∞
x
We are given enough time.
—J N L
*
I
am sitting on a cement bench beside the Woodbridge north lake in Irvine,
California. It is Mark Daily’s bench and today is November 11th,
Veterans’ Day. Today we honor all those who have gone to war for our country.
At the end of May, we honor those that have died.
Mark
Daily graduated from Woodbridge High School a year ahead of me. He was born in
1983, on the fourth of July.
I
did not know Mark Daily, but I know something of him now. His bench has a
bronze placard which reads “never forget that you can be a positive force for
change” and it has a view of the lake. You see the lagoon and the volleyball beach
club. Across the lake, you see the tennis courts but you do not hear them. You
can see Tiger Island.
Beside
the bench there is a young crepe myrtle tree that, in September, has enormous
red blossoms. You would never think such a wiry little tree could bloom that way,
but it does. I am not the only one who has seen this.
*
This
lake has a kingdom of birds. On a rock there is one seagull. There are a few
mallards, Canadian Geese, Egyptian Geese, and Cormorants. There are two or four
white ducks, a few “new mallards,” some Sandpiper-type birds. On one part of
the lake there is a small, woodland duck, their tails up like arrows. They
sleep on the lake with their necks tucked behind them.
There
is the Great White American Egret. There are a lot of coots, also called mud
hens.
As
I am sitting, a family walks by and their little boy has a remote control boat
in the lake.
The
little boy is driving his boat towards the birds.
His
boat almost hits a coot. Then it almost runs over another, another, and
another. A woman behind me laughs and says to her friend: It’s not a duck. It’s
just a stupid coot. The little black
birds.
I
turn around and to the boy’s mother I say: Don’t let him hit the birds.
He
won’t, she says.
To
the little boy I say: You might give those birds a heart attack.
The
little boy laughs.
*
In
September of 2001, the attack on the World Trade Center became the most watched
American event of all time. While other photographs have been as significant, perhaps
nothing has been as fervently—as systematically—looked at as NYC that morning in September. One year, nine months,
and eleven days after the turn of the millennium.
*
I
graduated from the University of San Francisco in May of 2006. This was two years
after I told my boyfriend that I loved him. [[There is no word in our language which has been so much misused and
prostituted as the word love—E.
Fromm]]
Do we have visions or dreams? Which are
we, the old or the young?
The
University of San Francisco is home to St. Ignatius, the largest cathedral on a
college campus in the Western United States. It was built in 1914. My
graduation ceremony was in this beautiful place, and my whole family came.
That
day, eleven members of the 1951 Dons football team made a special appearance.
Among them was linebacker Burl Toler, one of two black players.
The
Dons never lost a game. They were invited to play in the Orange bowl, but a
game in Miami meant that they’d play without their black teammates, and all of
them refused to do this. They turned down many bowl games, costing the school
so much money that they finally cancelled the team. That was 1951.
My
grandfather remembers something fondly. At the end of the ceremony, Father
Privett turned to face the graduating class and he said, “It’s in your hands.”
It
is in your hands.
This
is why September 11th is still such a defining moment.
That
morning, something became clear: the world was not in our hands.
We
were watching what could already be felt—a hologram.
*
On
a train out of Prague we went through fields of yellow mustard.
[[Pollen as thick as the sun.]]
Outside
of Plzen, we slept in a field. Before setting up our tent we saw three
deer. They were large and at least one of them had enormous horns.
I
was scared of the deer. I am from California. Nate is from PA. Peering through
the long grass at these animals, I was so afraid that I begged Nate to do
something.
Okay, okay. Nate took off
his backpack and kneeled down behind it. You
get down behind me. If they charge us, my backpack will take the blow. Don’t be
afraid. Look at the sky.
*
I
have friends dead from insurmountable depression. No, depression is not the word. I can't know what the word should be because I was not living their lives, only they were. But I am going to venture that the word is Hell.
I have friends that refused to make
a life for themselves. In one more week Nate would have completed his
bachelor’s degree. He took classes for ten years because he didn’t want to
repay loans. The truth is, I wonder if he would have rather died than see his name on that degree.
It’s the entrance to a bone yard. Go
past this line and animals turn. You will never give birth to yourself. You
will never become free. You alone can speak of love.
*
I joined the fight because it occurred
to me that many modern day “humanists” who claim to possess a genuine concern
for human beings throughout the world are in fact quite content to allow their
fellow “global citizens” to suffer under the most hideous state apparatuses and
conditions.
—
Lt. Mark Daily
And
those who are not content sometimes stay alive by turning their shame inward. They call it by another name.
