Goddess Bless Inga

Today, I felt:

Peace.

Absolute

Embracing

Fulfilling

...Peace.

Ironically, this stemmed from reading Cunt, an otherwise incendiary book that gets my heart pumping faster rather than slower. But today, she nailed it, that feeling of being nurtured. That feeling I would like to provide to anyone who approaches me. If we would but nurture one another, and forgive each other for whatever it is we're holding against ourselves, all of these fabricated complications would dissipate.



"Ammachi seized me gently--if you can imagine that--and pulled me into her lap. She cradled me, murmuring sweet chanting sounds into my ear. Her body engulfed mine and I relaxed--almost melted--into her. My face buried in her shoulder and neck, I breathed in her smell.

This is when I really, truly started to freak on the wonder of Ammachi. After holding hundreds of people in this manner, you would think she'd start to kinda stink. I was nowhere near the begining of the line. The sun set and went down, down, down to Australia while I stood in that line. A lot of people were in her arms before me, but the woman smelled like flowers. Not perfumey at all. Like if you covered every inch of your bedroom floor with freshly cut bouquets of jasmine, gardenia, roses, hyacinth, carnations, sweet peas and freesia is what she smelled like. And this smell wasn't coming from the flowers around her, it exuded from her skin, the fabrics of her sari and veils. It filled my whole body, permeated my pores. Her smell made me so giddy the attendant had to help me stand back up again. She stared deeply into my eyes and pressed flower petals and chocolate kisses into my hand.

I stumbled away like a drunk.

Like I just had one 'dem orgasms to raise the dead.

Lordisa.

For a whole week afterwards, my entire apartment smelled like Ammachi. Everywhere I went, I smelled her smell. Walking down the street with one of my friends, the smell of Ammachi would assail me. I'd go, "Damn, do you smell that?" And my friend'd go, "Car exhaust? What?"

As Ammachi's smell faded from my life, I started thinking about what happened when she blessed me.

It was the first time in my life I felt /loved/. Physically, emotionally, psychically, spiritually, /deeply loved/ from the epidermis of my skin that featured a couple of ugly zits, to the core of my heart that is still traumatized by the death of my brother, abortions, meanspirited lovergirls and other nasty hurts. It is a consciousness-broadening freak-out to feel love in this way."

--from the chapter "Whores"

Mirrors...

I don't own a mirror.

As such, I have no idea what my body looks like.

When I see a mirror, I'm fully clothed and only see myself from the waist up.

Today, I discovered that I have a mirror in my room here. And I stood in front of it. Naked.

Duly, I screamed.

We're made out of blood and rust...

I know that I cannot believe them.

Any of them.

But can I trust them? Can I trust them with me, even when I know not to believe them about each other?



We're made out of blood and rust,
Looking for someone to trust
Without a fight.

--Joseph Arthur, "Honey and the Moon"

We generate our own light...

night falls like people into love,
and we generate our own light to compensate
for the lack of light from above.
every time we fight, a cold wind blows our way,
but we can learn, like the trees, how to bend,
how to sway.



Tonight, Ben and I talked for two hours and forty five minutes. We exchanged book suggestions (he has read quite a few Feminist theorists), and talked about our relationships with Mom and with Dad. We discussed theories on life and swapped mutually counter-cultural stories on the pretentious people we meet--I go to a private university and he works in a ritzy restaurant, so one can imagine the types of encounters we explore. And we kept telling each other how excited we were to talk with each other, which we both cited as our first real conversation in over five years. And he repeatedly mentioned how proud he is of me.

First, I was born into a family. And then they left, and I left, and we all shattered to each other. And then I made my own family, constructed of close friends and mentors. And now, I have that constructed family, but I also have this faint and terrifying hope that maybe there can be something with that original set, with Dad and Ben. Maybe there's something there.

Can I slip into this love for them so easily? It frightens me, but I am so excited to be talking with Dad and Ben. It brings to mind Heraclitus: "You cannot step twice into the same river." This love we have, I once felt it surrounding me, holding me afloat in its motion, and at some point we jumped out of that. Now I'm testing the water again, after five years of parched anger, stepping in a bit eagerly, and I know that this water is different, that this current has shifted, and that we, especially, have changed, but it feels similar and welcoming and vaguely consistent, and my feet have been so long dry.



i, i think i understand
what all this fighting is for-
and i just want you to understand:
i'm not angry anymore.
no, i'm not angry anymore.

--Ani DiFranco, "Angry Anymore"

Everyone's got to face down the demons...

Everyone's got to face down the demons-
Maybe today we can put the past away.

--Third Eye Blind



For the past twelve days, I have spent countless hours with friends trying to put away the past. It hasn't quite worked, since I've been using them as more of a distraction than anything else, but I will say that through the desperation, through these terrible days, I have felt the love of my friends, and it has cushioned me against the many-cornered emptiness that threatens us.

So thank you.

Thank you, Sarahschwarz. Thank you, Kristine. Thank you, Danny. Thank you, Mallory. Thank you, James.

And thank you, Seth, for being stronger than I am. I'm sorry that I cannot help you through this; I hope that you know how much I love you.



And when I chose to live,
There was no joy, it's just a line I crossed.
I wasn't worth the pain my death would cost,
So I was not lost or found.

And if I was to sleep...
I knew my family had more truth to tell,
And so I travelled down a whispering well
To know myself through them.

