clothes. just like how having long hair weighing down our back made us want to wear buttons up to our throat, men's sleeves rolled up our biceps, handsome, handsome things. none of this was a new thing. we had been the same since the first birth, through the second naming, the third molting. to make the vessel look a little more like us -- that was the extent of our intent. we have understood what we are, the places we are suspended in, between the inaccurate concepts of male and female, between the us and the brothersisters slavering on the other side.

after our first birth, it took only a short time before we realized that time had trapped us in a space where we no longer were what we used to be, but had not yet become what we were going to be. it was a place that always and never moved. the space between the spirits and the alive is death. the space between life and death is resurrection. it has a smell like a broken mango leaf, sharp, sticking to the inner rind of our skin.

the prophecies that came later, from malena and others, they explained this -- the shifting, the quick skinnings and reshapings, the falling and revival of the scales. but by then it was too late for the ada to do anything except try to keep up with us, try not to be drowned in the liminal fluid we swam in. it tasted sharp as gin, metallic as blood, was soaked in both, down past the red into the deep loam. ogbanje space. we could rest in it like the inside curve of a calabash; we could turn in on ourself, wind back to our beginning, make those final folds. sometimes they call this the crossroads, the message point, the hinge. it is also called flux space, the line or the edge -- like we said, resurrection.

morning cleanse

from how to meditate by pema chodron

"when you say 'everything is a dream,' another way to say that is, 'there is just so much room.' we have an enormous amount of room to move around in. our minds are really vast. we're not constricted by anything. but the opposite is our habitual experience. our experience is usually quite claustrophobic, and we carry with us a very strong sense of burden, of things being solid. if we can loosen the grip of our thoughts, regarding them as dreams, we've just made the world and our ability to experience this world evermore larger."

"the instruction i've been giving for years is: when you're meditating, and even in your everyday life, notice when you're hooked. notice when you're triggered or activated. that's the first step: you acknowledge that emotion has arisen.

next, i advise students to drop the story line and lean in. just pause, and for a second connect in with spaciousness, with openness. i call this the 'pause practice.' it's like taking a time-out for yourself. then you lean in to the quality or the texture or the experience, completely touching in to the emotion, without the story. how does the sadness feel? how does the anger feel? where is it in your body? you let the feeling of the emotion become the object of your meditation. and the reason that i've been so committed to teaching on this is emotion itself is a radical and very potent way of awakening.

without a doubt, this is where everyone loses it. we have so much fear of our emotions, so much aversion to them. you get caught in the momentum of the emotion, and it sweeps you away as if you were in its control. but i've found that we can take another approach, which is to enter the emotions that arise in our practice. emotions are actually very empowering; i call working with the emotions 'accelerated transformation.' when you experience difficult emotions in your sitting practice, and you let go of the words and the story behind the experience, then you're sitting with just the energy. and yes, it can feel painful to do this."

"one of my granddaughter's conclusions was that we're changing all the time; everything about us is always changing. my granddaughter said, 'when you hold a fixed idea of yourself, you have to leave out all the parts that you find boring, embarrassing, difficult, or sad. you leave out the emotions you don't want to feel. and then when you do that, when you leave out all those parts, when those parts are not acceptable, then it eats away at you underneath. these unacknowledged parts are like a hum in the background that's eating away at you, and you have to find an escape to get away from that. and my mother's escape was alcohol.'

in order for us to be fully present, to experience life fully, we need to acknowledge and accept all our emotions and all parts of ourselves -- the embarrassing parts as well as our anger, our rage, our jealousy, our envy, our self-pity, and all these chaotic emotions that sweep us away. looking for an exit from experiencing the full range of our humanity leads to all kinds of pain and suffering. meditation gives us the opportunity to experience our emotions naked and fresh, free from the labels of 'right' and 'wrong,' 'should' and 'shouldn't.'"

breaking the fast

by naomi shihab nye, from red suitcase

1.
japanese teacher says:
at first light, rise.
don't hover between
sleep and waking,
this makes you heavy,
puts a stone inside your heart.

the minute you drift back to shore,
anchor. breathe.
remember your deepest name.

2.
sometimes objects stun me,
bamboo strainer, gray mug,
sitting exactly where
they were left.

they have not slept
or dreamt of lost faces.

i touch them carefully,
saying, tell what you know.

3.
cup of waves,
strawberry balanced
in a seashell.

in morning the water seems
clear to the bottom.

no fish blocks my view.

pure silence

quotes from lost paradise by cees noteboom

"the gallery owner must have told him something, because he stood there before me without saying a word, whether out of shyness or because his thoughts were miles away i couldn't tell. and i still can't. sometimes i think he doesn't see me, that even when he touches me or has sex with me, i am invisible to him, someone without a soul, a mere shape or figure - and he is right about that - as if what we do has no substance, as if his pre-announced departure can be felt in everything, in his long silences, his stillness, his refusal to see me although i am dying to be seen and know i won't be - i knew all that the moment i saw the painting."

