On the blackened beaches of the island known as Kona,
the lanterned hands of Pacific hearts
appear in the eyelid of morning –
heavy,
like a seed in your throat
ready to be swallowed,
they arrive with pockets of white stones
plucked from the tongues of highways
and they spell out the names of the people they have lost;
like giant love letters of the Earth
swirling across the volcanic heart of the ocean,
fury in their fingers
as if they could teach the sky about reflection.
Welcome to The Beginning.
I want you to remember
what you were doing with your hands
when you were capable
of not chasing
and not wanting to be chased.
When you are ready,
This is how we will find each other:
stolen and whipping in the wind
crafting the pebbled bodies of our hearts –
I hope that we are more broken than we could ever imagine
so there are more parts of ourselves to know
than there ever were before,
tumbled and blistered by those who could not see us in the dark,
held like a fist of feathers.
We will understand that you only know people in the ages you meet them in
and we will continue anyway,
arthritis in our eyes –
I do not know how it will feel to be myself when I am old,
I am constantly the wrong age for my body –
I do not know if I will ever learn how to thank you
if I will know how to stop speaking Airport
if I will touch you like linoleum
but I will store all of your birthdays somewhere below my shoulders,
so when you wake with ceiling eyes
you will consider my mouth
pressed against yours –
how it is slower than imagined,
how everything is brimming
like dinner on a stove top.
I hope I never dream of you
so I am constantly discovering
what I have.
Overwhelmed every time you glimmer
like the glare of the sun
in the revolving of a door –
the eagerness of unbuttoning fingers,
the buckling of knuckles,
the crushing nature of hope.
You are everything and nothing like what I have waited for –
familiar as a perennial weed harbored in my stomach,
tumbling through each moment
with the feet of bicycles
to devour every part of this country
like a laugh in the night –
fingers of sparklers
teeth of split chins
restless believer in open spaces,
humming and listening
with the sun in your throat –
you don’t ever say much.
You just stand
like a mesa in the desert,
hopeful as the howling of wind against the garage door.
You are the only voice in the night
I will ever call back to –
stumbling everything I’ve believed
like an ocean of stars,
the silence of a first snow,
this notion of home.
I will love you
the exact way I always
wanted to be loved.
And when I lose you –
as death and the nature of men
have promised me I will –
I will find my way to the Pacific,
to the island known as Kona,
a fist of white stones
and I will write you
like the poem that you are.
© Carrie Rudzinski 2009
(Originally published in “A History of Silence” on Bicycle Comics Press.)
After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.
Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she
Did this.
I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?
The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used—
She stopped crying.
She thought our flight had been canceled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late,
Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her—Southwest.
She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.
Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.
Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.
She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.
She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag—
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.
To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.
And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers—
Non-alcoholic—and the two little girls for our flight, one African
American, one Mexican American—ran around serving us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.
And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands—
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,
With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.
And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.
Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped
—has seemed apprehensive about any other person.
They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.
Not everything is lost.
”
(via cuntwarrior)
Comedy is a shared experience. Without an audience it is nothing. Far more so than tragedy, comedy is intimately connected with the audience’s response. We weep alone, but we all laugh together.
It is this shared communality that makes it so powerful and so popular. It is constantly reminding us of our own absurdity in this vast universe. It is frequently to do with scale, cutting us down to size, laughing at our human weaknesses. For a few moments it removes us from the prison of our own personalities, the trap of our own self-created selves, and unites us in a warm shared response by making us laugh at the trivia in which we continually enmesh ourselves. It is an uplifting experience. We are taken out of ourselves, and made to laugh at ourselves. This is both slightly painful (laughing does hurt) and healthy (because it is done communally). It is instant group therapy.
”The Thing Is
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
