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Write Me! MiXiM

April 5  Women in Black

Let me start with where I have been for the last few months. I have been to quite a few protests since September 11, 2001. It seems so long ago, the day everything changed. My last protest was in D.C. January 18. It was huge and energizing. My planned digest for that protest was to transcribe some speeches I recorded on that day. I never did it. In fact I haven’t done much since. I have been sliding into some safe oblivion. I had conflicting plans for NYC February 15. When Bush pushed us to war, I was so disheartened. I was free and it would have been easy to go to NYC two weeks ago, but I couldn’t see the point.

The last few weeks I have slid even farther. It is easy to ignore news up here, but also easy to hear it if you try. For the first week, I saw a lot of coverage. I even watched and listened with interest. A friend sent me this link to a site that has counters, for things like Bombs Dropped on Iraq, Iraqi Civilian Casualties, Iraqi and US POWs. I wrote the the web master and asked why he didn’t have a count of Iraqi Military Casualties, the number in my reasoned media consumption, was most missing. He replied, “That's a really tough number to nail down.  We all know it is or will be in
the tens of thousands.  But it is too hard to verify and too sad to report. You'll never hear folks speculate on the soldiers killed in Gulf War, Part One. It must have been 100,000 poor slobs ripped to shreds.”  That was the beginning of the end of my media consumption on the subject. The final straw was USA Today. I think it was last weekends edition. The front page was a bus parked in the  background, us soldiers in the mid ground circled around something, and right up front two Iraqi Soldiers, face down in the sand, pools of blood running downhill toward the photographer. Toward me! My stomach turned.

I haven’t been able to listen or watch since. A friend of mine has been following indy media and foreign media closely. He sent me this link, with the subject heading, “war pictures.” I can’t look. I don’t think  I ever will. But if someone has the heart to let me know... No! Forget it. Look but don’t tell me, please.

So, I’ve been minding my own business, building boxes with dovetail joints, crawling around in rabbit shit stapling up insulation, skiing. A normal week in Number Four. Until Friday.

I was looking over the same old bulletin board at P&C. Stove pipes, rusty cars, barbecue, child care, women in black vigil...  Women in Black Vigil? Right here in Lowville, Saturday, tomorrow (now today). I’m glad I had a pen to write down that number for the stove pipe. I wrote down the email address instead. I couldn’t guess who the organizer was, except a student currently or recently, by the .edu address. I came home and emailed right away.

I didn’t know what to expect. I have thought of organizing something in Lowville, countless times, but I didn’t know where to start. I was afraid. Now, I had to go, of course. I was ready and happy to go. I was glad to have the opportunity to follow. I made a crane banner out of what I had laying around the house. 20 rainbow oragami cranes, yarn energized by pagans last time I was in DC, and a 14 foot long bamboo pole. I love having just the right stuff laying around. (I just went to look up the difference between lie and lay again. I know I am getting it wrong. Someone just let me know which is which, and what the participles are.)

So I went to town armed with my cranes. What was I expecting? I knew Christie would be there, and I figured she had a least two partners who would be there. That is the number I would have needed to back me up, if I were going to do it. I was counting on five people. I arrived just as Christie did, and Ruth came 10 minutes later. Simple. I saw Christie’s flyer, I called Ruth. That was it. I can’t lie. I was a bit disappointed, even a little scared to be such a minority. I thought, “That’s it! We are all now the most radical leftists in the entire county, and everyone knows it.” We got acquainted some, and we stood, in vigil, sometimes breaking for another question or comment amongst ourselves. We had more supporting waves and beeps, than we did negative comments. Most notable is the guy who showed up, with his flag, about 20 minutes after one, to stand 100 feet from us, for the rest of the hour. It was quiet with little traffic. At one point, I noticed it was even still, like we were standing on the ice in the middle of a lake rather than at a populated intersection.

I drove home. I felt kind of empty and alone. Which makes some sense since it is my first day home alone, since I came back to stay. Winter can be quiet, isolating up here. But it was more than that. Emotionally I was standing alone on the ice in the middle of a lake. Nothing but trees on shore, and still.

So what could I do? I put on my skis and go to stand in the middle of a lake. At least I can have a concrete reason for feeling this way. The way is long and slow. I am in no mood to work hard. I had skied this morning on an errand, with a goal. Now, I set out with the aim of watching the trees go by. Breaking track in this new snow is hard. It is not the moon dust of midwinter, which was falling through Wednesday. The snow holds me back. I feel the weight of it as my foot plows through what the ski didn’t pack.