"after a few days in port willunga we went to a strange place, a reserve in which we played at being aborigines. it sounds awful, and it was. i don't know why he took me there, but at least i now know how to find food in the desert and have seen how pure silence can turn you into silence yourself. no one was surprised to see me, so perhaps he had brought others there before. i shrugged off the well-meaning nonsense and practised withdrawing into myself - i'm good at that. it was not his mob, and since they spoke english to him, they did not come from the same language group either. i did see him smile, but not at me. i considered telling him what had happened to me that week, but my black cloud could never be his. i would take it with me when i left, incorporate it into the rest of my life, as if one cloud could cancel out another. we'll see. it is our last night together. i rub my hand over the dirt floor of the cabin. it feels hard and dry, like paper. everything in this country is different from mine. outside, the dawn's early light flows out over the world with such violence that it almost hurts my eyes. red paint. blood. i roll over and look at him. he is still asleep. he too just a shape. i wish i could lift him up and fly away with him, over the vast emptiness of this country, to the place he comes from, to the place he belongs and i do not."

i'm pretty comfortable, but i could be a little more comfortable

short story by lydia davis, from can't and won't


i'm tired.

the people in front of us are taking a long time choosing their ice cream.

my thumb hurts.

a man is coughing during the concert.

the shower is a little too cold.

the work i have to do this morning is difficult.

they have seated us too close to the kitchen.

there's a long line at the shipping counter.

i'm cold sitting in the car.

the cuff of my sweater is damp.

the shower is weak.

i'm hungry.

they're quarreling again.

this soup doesn't have much taste.

my navel orange is a little dry.

i didn't get two seats to myself on the train.

he is keeping me waiting.

they have gone off and left me alone at the dinner table.

she says my breathing is incorrect.

i need to go to the bathroom, but someone is in there.

i'm a little tense.

the back of my neck feels prickly.

the cat has ringworm.

the person behind me on the train is eating something very smelly.

it's too hot in that room for me to practice the piano.

he calls me when i'm working.

i bought sour cream by mistake.

my fork is too short.

i'm so tired i won't do well at my lesson.

this apple has brown spots on it.

i ordered a dry corn muffin, but when it came, it wasn't dry.

he chews so loudly i have to turn on the radio.

this pesto is hard to blend.

the wart on my thumb is growing back.

i can't have anything to eat or drink this morning because of the test.

she has parked her mercedes across the end of my driveway.

i ordered an oat bran raisin muffin lightly toasted, but it wasn't lightly toasted.

my tea water takes too long to boil.

the seam in the toe of my sock is twisted.

it's too cold in that room for me to practice the piano.

he doesn't pronounce foreign words correctly.

my tea is too milky.

i've been in the kitchen too long.

there's cat saliva on my new sock.

my seat doesn't have a back.

the blender is leaking at the bottom.

i can't decide whether to go on reading this book.

i missed the view of the river from the train because it got dark.

the raspberries are sour.

the pepper grinder doesn't grind very well.

the cat has peed on my telephone.

my band-aid is wet.

the store is out of decaf hazelnut coffee.

my sheets get all twisted in the dryer.

the carrot cake was a little stale.

when i toast the raisin bread, the raisins get very hot.

the bridge of my nose is a little dry.

i'm sleepy, but i can't lie down.

the sound system in the examining room is playing folk music.

i don't look forward very much to that sandwich.

they have a new weatherman on the radio.

now that the leaves are off the trees, we can see the neighbor's new deck.

i don't think i like my bedspread anymore.

in the restaurant they are playing a loop of soft rock music.

my glasses frames are cold.

there is st. andre cheese on the platter, but i can't have any.

the clock is ticking very loudly.

space and ancestors

from m archive by alexis pauline gumbs

soon she was shaped like a ghost. had it always been so? she had noticed that in crowded places people always seemed to find her to be the route of least resistance. there was space where she was standing. she was space for other people's journeys. no one could see all there was to her. it made her feel small. she poked her elbows out and broadened her shoulders, she wished she had a retractable fan that popped out of her vertebrae like a dinosaur. she wished she had huge angel wings to slap the faces of the unseeing everyone. nobody thought she was such a big deal.

or

wherever she was there was space and ancestors came through. they were drawn to her like they had been drawn to all the shores and like water they began to shape the stone of her back into sand. she recognized the shape of stardust, she breathed deeper to feel them moving. it didn't take long (only eternity) for the evidence in her side abdominals to show the work of breath, the depth of working. her movements became dance for landing light. her offering to the heaviness of heaven. she cultivated fluid-nuanced hips to stretch the follow-through of being. her bones decided not to know their limits. the space around her shone with beckoned peace.


