Becoming An Indian

Just before my marriage, my soon-to-be mother-in-law told me:

“After marriage you will be Indian.”

I smiled and quietly laughed at the thought of me, a white American midwesterner, morphing into an Indian.

Then, a Hindu marriage ceremony: Pouring rice on each other's heads, golden necklace, tying knots of silk, putting on toe rings, bangles, bowing to elders and vowing to care for them, walking around fire, ash on foreheads. And, of course, brilliant silk sarees, hennaed hands, splitting coconuts, dancing to joyful Bollywood songs.

Then, being welcomed and accepted into an Indian family: Laughing with nieces, sisters-in-law calling me sister, tears of joy at the wedding, family photos in the living room; making coconut laddoos with (mother-in-law) Aatama, my hands almost twice the size of hers, shaping the melted jaggery and shredded coconut into the coveted sweet spheres.

Driving Aatama and Mamaya to the airport, struggling with bulging suitcases strung together and labeled to arrive on the other side of the world. Witness to tears, I promised to take care of her son. We arrived home to find her pink cotton sari, hanging to dry in the sunroom, left behind.

My new husband moved in and suddenly there was Telugu on my television; video chats with sister-in-law Akka, our bright niece and nephew’s silliness for their Ravi Chinnana (uncle) and Madalyn Pinni (aunt); phone calls to India, with attempts to speak the language: “Me abrogyam ella undi?”

The humbling experience of learning from my husband how to make the food he loves. His expressions of delight after I mastered the curry formula and even made curries he had never tasted. Plus rootis from scratch: hand kneading, rolling, oiling, folding, rolling again, and frying on a dry, hot skillet. Then one day finding myself in Global Foods picking out my own essential ingredients for our Indian kitchen: cumin, turmeric, green chillies, curry leaves, toor dahl... The faint hot tinge of chili powder perpetually on my fingertips.

One item from the Indian grocery I’ve come to rely on is coconut oil, applied after the bath. It ended up curing a skin condition I’ve had since birth. “I think it’s because you were an Indian in a past life,” said Ravi.

“Is that why you feel it’s acceptable to love me?” I ask. “It’s okay to love an American if she were an Indian in a previous life?” We laugh.

There’s always laughter with my lighthearted husband. And sunset runs in the park. Coming home to each other on lunch breaks to devour leftover curries. (No American lunch stop can compare to our own kitchen). We are also developing our own traditions as a new family together.

We celebrated our first Diwali, the festival of light. Wrapped in magenta silk, I drew a muggu (chalk drawing) of a lotus on our threshold. At night we lit diya lamps and candles and placed them throughout the house. Friends gathered for celebratory meals and temple visits, exchanged photos from afar. Our littlest niece Vaishnavi was captured with eyes wide in delight at the bright golden sizzle of a sparkler. Aatama and Mamaya called from Hyderabad to tell of “crackers” going off at all hours after days of celebration.

One of the most memorable moments since the wedding was our visit with Akka to her sister’s Chicago home. We spent the day playing carom, laughing with the children, and looking at wedding photos. As we were about to leave, they asked me to sit down. My Akka’s sister put a vermilion dot on my forehead and gave me a woolen shawl, welcoming me into the family. We video-chatted with their smiling mother in India who said she has a new daughter.

There are temple outings every Sunday with my husband -- me dressed in kurta, dupatta, and gold jhumkis. After the long drive to the white intricately carved temple, towering pyramid of gods, decades ago delivered piece by piece from India and assembled in the middle of suburban Midwest America, we remove our shoes and stand before Ganesha, Durga, Laxmi... watching all the ways Indians worship: circling, prostrating, crossed-arm bobbing squats. We sit in front of Shiva, the God of Destruction, meditating with intentions to clear obstacles for welcoming new beginnings.

I boldly ring the temple bell and eagerly head downstairs for spicy hot masala dosa, mango kulfi sweet, and chai. The “desies” have gotten used to me, the “gori girl” who tries to fit into their world while they try to adapt to mine.

Some who see my occasional Indian dress might accuse me of cultural appropriation. But my saris and silver toe rings were given to me and accepted in earnest. They are one way I can outwardly display the culture of the Indian-American family to which I’ve come to belong, the culture of my home.

My Indian family has shown that being Indian means generosity and acceptance, unwavering commitment to family, duty as the path to fulfillment, celebration year round, and love expressed by taking care of one another. Those are values I’m proud to take on. In less than six months after my wedding, I must admit that my Aatama was right.

American Individualism

What if you didn't have to buy a lawnmower, instead you shared one with several of your neighbors?
Same goes for the rake, drill, wheelbarrow, shovel, and trowel.


What if you lived with your parents, brothers, sisters? Maybe you could take turns minding the children, instead of leaving them with strangers.

What if you shared a house? Think of all the savings! One TV, one microwave, one of all the things we call necessities which fill our homes.

If the individual, or the household, is the economic unit
and a household is only you and me,

We must consume more.

We don't share.

"That is mine"
Mine is customized in my personal color combination.