In time I reach the lake. I have recently learned that Hope and Star are a good gauge for what ice will hold my weight. If they can stand on the ice, I can ski on it. They have fallen in enough now, too to have some sense of what not to try. They run out onto the lake, break through a thin shell and wade in inch deep slush. They don’t fall through the second layer, and they keep going expecting me to follow. I know I can and would if the ice would get better, and dry, but I don’t want to be wet. I ski over to a better view, and imagine I am out there. I plant my poles, and squat to greet the dogs. I try to reach my sadness, and expel it out with some deep breaths. I give up, and flop on my side. The talc snow of midwinter is definitely gone, but this is not the sponge-wet, limb-breaking snow of March (or April), either. This snow is not of the winter, or of the spring, or of this world. It does not push on my body yet does not let me sink in either. The only way I sense it, is the slight cold I feel through three warm layers and a gore-tex jacket. This snow could be an angel’s cloud bed.

I lie there and take in my surrounding. The dead hemlock over my head, and the frost burned spruce next to it, the pines across the lake whose limbs show constant wind. I try to remember that page in the wind energy guide, that describes how pines will show you a good spot for your wind charger. I guess this pine is telling me, “25 MPH sustained wind.” I could power my house with a charger over there. The blueberry bushes (the ones I think are a kind of blueberry but I have yet to confirm it, as I can’t find any with nice fruit in august.) pushing through the snow under me. And the roiling sky.

I try to relax. I find that sadness and breath it out. I start a chant. “earth my body, water my blood/ air my breath and fire my spirit.” It takes me awhile to put the words together, but I get them because there is only one permeatation that makes sense. I can’t find the tune. Later, I realize this is like My Victory Song, which I learned on a long bike ride, years ago.  I don’t know how many times I whistled the same tune going down hills, before I caught myself. Then it took me a few more hills to verify it really was the same tune every time. Then I tried to remember it when I wasn’t going down a hill. I couldn’t. The tune was locked in my memory only to be released when I was long-hill-happy, or victorious, as I later named the tune. I never learned this tune as much as I captured it. I had to set a trap, which sprung when the song started. Each time my brain would capture a few notes. A year and half later I could whistle the whole tune or play it on my flute, anytime, happy or sad. Though, it is easier to play when I am happy. I chant a tune I know better, “return again/return again/return to the home of your soul/return to who you are/return to what you are/return to where you are born and reborn again.” Hope and Star love this and climb on me, licking my mouth and putting all their weight on my solarplexis, encouraging me. 

After a few rounds I start to relax. As I look up at the dead hemlock, I study the tiny cones, then my my focus relaxes and the hemlock is no longer central, but part of a whole scene of the dark and light clouds and small flakes meandering down through the branches. Now I can remember the tune,”Earth my Body, Water my Blood/ Air my Breath and Fire my Spiiriit” I sing loudly. Then I cry.

I cry for the ‘100,000 poor slobs ripped to shreds.’

I cry for the people dead on the front page of USA Today.

I cry for Christie who spent the entire week organizing, talking to people, handing out flyers, so three people could come stand for an hour. I cry because we should be handing Christie a better world, where she can spend her week dreaming of life, instead of daring, against the odds, to hope for the end of violent death. I cry because Christie should have spent her break building a gyrocopter, out of three sheets of plywood, and a VW bug engine with plans she bought off the internet for $25.

I cry because I couldn’t face the news this week. 

I cry beacuse I haven't been eating enough vegetables. I cry because I have been eating too many cocoa pebbles.

I cry because I realize what I have been hiding from. I cry because I know this will end one of two ways. I cry because humans will either kill each other until they have destroyed all technology that enables them to do so, or until someone just says ‘STOP’, and it is heard and followed. I cry because I have no hope of the latter.

I cry because I just want to stand on the street corner, and yell, “STOP.” I cry because I realize that is what my heart was doing today, pleading for an end to all violence.

I cry because I am standing alone, on the ice, in the middle of a lake, just trees on shore, still.

I stay here for awhile, before skiing home, gliding in my new track. I stay here awhile before filling my mind with the words on this page. Before filling my mind with these words, I stay and breath. The air is not the air of winter. It does not burn with the cold and dry. Yet it is not the air of spring, full of promise, damp and sweet.  At best it is full of the promise of promise. The air is sterile but warm. I suppose it is me that gives it the promise of promise.

Before I fill my mind with these words, I watch the roiling sky, dark and light. I had realized this morning, it is not the sky of winter. Neither is it the sky of spring. I gave it words on the way home, as the sunset oranged the snow. It is the sky of Wednesday in the cool of August, cook out day. As if it has been raining for one and 5/8 days, and you don’t have much hope for a hot greasy burger. But then you start to see those light patches. Maybe the sky will work with your stomach. Then you see that dark patch and maybe not. In the end the sky breaks in an orange sunset, drying the picnic tables, just in time. That is today’s sky.

Peace,
Mixim