*                                 *                               *                              *

when the memories started to come back we were sleeping. not quite dreaming but regenerating our cells. almost dreaming that we were regenerating cells. on the verge of regenerating the cells that would let us dream deep enough to remember.

we didn't know about the liver cells that could sing. the stomach lining kaleidoscopes. the geometric worlds in our larynxes. we had explored our bodies like battlefields and colonies. never like funhouses or arboretums. until our days became boardwalks on a rising sea and the nights we could sleep became worth saving, like named and labeled trees.

when the memories started to come, we were untrained. we didn't even know how to tell each other what was happening. eventually we would learn to share what went on while we were sleeping with all the specificity we had reserved for waking life. but at that time, when the memories came back, we were only starting to know.


*                                *                                 *                             *

when they cut us down they found our layers, obvious as orbit. there was the year with the blood in the groundwater. there was the year of the sulfur in the sky. there was the year of bark turned blue with freezing (in the middle) in the middle of july. there was the time we focused on waiting. there was the time we warned them with lines. there was the season of not enough ozone and way too much sunshine.

when they cut us down they found us open to what they easily could have known if they had paid attention to any one of those seasons through which we had grown. we offered ourselves to their breathing. we offered ourselves to their homes. we offered ourselves to their dull admiration, their need for protection, their forehead intuition, the walks they walked thinking they were alone. we chipped into pieces to soften their playgrounds, we bent in strips to ferment their drink. we made every component of their housing except the kitchen sink.

we watched and grew thick with the knowing, we bent with the load of their love. it's not easy to be resilient when you feel from below and you see from above. we broke in the middle so often we thought we'd evolve past hearts. and we'd offer ourselves for release (but we want to see the next part).


*                              *                              *                                *

what we wanted was to want to. not to have to do anything. and the problem was we forgot after all these years of force what wanting was.

want was not getting, nor was it having. wanting was not needing. wanting was not having to have or needing not to need. it was not. and there was a wideness in wanting that didn't quite fold in on itself. it deepened and rose up and radiated out and touched softly to itself with warm warning.


*                             *                                *                                *

there is compelled. and then there is compelled.

that was the other time we had gotten to the edge of everything. war had become the question impossible to answer and then the empty appeared with their swallowing want. (we didn't know.)

you have to know that we were shedding ourselves. you have to know that we felt alien in our hearts. you have to know that we already felt it. that never enoughness gnawing at our spirits. this is the only way we could have ignored the prophets and our own knowing for so long. you have to know how deeply we had given up, to trust ghosts to take you away. we lied and told ourselves that maybe across was a better place. and then we nailed ourselves to crosses here.

i don't have to tell you. but we were wrong.

flying

from m archive by alexis pauline gumbs

they were addicted to things like hydrogenated soybean oil and mutant chicken. their memories were linked to the tastes of things the studies said were poison. and so they bought other things, things that felt older to them. but they continued to trust the source of the studies, which was also the source of the earlier poisons. we can only understand this through the concept of addiction, which was an ancient condition of being that was characterized by lying to oneself and others in order to continue behavior that was repeatedly harmful to oneself and others.

they really thought they knew what home tasted like. what healthy was. how to cleanse their palates. there were brilliantly marketed packages that disavowed the past which were very attractive to people trying to distance themselves from the mistakes of their parents but who didn't have the bravery to distance themselves from the system that created their parents. they ate these new and different things while they pretended not to be their parents.

they thought they were tasting the future (which for some people tasted like cardboard and for other people tasted like sugar), but they were not. they were avoiding the necessary bitter tastes of the most accessible greens. to say the general palate was unbalanced would not be quite saying it. how could they have known what this would mean after?

the only one who made it had a direct connection to those women who craved the crunch of eating dirt. who sensed their need for iron. and acted.


*                            *                                 *                                *

they dug in their memories for the one day. for some of them it was a couple of days per month. rock-bottom days. the days in their lives when the world had already ended. they thought back. and asked:

what did we each do then? on the day that everything went wrong. when transportation and communication technologies conspired against us individually. when we personally couldn't get out of bed, dehydrated with crying. when we didn't ask for help. when we hurt the people we loved. when the sun died. when we lost everything. when we lost exactly who we needed to save. when we knew there would be no tomorrow. what did we each do then? how did we keep breathing past it  (because we are the ones that did). they dug for those memories and stacked them in a row.

that's how. that's how we learned to get through this.