American individualism is now about consumption, not independence.

If you're suffering alone, just go to the store.
You'll find lots of other Americans shopping for items to personalize themselves.

* Author's note: I am not this cynical all the time! America has a rich history of strong social capital--from social clubs to sewing circles and much more. At times American culture these days can feel very isolating and superficial. And for decades the dominant message has been that each nuclear family can have it all. But I believe people are starting to wake up and realize the strength of community--research is proving that it's directly related to happiness--and that more people are becoming disillusioned with a mass-produced consumer culture where the individual is the greatest good. I refuse to buy into the idea that I have to go it alone, and that what I buy is who I am. I am so thankful for our writing and meditation groups, where peaceful community and space for thoughtful sharing are thriving.

"I Know You Can Read My Mind"

You can cry on my shoulder anytime, no questions asked

You can use me to train for the Guinness Book of World Records for Lingering

You can take me for a Lou Reed ride in your badass White Lightning truck

You can leave inscrutably soft messages on my voice mail anytime you catch yourself feeling lonely, bereft, existentially woebegone

You can be a beautiful mess around me anytime between the hours of 10 a.m. and 10 p.m.

You can shriek, stomp, and stammer, but there you’ve got some competition

You can do yourself a favor and watch Kuch Kuch Hota Hoi three times within two weeks

You can keep sending notes, letters, scribbles, post-its, lists, a jewel jam of genres

You can be incomplete, strangely stuck, untogether, a fumbling work-in-progress, just like about 5 billion others of our species

You can seek refuge amid my persiflage, crème brûlée, and recitations of Paul Éluard

You can throw away that mask that flashes: “I’ve Got It All Figured Out”

You can relax when you arrive back home: In the precious present moment


-- Our Heroic and Ceaseless 24/7 Struggle against Tsuris

NOT written by me - though I should wish to be this universal in thought -

"Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four,
and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God
and in my own face in the glass,
I find letters dropped in the street, and everyone is
signed by God's name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that
wheresoe'er I go
Others will punctually come forever and forever."

                                                   Walt Whitman



speaking to my love of glass

the glass and the water are one
and with the light and sun they are one
and I love the glass uncut and the water undammed singing over
the rocks and pebbles of the stream
the deep flow of the river and force of the ocean surge
and I put the glass away,
loathe to cut it, to destroy its elemental beauty for the sake of some poor
design some haggling client ( or even myself) craves.

glorious reflections of the sun
the glass and water flowing with the rising and falling light

carol

The Little There Is To Do

A friend sent us a letter
At a loss for words of wisdom
She simply wished she could be with us
To share the day to day
Do the little things
That needed to be done:
Like when a friend was sick and dying in the hospital
She threw away the dead flowers
And moved the fresh ones closer to her

A Story from a D.C. Nurse by Kate Smith

Kate Raymond put me in touch with Kate Smith, who is a nurse and a writer.  I emailed her the following request: "Tell me a story about living and working in D.C. ... off the top of your head,  go for ten minutes, let it rip."

She wrote back: "Ten minutes off the top of my  head. Ok. I can do that:

 

Sometimes I feel bad because I don't think of my patients beyond the moments that I'm with them.  I am a paper bag and they are a torrent, a waterfall I can not contain.  I care, genuinely, standing over them, helping them undress, asking them about their childhoods and grandchildren as I pierce their flesh, the bevel of my needle always pointing up.  When I walk away, I usually don't blink.

There is one woman who never leaves me, though.  During sleepless nights I imagine her on the streets and wonder if she's safe and if her baby is still alive.  My prayers for her are simple - for a coat, for enough food, that she doesn't walk in front of bus.  She walked through the door at 18:50, I picked up her chart at 18:57.  It was a Thursday.  A man was waiting for me. I'd made chocolate mousse for dessert.  My skin was clear and the sky was pink and yellow.  I almost put down the chart.  Nobody keeps triaging through shift change.

It took her a few minutes to gather up her baby and all the plastic bags, to cross the lobby and fall into the chair in my triage room.  Chest pain, breast pain, stomach pain, itching.  The bottoms of her earlobes were split in two where someone had yanked the gold hoops down through the flesh. She'd found duct tape, pieced them together. Gold hoops back in place, a problem she'd solved herself.

That was 13 minutes, but only because I looked up the medical term for earlobe because it bothers me how much I've forgotten.  

May We Always Be Amateurs

Nonrequired Reading: Prose Pieces
Wislawa Szymborska
Translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh

Herein are a few score short pieces by the Nobel laureate (Literature, 1996), usually no more than a page or two, although I think of them more as her writing practices, as she uses the book at hand to provoke wide-ranging exploration.  Her reading has breadth — statistics, Polish history, birds, El Cid, Vermeer, the history of clothing, the persecution of witches, handyman guides, Napoleon, deer, the Polish nobles, Ella Fitzgerald, yoga for everyone, divas, wallpapering your home, all the Cleopatras, gladiators, Catherine the Great, Hammurabi’s Code, the Three Tenors, Fermat’s Theorem — but my favorite pieces were those about other writers, like Jung, Milosz and Montaigne.  She admits, “Basically I am and wish to remain a reader, an amateur, and a fan, unburdened by the weight of ceaseless evaluation. Sometimes the book itself is my main subject; at other times it’s just a pretext for spinning out various loose associations. Anyone who calls these pieces sketches will be correct. Anyone insisting on ‘reviews’ will incur my displeasure.”