...

When you live in a world,
Well, it gets into who you thought you'd be,
And now I laugh at how the world changed me:
I think life chose me after all.

--Dar Williams, "After All"

Virginia Tech Candlelight Vigil

The event was touching. People read verses from the Bible, and two women from MSA read from the Qu'ran, the first woman speaking in Arabic and the second (Saddyna) reading an English translation. At first, the microphone didn't work, and everyone shuffled closer to the podium to better hear, causing us to reduce our "personal space." What kinds of situations facilitate, and permit, this breach of such a strongly held taboo as our distance between our bodies?

Word of Truth led us in singing Amazing Grace as we lit our candles, a process which began on the inside of the arc of people and spread to the back in a wave of increasing light, each person sharing the flame of their candle with the unlit wick of the person behind them, and together we sang. To see the light spreading, to hear people lifting their voices, together, in song to the same god...it made me cry.

I cried because we expressed this unity in the aftermath of such a tragedy rather than before it. In the context of tragedy, we were willing to pray together, to sing together, to bow our heads in a moment of silence together, to stand, together, with our candles, lit by the willing assistance of a stranger whom we may or may not see again.

I ponder the metaphor of the candle. I see it as a representation of the self, a symbol of our vital energy that we our selves hold, and at first I wondered to what extent this enforced individualism, but then I saw the paper disc that someone had pushed the candle through, now catching hot wax that dripped from around the wick just as tears slid from the eyes of my peers. And I saw how many candles depended on others to be lit. And I saw how, when we each held these candles, the light overlapped and collaborated and spread outward into something we shared, and we could see it and feel its heat, and if anyone had walked by, they would have felt it, too, and would have been welcome to join us. And I saw how that light would not have been observable had it not been night. And I wondered why the shooter felt compelled to harm others, wondered what forces led him to that sense of isolation, for he surely felt as one in the night. And I see him as holding his own candle, but by himself, a solitary light meek and feeble, and when it blew out, no one was around to lend him their light. Each person scurried past, hands cupped around their meager flames because of their fear that it would go out. But if we would support each other, we would recognize that we do not need to protect our selves so much, that when we focus so much on our own selves, we are actually neglecting our true selves. When we look so anxiously at our flames, we fail to see that a fellow person's has become extinguished. But if we walk together, our light can show the way for our selves, our unified self, and others, who should be welcome to join us or just use us momentarily. And because we have the confidence of our numbers, none need protect their flame over-zealously, because if one goes out, several others can offer help. And the beauty full thing, the truly beauty full thing, is that no one gives anything up for the sharing; on the contrary, all benefit from it.

During the readings from holy books, during prayer, and during Amazing Grace, I thought of god for the first time in terms of a key metaphor, this common thread to unite a diverse people and provide them with a framework for understanding. In this way, a seeker, one searching for a line-of-best-fit religion, can, I believe, fully believe a sought-and-found religion, partially because they can claim an appeal to faith and point out that it was always true and they simply hadn't known it, but beyond that is the sense that a seeker is not looking for something to believe in, but for a way to believe in that essence, a way to express that belief through ritualism and have a community to share that.

I don't know how we would have communicated tonight if not through religion. I don't know how we would have understood each other. Thinking of the word communicate, I see that it means something like 'to create unity together,' that community means (approximately) 'with unity.' Communication, then, if truly observed, is a process whereby we unify, and community is a result of that process which requires ongoing communication, ongoing creation and definition.

Day of Silence

This is part of a poem I wrote the morning we left for Chicago. I thought it appropriate to share today:

...

and life is a series of easy defeats
that people deny with their subtle conceit,
'cause this illusion is quiet,
this illusion's discreet,
and if there were truth
then we'd still choose deceit

...

and the best we can do
is just to charge on,
without hope for glory,
expectations gone,
and if there is hope, then it's in the dawn,
and if there is hope, then it's in our lawn—
that small patch of land that we all dismissed
'cause the lure of the tv's too much to resist,
and we forget how to speak but we memorize lists
of shows that display all these guns, all these fists,
and we'll watch people killed, we'll watch people die,
without making a grimace or blinking an eye.
and somewhere in this mess we forgot how to cry,
but we learned to not eat, to make ourselves thin,
and we learned how to dress, to look just like them,
because the most important thing is for us to fit in.
the most important thing is for us to give in.

...

and I always wonder why they choose this fear,
why they fight the love that could save us here,
why they force us to silence,
why they smother our voice,
why they call it a sin,
why they call it a choice.
and this silence?
it's violence.
and this hate crime must end,
'cause more people will break
if others won't bend.

and i have seen people pushed over the top,
and this silence must end,
and this violence must stop,
'cause my friend, she is giving
the pulse of her wrist
to the people whose hatred
will never desist,
and if they saw her scars,
they wouldn't ask why,
because life is easier when life is a lie.


...

and you say god is love,
and you drop to your knees,
and you ask what you want,
and you say pretty please,
but you neglect with willful ease
that queer is a lifestyle and not a disease.
and the hatred you preach
from the pulpit, your sin,
is beading blood on delicate skin
that's not thick enough, no, it's too thin,
and the raised lines that criss-cross
her once-young breasts
aren't there to offend, aren't there to protest:
they're her favourite secret, kept close to her chest,
and the ones who know it—
they know her best.

...


I have so much to say about this day. But that is all for now.