*                           *                                    *                               *

at some point the work of pretending we weren't going to die, that our children weren't going to die, that our deaths and lives weren't going to be forgotten, became unsustainable. it was hard enough to just breathe and metabolize. to find something to metabolize. to find people to metabolize near. now some people call it the true end of whiteness, when the world could finally operate based on something other than fear of blackness, of being, of death. but at the time all we knew was the story had run out. all the stories. of staying young to cheat death. of thinking young people wouldn't die. of immortality via "making a difference." of genetic imprint as stability. of stacking money and etching names on buildings. people used to do those things before. not to mention that they would not mention death and would hide the dying away and strive to protect the eyes of the children who already knew everything.

at some point. all the dead being here anyway and all of us here being obviously doomed, we let go of that particular game. and started breathing. and saw our hands.

we let go.

i felt like i could fly.


*                           *                                 *                                  *

on a screen the size of a wall there was a gif of amazon warriors cutting off each other's breasts to better hold the weapons they needed.

through the speakers audre lorde's voice was on loop. the only recorded reading of the cancer journals.

she looked at her reflection, lit by candle in the small pool, and thought back to yesterday when her sister comrades had surrounded her singing, i'm gonna lay down my burdens. . .

she blew out the candle and began to pray. may that which is not mine fall away. may that which hinders my love leave of its own accord. may that which blocks my circulation dissolve in this moment. may who-i-am-not run through this river back to the ocean. may who-i-am emerge clear as birth.

she cried during the hours she was in there. she squatted, sweated, moaned. she bled and defecated and urinated and screamed. she scrubbed off layers of her skin. she pulled out most of her hair. and at some point she blacked out, exhausted. and the dark room held her.

the next morning when they came she looked rather like a baby bird. tufts of hair, raw skin, swollen eyes, dark red and naked. the midwives stung her with tea tree and she gasped. they wrapped her in cotton and she sighed. they sprayed a mist of jasmine over her and she knew.

she knew she could fly.

the teacher

from start where you are by pema chodron

"first we'll consider the teacher. in the lojong teachings the teacher is referred to as the spiritual friend, the kalyanamitra. the teacher is like a senior warrior, or a student warrior who's further along the path. it's somebody who inspires you to walk the path of warriorship yourself. looking at them reminds you of your own softness, your own clarity of mind, and your own ability to continually step out and open. something about them speaks to your heart; you want to have a friendship with this person as a teacher. trust is an essential ingredient: if you enter into a serious relationship with a teacher, you make a commitment to stick with them and they make a commitment to stick with you, so you're stuck together.

lest one romanticize the relationship, i'd like to repeat something that trungpa rinpoche once said: 'the role of the spiritual friend is to insult you.' this is true. it isn't that the spiritual friend phones you up and calls you names or sends you letters about what a jerk you are. it's more that the spiritual friend is the ultimate juan. all your blind spots are going to come out with the spiritual friend. the only difference between the spiritual friend and everybody else in your life is that you've made a commitment to stick with him or her through thick or thin, better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in death. we're not too good at keeping commitments these days; this isn't an age where commitment is honored very widely. if you enter into a relationship with a spiritual friend, you're really asking for it. rather than the cozy, nurturing situation you might have imagined in the beginning - that the teacher is always kind and will replace the mother or father who never loved you or is finally the friend who has unconditional love for you - you find that in this relationship you begin to see the pimples on your nose, and the mirror on the wall isn't telling you that you're the fairest of them all. to the degree that anything is hidden in this relationship, you begin to see it."

quotes from the wisdom of no escape by pema chodron

"when people start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they're going to improve, which is a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are. . . but loving-kindness - maitri - toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. maitri means that we can still be crazy after all these years. we can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. the point is not to try to change ourselves. meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. it's about befriending who we are already."

"why do we resist our energy? why do we resist the life force that flows through us? the first noble truth says that if you are alive, if you have a heart, if you can love, if you can be compassionate, if you can realize the life energy that makes everything change and move and grow and die, then you won't have any resentment or resistance. the first noble truth says simply that it's part of being human to feel discomfort. we don't even have to call it suffering anymore, we don't even have to call it discomfort. it's simply coming to know the fieriness of fire, the wildness of wind, the turbulence of water, the upheaval of earth, as well as the warmth of fire, the coolness and smoothness of water, the gentleness of the breezes, and the goodness, solidness, and dependability of the earth. nothing in its essence is one way or the other. the four elements take on different qualities; they're like magicians. sometimes they manifest in one form and sometimes in another. if we feel that that's a problem, we resist it. the first noble truth recognizes that we also change like the weather, we ebb and flow like the tides, we wax and wane like the moon. we do that, and there's no reason to resist it. if we resist it, the reality and vitality of life become misery, a hell.

the second noble truth says that this resistance is the fundamental operating mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering. traditionally it's said that the cause of suffering is clinging to our narrow view. another way to say the same thing is that resisting our complete unity with all of life, resisting the fact that we change and flow like the weather, that we have the same energy as all living things, resisting that is what's called ego."