Many of these books were published in Poland, and I have no desire to read them (my “To Read List” is already impossibly long). However, she inspires me to go to Left Bank Books to browse in sections I’ve never been to before, if only to whet my curiosity as to what’s out there.

I can see how some of these pieces relate to her own poems. For example, “Chips Will Fly” is a prose riff on her poem, “The Terrorist, He’s Watching.”  Also, the following quotation reminds me of her magnificent “Miracle Fair”:  “The reader may think that I’m a thick-skulled rationalist who can’t even entertain the idea that anything strange, mysterious, and amoral could still happen on our ordinary earth. It’s just the opposite–for me there is no such thing as an ‘ordinary’ earth. The more we find out about it, the more mysterious it is, and the life it holds is a bizarre cosmic anomaly.”

Last, Szymbroska’s description of the common reader will ring true for several people I know: “I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised…. Homo Ludens with a book is free. At least as free as he is capable of being. He himself makes up the rules of the game, which are subject only to his own curiosity. He’s permitted to read intelligent books, from which he will benefit, as well as stupid ones, from which he may also learning something.”

This month I’ve been reading and rereading all of Szymborska’s books available in English translation; she’s been reminding of poetry’s power to wake us up and see more clearly  I have compiled a list of 17 of her poems that are worth rereading over the next decade.

We can follow her example of bibliophilia in Nonrequired Reading and take some time to let our friends know what we’ve been reading, how it has touched us, and why we’re glad to  have found a kindred spirit, teacher, journeyer, or disturber of the peace at just this moment.

As They Please by Te

As They Please
by Te

The trees dance.

on this crisp autumn morning
they sway
they jitterbug
as they please
they romance
as they please

and i watch as i waltz
looking longingly from
this masquerade ball
wanting nothing
but to strip off this facade
to step out of beat

but my feet won't flee
from the rhythm of
from the march to
this beat that leaves

my feet aching
my head pounding
my mind escaping

but only my mind

As I watch the trees
Dance as they please.

Ode to Frijoles (Redux)

Mark - I think you are right. I think this is better set in verse. I reread "Ode to Salt" by Pablo before revising, below.

  

My father was a good man

maybe even a great man

but he unraveled slowly

like an old wool sweater that got

snagged on the sharp edge of life,

straining ever since he landed

in Miami, a refugee from Cuba

with a coarse black mustache

who never quite fit in

never quite felt at home.

But my father could do one thing

that helped him forget where he was

and helped him remember who he was

and where he came from. He could cook

frijoles negros, Cuban-style.

Primero

first

sauté the onions

and don’t hurry them

let them turn golden

like the tropical sun.

Then

entonces

add the peppers

a little fire for the soul.

The frijoles too

must cook slowly —

three days, as many days

as Jesus was in the grave.

You’ll know when the frijoles are done

because you will not want anything else

for breakfast, lunch or dinner

when you first begin to smell

the bubbling, rich aroma

of God’s black frijoles.

You will run into the kitchen  

and you will beg me: Papi, please,

may I have the frijoles now?

And I will do exactly what my mother did

and my grandmother did, and all

the mothers and grandmothers of Cuba

as far back as anyone can remember.

I will pick you up in my arms and I will hand you

the special wooden spoon that I have used

to stir and stir and stir the frijoles

and I will say, Sí, mi querida, 

mi corazón. Yes, my darling, my love.

Take and eat. I have made this

all

for

you.

Meditation Reflection #21

(In response to entry #21 Life is Not a Means to an End from Thich Nhat Hanh's Your True Home)

Sometimes I want to just take Thay's book and words and throw it against the wall... That's not very mindful of me, is it?  It sounds impossible to live the life he speaks of here in the U.S.  I know it is possible in Plum Village, because I've been there. I've lived it and experienced it.  I was present to my life for 6 whole days: learning, making mistakes, smiling, bowing, sitting, washing dishes, and all mindfully.  And it was incredible.  But I don't know how to do that here.  I have such a hard time making happiness the way.  Instead, I search for a way to peace and happiness, and feel lost.  It's easy to say the words, read the words, and think, oh of course, that makes sense, sure wouldn't that be nice.  But it's a whole nother thing to actually figure out how to live the words.

I feel like a lot of life is spent as a means to an end.  You plan out what you want in life, and how you are going to get there.  Goals.  Goals aren't a bad thing to have are they?  Can you have in mind things you want to work towards and accomplish, while still appreciating each moment?  It seems like just accepting everything is a very passive way to live.  But Thay isn't saying to live passively, he's saying to live intentionally, and you have the power to make every moment, every action or non-action, intentional.  Can I work towards a future goal while being aware and fully alive in each step that I take to get there?