*
On our bus ride into Prague, at the beginning of the semester, Nate sat in the window seat. He had a black fur coat.
It was mink, actually; he was wearing a coat made from an animal. He told me
then that Love is fierce.
Now
I understand, The Great War.
Total self-indulgence.
*
I think
of the Japanese sabishii, a kind of
lonesomeness that comes from thinking about impermanence. The cherry blossom is
the greatest symbol of this. In Japan, the cherry blossom is a kind of ache
that stretches from one generation to the next, that blooms in the horizon between
life and death.
Much
has been taken from people alive on earth today. But perhaps the greatest
trespass has been the taking of life and death, the mortal and therefore the immortal,
the taking of spiritual time.
Most
people in the United States live in a present blanketed by a line that does not
actually exist. This linearity is a blindfold, and Americans need this to
survive, to make a life for ourselves in a world where Life is being
exterminated and dismantled—river by river, brick by brick, human mind by human
mind.
On
May 1st, the cherry blossoms in Allentown, PA must have just been
opening. They went off without a hitch.
*
The
truth is, I am afraid.
Today,
in every American Institution, there is that which takes away from what makes
us Human: the freedom to become, the freedom to live in a way that affirms Life
instead of killing it. It is in our education and in our politics. In our careers
and in our religion. It is in our food, our water, it is in our homes and malls
and parking lots. It was in my love. It’s in my sense of self.
It
is even here: on this bench, beside this lake. It is here in these birds.
*
I carry your heart in my heart.
The
word Free comes from the root for “to love,” same as the word Friend.
*
The main
condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism.
The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that
which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no
reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their
being useful or dangerous to one—Erich
Fromm
The
thing is, I can see that the little boy doesn’t really care to go after the
coots (the little black birds) but, strangely, his parents are encouraging him.
His young sister is holding their father’s hand and I can see in her face that
something is not right.
The
family walks on around the lake. On the bench I am furious. The family walks
onto the bridge and the little boy and his father go onto Tiger Island. From
there they drive the noisy boat around, mowing down every coot in sight.
I
have to stop them.
I
catch up with them just past the little water fall and the ‘park over the
bridge’. To the father I say a lot of things.
The
grandmother says I should worry about something else.
But, this is a kind of desperation.
*
My
grandfather says he doesn’t want me to die on the vine.
Remember, it’s in your hands.
He says I’ve got to do something.
*
I love this lake. If there were only this
lake and these birds and these people and that was the whole universe, it would
be easy to be happy. But as it is, the thing that hurts has to do with what is
seen. It has to do with the way houses and roads and trees and even animals are
arranged, and it is not so much the
manner in which they are arranged but simply that they are, in the fullest
since of the word—[put in a neat or required order].
Of
course to address what is seen means also to address what is unseen. And to
address what we see is to address how we see and vice versa, because these are
two sides of the same coin.
You
know everything is a voice.
As
much as I love this lake, as much as I love everything here, the arrangement seems to say: we ignore suffering. Ignore suffering.
The
American Dream is rooted in this.
*
I yell at the parents: your family is everything that is wrong with the United States! Finally I scream: why would you go after birds?
*
I wasn’t out of line; I was in the very thick of it. I said that family was everything wrong with the United States.
I should have said: these coots run on water.
I should have begged the children: look at their dinosaur feet.
I should have said something to help myself overcome my own suffering, which is to say my own narcissism. I should have tried to do what I have never done before: see these people as they are. That would be freedom.
*
Sometimes
when I am sitting on Mark Daily’s bench, I look out over the lake and, in the
space between two houses and two Eucalyptus, an orange sphere appears in the
air space. The sphere rises just above the tree line, and it stays there, in
the thinness between air and horizon.
The
sphere is the balloon at The Great Park. The park is being built on what used
to be the El Toro Marine Base. The orange balloon carries people into sky.
In
another ten months it will be September. The crepe myrtle behind Mark Daily’s
bench will bloom. Think of the sky.
*
I have been fascinated by people, but I have never loved them. I have not even loved the desert. I criticize "the system" for the negation of life, for the taking, using, and killing of what lives. I have been horrified by the treatment of land as wasteland, the treatment of people as machines, by the valuing of space and time only in as much as they turn a profit. I thought I loved a person. But what I thought was True Love could not have been because I have never valued a thing outside of me for its own being. I ignore suffering.
The heart of darkness never rained on Niagara Falls.
I have only looked, I've never felt. Love is fierce when it is an idea, an archetype. Love is fierce when it can be recognized.
Think of the sky.