I have a difficult time saying the point of life is just to be aware that I am living.  I want to do something meaningful with my life.  If not, what's my purpose?  What's anyone's purpose?  If we all just sat around and breathed and smiled at each other, that would get so boring.  There would be nothing new or creative.  There would be no celebration.  What about art and music and dancing?  What about expressing the full range of emotions including sorrow, and outrage, and fear, and exuberance?  What's so great and desirable about just being calm, wise, practical, slow, and intentional all the time?  I think there's more to being human and the human experience than just floating on a still pond. 

What Hunger Looks Like

Hunger is the substitute teacher whose name has yet to be called.
Hunger is the Salvadoran guerilla fighter who used to feed his whole town.
Hunger is the couple who only have the streets to call home.
Hunger is the girl who skips school so her son can have something to eat.
Hunger is the soldier who gained PTSD when he lost an arm.
Hunger is the grandmother, too afraid to ask for help.
Huger is the children, consuming government mass-produced meals.
Hunger is the Mexican immigrant, still trying to find a safe home.
Hunger is the family, whose children do not qualify.
Hunger is the businessman, who does not need a second explanation of the recession.

Writing with Annie, Northwest Coffee, April 2012

It's easy to be in the present moment
With Anne Fitzgerald
I want to listen
I want to be receptive
I want to assure her
That Jesus was right:
You, Annie Fitzgerald, are the light of Gibson Avenue
The light beaming whenever you and Becca Feldmann are together
The light giving comfort at your grandma's memorial service

We were present to each other
That Saturday afternoon in April
We did writing practice
It was your first time in a  long while
You had a brand new notebook untouched
I gave us a topic
"Go for 20 minutes"
And off we went

Metta Meditation Modified

May you be filled with lovingkindness (even through all this) May you be well (despite the tempestuous circumstances)
May you be peaceful and at ease (though this may seem remote)
May you be happy (at least in this present moment)

Just Another Night at Café Illumination

After the talk on Operation Cast Lead
Carla Nguyen and I headed over to Café Illumination
Where we began processing what we heard

We sat outside as it was a balmy night
Odd how calm we felt
After the typical brouhaha and sparks flying

We were surprised
When an older man approached us
"Hi, the name's Cal...

I saw you at the Palestine speaker
Damn! -- That one guy got pretty hot
And no one was there to support him"

Two Years Later

Mary Oliver says, “ Meanwhile the wile geese,

High in the clean blue air, are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination

Calls to you like the wild geese,

Harsh and exciting –

Over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”

It’s ironic that I am once again reminded of her words.

Almost two years after I first came across them in this same country.

As I once again try to find my own place in the family of things.

In August of 2011 I had no expectation that my life would be changed.

Now here I am, reminded at every minute, with every smiling face, silent tear, and joyous laughter of the person I was before and the person I am now. Reminded of the strength that out lasts fear and joy that out lasts pain.

In October of that year rain destroyed everything. Killed the baby at Casita Blanca. Washed the women down the road. Left my family cold and hungry.

Last week I sat on Angelica’s patio, writing only by the light of the candle, at peace even after the storm knocked out the power because we still laughed and danced and cooled off in the rain.

In December I said goodbye and I thought the world was sure to end.

Now here I am, after memories became distant. After names took a moment to recall. After a 122 day countdown started in January. 4 weeks in El Salvador. Back in the United States. Certain life has continued, that the world will not end.

A year later, things were better. I wrote to wake up, fell in love with St. Louis.

Then this past December, when my mom was diagnosed with cancer, the reality of losing a parent was still so distant.

Then on June 9^th, we lost Samuel, our beloved micro driver, father and friend. Nelson said, “when this happens one can only imagine themselves in the same situation”. And it hit me.  Now my mom sits in her rocking chair, no hair on her hear. Squeezing her eyes as I giver her her shots for the day.

 

Then Spring time brought flowers and sun, long walks in the park and the love of woman named Ann Manganaro.

Now I’ve been to Guarjila. Walked the grounds of the clinic. Met up with Marilyn and translated the mass for Ann’s twin and sisters. Stories, chocolate, and pan dulce were shared. Everything came full circle. Eyes filled with tears for loss and for gratitude.            

           

On May 25^th I boarded a plane, seeking validation that the experience I had, the love I felt, was real not imagined.

In four weeks I spent no more than six hours alone. I was accompanied by mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, most constantly fighting to survive. All with a power to pray, to give thanks, to offer blessings, food and beds.
Two years later, babies have been born. Lives have been lost.

Two years later El Salvador is still home.

Two years later the love is still real.

Two years later, we still sore, like Mary Oliver’s wild geese, trying to find our place in the family of things.

What Each Breath Felt Like

Inhale…

Sitting perches against the wall

Watching every raindrop

Toes just an inch away from the falling water.

Safe.

Trying to understand how this all came to be.

Trying not to hate the rain.

Recognizing the life it brings.

The corn, the coffee, the beans.

Contrasted with this morning’s funeral.

Samuel’s life taken by cancer.

While my own mom awaits the next phase of her treatment.

Fear.

Where time flies yet seconds can last a lifetime.

Constant accompaniment.

Millions of questions.

Everything aligns.

And it makes sense that nothing makes sense.

Beauty.

Exhale…

Como Ya Sabes/ As You Already Know

Como ya sabes that the men act a certain way.

That mauchismo is alive and well.

In Tepecoyo. San Salvador. St. Louis.

Como ya sabes that the men drink

Don’t come home until morning

After their daughters go looking for them.

Como ya sabes that they waste the money they earn.

While their wives and children go hungry

One tortilla shared for each meal.

Como ya sabes that men think they are stronger

Even as women run households

Build concrete pillas

And fight to seguir adelante every day.

Como ya sabes that the men don’t wash dishes.

Or cook.

Or clean.

Como ya sabes that we walked to the US to be with my husband

And then he left me and my children alone with nothing.

Como ya sabes that men rape and beat their wives

Girlfriends

Children

And the innocent woman coming home from work in the darkness of the night.

Como ya sabes Linsita que así es la vida.

Yes I know…

But why does that make it okay?

United States of Ch'an

Reading Penelope Fitzgerald is ch'an
Stretching out on the beach is ch'an
Quitting your suckey job is ch'an
Sitting and not being productive is ch'an
Befriending your arch-nemesis is ch'an
Attending to your 13th patient of the day is ch'an
Expanding, radiating, and dissolving is ch'an
Remembering to pull out the paintbrush from the enormous pile of stuff is ch'an
Kissing the beloved is ch'an
Washing the lettuce is ch'an
Knocking on the front door is ch'an
Driving with no music  playing is ch'an
Bowing to the ducks in Forest Park is ch'an
Repeating the form 1000 times is ch'an
Texting a troubled friend just the right gatha is ch'an
Drinking a glass of cool water on a 95 degree day is ch'an
Remaining unfazed by the spectacular is ch'an
Smiling while being stood up for 40 minutes is ch'an
Being OK with not being OK is ch'an
Holding your friend's hand while she is holding yours is ch'an
Brushing your teeth with brio is ch'an
Swimming one  mile, biking 25, and running six is ch'an
Looking at your tattoo is ch'an
Looking up at the blue, blue sky is ch'an
Seeing Buddhas every which way you look is ch'an







--Zen is the Japanese word
that translates ch’an
which is the Chinese word
that translates dhyana
which is the Sanskrit word
for “meditation.”

Insertion

Wherever you have refugees, you have vultures who feed off them.

–Kuan Ying, quoted in Lady Borton, Sensing the Enemy: An American Woman among the Boat People of Vietnam [101]

Three worlds collide in this memoir by a more or less Quaker (“I’d never joined a Quaker meeting” {59}], Lady Borton: the world of Vietnam (Quang Ngai)  where she spent two years, 1969-1971, working with AFSC; her life as a school bus driver in rural Ohio where for years she had tried in vain to write a novel about Vietnam; and her six months on Pulau Bidong, West Malaysia as a project director for Vietnamese refugees.   She went because “I felt I needed to shake my introspection. I wanted distance from books and I thought the six months might provide perspective. Or maybe, if I were honest, I’d say I fled.” [16]  She herself was descended from Quaker boat people of three hundred years before.

The refugee camp had such areas of concern as the following: education, administration, engineering, language interpretation and translation, security, labor recruitment, social welfare, sanitation, and health.  [25] “As an administrator, I didn’t write memos, letters, feasibility studies, and project assessments in quadruplicate. Instead I ran errands. And I listened.” [35]

She took a hard look at what is happening to the refugees, either on the high seas, or at the camp.  “I checked on eighty-three new arrivals, among whom were twelve women and girls who’d been raped by Thai pirates. One girl was nine years old. [37]  “No one knows how many boat people never made it. The Vietnamese said more drowned than landed. Some Malaysians stopped eating fish; they said it tasted of decay.” [62]

She was honest, too, about her own weaknesses, like wanting to leave: “Much of the time I was tired and when I was discouraged, which was often, I counted the months until my departure in August, wishing for silence and someone to hold me.” [40] “Monika and Jim’s obsessive work frightened me, drawing me back into that destructively compulsive drive I’d felt when trying to write. With them I felt like a recovered alcoholic surrounded by soused drinking buddies. I never learned what drove them so; and they never learned what drove me.” [45] “A heaviness began to press on me. I wanted to be elsewhere, anywhere else but on that island and in that stark room with its cell-like walls and its louvered windows with bars made of glass.” [154] She recorded her anger as well, directed here at a  supercilious European mouthing off on how messy the Vietnamese are:  “You overstuffed rodent, I thought. Why don’t you go clean your plate in some chic restaurant?” [163]

Unsurprisingly, the boat people left Vietnam because of “the Communists.”  She heard one refugee lament the Communists: “The Vietnamese Communists are cruel. They give only three kilos of rice per person per month when an adult needs twenty-one. There’s no gas for motorcycles nor batteries for radios. And there are no jobs to make money to buy anything.”  Lady Borton reflected, “I nodded, knowing that there in the crowded hut on Bidong I’d never be able to explain how American dollars had created a market among Vietnamese for Western consumer goods unavailable before the war and unaffordable after.” [66]

I wonder what her views are now of “worthy victims.”  Just last night, I was perusing Eddie Adams photos of the boat people, which  were evidently used for U.S. propaganda purposes.  How was her book first received?

As the author would admit, six months of an American’s life—its hardships and aches—is nothing compared to the boat people’s or the Vietnamese who remained in Vietnam and attempted to start a new life under impossible circumstances. In the last chapter, she wrote “…I felt as if Bidong had cured me of a long, painful illness. I was ready to go back to America.” [175]

This book helps me try to visualize what a family  I met in the 1980s may have gone through.  As Tho said: “When we arrived on Bidong, I felt jubilant. Now I understand that Vietnamese like me must scatter over the earth. Our country is lost to us. This island is our last Vietnam.” [73]

Thich Nhat Hanh has said, “Plum Village is everywhere.” So, too, is Vietnam, as you can see on South Grand in Saint Louis, Missouri.

Toward a Curriculum for an Institute for the Cultivation of Slowness

For Lindsay

Morning Aspiration: Upon first waking up in the morning, recite this gatha from Thich Nhat Hanh:
“Waking up this morning, I smile:
Twenty-four brand new hours are before me.
I vow to live fully in each moment
And to look on all beings with the eyes of compassion.”

Experiment:  On the highway where the speed limit is 60, go under 55.

Reflection:  Consider the following from India mystic, Meher Baba:
“A mind that is fast is sick.
A mind that is slow is sound.
A mind that is still is divine.”
When and how is your mind sick?
When and how is your mind sound?
When and how is your mind divine?

Reading: Marx, “The Working Day,” in Capital, v. 1.

Experiment: Go for one week and eat your meals only when sitting down (not standing, not driving, etc.).

Training in appreciation: Take a stroll along Flora Avenue and notice what catches your attention. Do one block in 10-15 minutes.

Experiment: Get up a half hour early each day for a week. See how this affects the rhythm of your day.

Training in focus: Instead of doing four things at a time, try doing two.

Reading: Tolstoy, The Emperor’s Three Questions.

Training in letting go and being present: On a weekend, leave your cell phone at home when you go out (A) in the morning or (B) in the afternoon. Enjoy being unreachable for this short time.

Experiment: Slow down in speech.  Practice the Suf Three-Gate Rule for an afternoon: “The Sufis advise us to speak only after our words have managed to pass through three gates. At the first gate we ask ourselves, Are these words true? If so, we let them pass on; if not, back they go. At the second gate we ask, Are they necessary? At the last gate we ask, Are they kind?” (Eknath Easwaran)

Training in unflappability: Deliberately go to the grocery when it is crowded.  Take 2 (or even 3) times as long  to do your shopping. Move your cart calmly; let other people go ahead of you. Maintain an attitude of courtesy and consideration for others. If you’re in a long line at checkout, use a breathing gatha to stay in the present moment.  Afterward, write about the experience for 10 minutes.

Reading: Wendell Berry, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Writing practice: Imagine a future society that manifests a healthy pace. Go for 30 minutes.

Experiment: In the midst of a  very busy day, take two one-minute pauses to regain your composure.

Candor

When we ran into each other
On the sidewalk in front of Gelato Supreme

And I asked you, "Hey
When can we get together again?

Last Monday was so long ago!"
You raised that fine left eyebrow of yours

Ever so slightly as if I was joking
Au contraire Mein Herr:

Why wouldn’t I want to  spend a little more time
With someone who is smack in the centre of his center?

You might not be so interested in me
(I admit: I’m unsteadily eccentric)

But I’m interested in you
So carpe fucking diem

Tomorrow, noon?
Bella Levenshtein

--novel-in-progress, Our Heroic and Ceaseless 24/7 Struggle against Tsuris

When Hamlet Saw Sri Anandamayi Ma

What an uncanny phenomenon is this woman!
How penetrating in perception!
How infinite in faculties!
In form and moving how express and admirable!
In action how like an angel!
In apprehension how like a god!
The beauty of the world!
The paragon of  the wise!—
How may I remain close to this quintessence of bliss?

You're the Beautiful Resistance

There’s something about your sharing with me
Tears usually are the result

Not sadness as in Ach
But gratitude as in Ah

I’ve known  you nine years plus
So, of course, we inter-are

Muriel Ruykeyser: The universe
Is made of stories not atoms

You were a theatre wiz
Sassy smart aleck

Devotee of Boal
Proud hoosier

Companion to the refugee kids
Evoker of their stories

You used theatre to touch them
And so helped them to touch us

You read Mev’s gospel at LBB
Which sealed the deal for you, for me

Mev: Putting our bodies before the wheels of the great machine
That crushes the bones of the poor, blacks, gays, ...

For a couple months we meet week after week
At 6 North Coffee on Laclede

You making your jottings in your notebook
Me sharing scenarios, possibilities

You know the theatre of the absurd
Yeah there we were, Lucky and Pozzo

Trying to prepare for that
Which is beyond preparation

Then you performed the play about your alter ago Rachel Corrie
You fucking were Rachel Corrie

Summer 2006
Right before you left for the West Bank

Then you phoned me at some crazy hour
You were about to get on a plane

“Professor-friend, I’m scared shitless”
You admitted as Israel was leveling Lebanon

“What should I do?”
And then you accompanied your fear and soon got a taste

Of some of what the Fayrouzes of the world
Endure as they hold on to their humanity

Zora Neale Hurston: There’s no agony
Like bearing an untold story inside of you

And you transformed your months
Into not just one, but two plays

I’ve long been impressed, relieved, and inspired
By how honest and raw and real you are

Like when you sent me three pages of comments
About Dear Layla

I felt so honored
By you soul-probing reading of it

(Of course you inhabit the characters
Of Carla, Nirmala and Natasha)

Harold Clurman:  Theatre is
Propaganda for a better life

One day I promise
I’ll come to New York

Come see you in a performance
Then stay out regaling you till dawn

Today I got your postcard from Harlem
Your spirit and spunk radiated off of it

That’s why I’m writing these lines now in my notebook
Remembering a few flash moments

Of the goosebumped and glorious blessings I've known
Courtesy of the Indomitable and Tender Miss Magan Wiles

Would Someone Please Start an Institute for the Cultivation of Slowness?

Rushing is a way of life
We’re speed freaks
Yeah it’s a drug
Move the mind
Faster and faster
Get more done
Faster and faster
Our lives are one long Stair Master’s routine
The pace ever increasing
The intensity more than the week before
Go
Go!
Go!!
Go!!!
Day in
Day out

Cece's Smile

A while after Mev died
I went to a gathering at Jesuit Hall
In honor of Guadalupe Carney
Who had lived in Honduras with the poor

Scores of people were there
Across the crowded room I saw Cece Weinkauff
Who must have been 14 at that time
She saw me and let loose a smile to raise the dead

That beam of eyes and mouth and hand wave was familiar to me
I felt instantly at ease
Happy and grateful
To behold Cece (to remember Mev)

The Miracle of Beng Cheerful

Years of nausea
Anxiety
Affliction
Heart being battered
Hourly taking up your cross
And carrying it
Night after day
Day after night

And when I've seen you
Always that smile
Always that glow
Always that effervescence
Always that mirth
All the while being intimately familiar with agony
Your embodied miracle:
Not being bitter

Mary & Lindsay

A Prayer of Thanksgiving for the Boeing Company

O Lord God
We joyously thank you
For the many gifts
You have provided us in Saint Louis
With the Boeing Company
Who sees to it
That we are gainfully employed and
That our community is the recipient
Of its generous philanthropy
In the arts and education

Leaving the Comfort Zone

When we get bored and complacent
Playing it safe
Staying stuck in our routines of "I, me, mine"

May we remember and act on that phrase

Which can immediately enliven us
Bring out our daring side
Free us from the grind of self-preoccupation:

“Seventy times seven”

News from Bella in New York

Dear Poet Who Summons Other Poets,

I wrote this on July 4th at 12:50am and I think it relates to some of the questions you asked me in a recent voicemail.

Come see me,
Bella Levenshtein

Words for America,
New York specifically

new york you have taught me i can make it anywhere
new york you have taught me how to stand on a moving subway car
new york you have taught me the color of my skin
new york you have taught me the colors and stars of the puerto rican flag
new york you have taught me not to get fazed
new york you have taught me about section 8
new york you have taught me how to say no
new york you have taught me about ghettoization

Weekly Poem - Week Three

Burrito

I'm a burrito

unfolded

you are hot sauce and salsa

Sprayed, burning my insides

I'm folded back up

so thick, I am

bursting out my seams.

Grow Saint Louis Vietnam

Grow Saint Louis!
Monsanto gives charity
20,000 dollar grants
To those local organizations who compete against each other
To get the most votes
Charity (and competition) has its place
People will tell me

Grow Vietnam?
Monsanto won’t even give token charity
Much less countenance paying compensation
To generations of Vietnamese children and adults
Diseased and deformed by its Agent Orange product
Besides that’s ancient history
People will tell me

Ah, the lucky winners!
Oh, the unlucky losers

Gratitude Makes the World Go Around

Dear Brother in the Uprising against Shmegeggedom

Thank you for the times in Café Voltaire (I feel privileged to be able to steal a weekly spot in your schedule)
Thank you for being a clown sometimes and making me laugh from the saddest zones of my soul
Thank you for letting me read your heart breaking new book
Thank you for faithfully encouraging me to express myself
Thank you for beholding Me
Thank you for all the random pieces of snail mail over the months
Thank you for sharing your poetic inspirations with me
Thank you for introducing me to your teachers
Thank you for introducing me to Palestine and letting me stew and sob without trying to fix me
Thank you for appreciating my forays into watercolors

What You Understand Depends on Where You Stand & Where You Stand Depends on What You Understand

for Ellen

Mev looked up to Ann Manganaro
Co-founder of Karen Catholic Worker House
Sister of Loretto medical doctor
Compañera to Father John Kavanaugh

When Mev went to El Salvador in 1993
For the annual meeting with CRISPAZ
She sought out Ann for an interview
They spent hours together in  Guarjila

Shortly after Ann’s death that summer
Mev prepared that interview for publication
For a Catholic health magazine
She was not pleased when she saw the final result

The editor had cut out something Mev deeded crucial
The part about Ann’s consciously choosing
To go to El Salvador
To act as a small counter to the evil of U.S. policy--

A million dollars a day for the decade
Going to the Salvadoran government
That was crucifying its own people--
So Ann went there to be with them

Ann was a witness to their agony
And their courage
She is still fondly remembered in El Salvador
And ought to be better remembered here

I'm Getting Better at This

A beautiful sunny afternoon 70 degrees
Dear Bella Levenshtein

For months
I've wanted to visit with you

But packed schedules
The oddities of time and noncoincidences of space

Emails unresponded to
It didn't ever happen

Till today, at last!
We planned to take a walk in the park

An hour to expand, radiate, dissolve
Together

Then while waiting I received your text
"Something's come up ... reschedule?"

I admit I was very disappointed
For about six seconds

--from novel-in-progress, Our Heroic and Ceaseless 24/7 Struggle against Tsuris

4 Years

4 Years

4 years has taught me what Steinbeck said,  “now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good”.

4 years taught me my worth is not measured by my GPA, the programs I am rejected from, the programs I turn down, or the awards I do and do not receive.

4 years has taught me that a personal poem means a lot more than an award announced by a man in a suit and bow tie.

4 years has taught me that I do not need approval, I just need love.

That the ones who really matter won’t tell me what is right and what is wrong.

That they won’t judge, or roll their eyes, or tell me I’m not being rational.

4 years has taught me that my mom will always be my #1 fan

4 years has taught me that I will always be hers.

4 years has taught me to dream

and to also be here now.

4 years has taught me I love brick

4 years has given me a coffee addiction

and more importantly coffee shops

The quiet solitude that comes from a black coffee and Keroac on a cold winter morning

and the exuberant life that comes from discussion with Che’s in the making.

4 years has taught me to slow down

and to procrastinate.

4 years has taught me to not be okay

and to be okay with not being okay.

4 years has taught me to read cancer facts out loud, to a group of strangers, without stuttering.

4 years has taught me to act on a whim

Playing outside in the rain, dancing to the sound of tornado sirens are definitely risks worth taking

that 3 am sledding is never a bad decision.

4 years has taught me that people matter

and their stories matter

and sometimes the people that seem the strongest, are really just about to crumble

and sometimes you just have to hold them really tight

and believe they’re going to be okay

4 years has taught me that home grown tomatoes

will always be better than store bought ones

and that eating fresh food is great

except on tax day when roller grill items from the Quicktrip are free

4 years has taught me that distance doesn’t need to mean anything.

4 years has taught me to not sit still

4 years has taught me to not be quiet

4 years has taught me “gracias a dios” and “que dios te bendiga” and that faith doesn’t need to be a scary thing.

4 years has taught me that moccasins are more comfortable than heels

and dirt is more fun than cubicles

4 years has taught me to be skeptical

and to not believe everything people say

to question the norm

and work to change the norm.

4 years has taught me who Mev was and who Ann was

and who I am.

4 years has taught me to be me

4 years has taught me to be happy

4 years has taught me that candles can create energy strong enough to move fans

and that nature can create rain strong enough to destroy lives

4 years has taught me that being afraid of dogs is better than being afraid of inadequacy

4 years has taught me that vulnerability is not a weakness

4 years has taught me a lot in social work classes in Tegler

4 years has taught me even more outside the classroom

4 years in North City, South City, El Salvador

4 years has taught me what not to do, who not to be, who not to follow

4 years has taught me how to write grants,

theology papers and even research papers….with passion

4 years has taught me that having more than one home

to say goodbye to is not painful,

it’s a gift.

4 years has given me a million reasons to say thank you.

So thank you…mom, dad, family, best friends, SLU professors, SLU faculty, Mark, Writing to Wake Up Companions, Sharers of Wealth, Sara, Mama Angelica, the Portillo family, coffee shop workers, Janiene, Mona, Geri, Kingdom House clients, Kingdom House staff, man that sits outside Kingdom House, Maria, casa Romero, Mev, Oscar Romero, Padre Dean, William, SLU casa family, the climbers and the crafters, the Tortillas for Tepecoyo supporters and so many more. Thank you.