There is a ginkgo tree in my direct line of sight, taking up a fourth of the window pane, bristling at the tips against a moody, stagnant sky. The leaves don't sway gracefully in the breeze but rather quiver repeatedly in the same pattern, as if the tree isn't a natural organism but rather a manual mechanism built of tiny parts like a children's mobile.
I've abandoned this space for a long time and so much has changed since I last made an entry. I have chapters sitting in drafts that I left prematurely, perhaps lacking the confidence that what poured from my mind to the pen (or in this case, keyboard) was anything worth reading and thus anything worth sharing.
In 10 months I am getting married. Actually, I'm already married in the most wrote, legal sense of the word, choosing to leverage an institution and its systematically enshrined privileges to take the steps to secure my own happiness. This was a choice made, an application completed, a check signed, a manila envelope mailed into a bureaucratic abyss so expansive and so consuming, one feels that the gravity grounding one's life to beginnings and ends and the plans that span between simply dissipates into nothingness, leaving only a sense of untethered purgatory.
In the end it took eight months to reach the goal (a green card). And I think only now am I feeling the residual trauma of that untethered eight month sentence. The whole experience has me now meditating on the idea of resilience and what it means in this world of unrepentant weariness. How somehow at the same time, the forces of evil that seem to gain only more and more power day by day show marked resilience in their ability to withstand the most ardent and public criticism. Yet also the forces of resistance, both organized and microcosmic are still further resilient, standing firm at the gates of a universe of ideals that are worth protecting and fighting for. Is resilience inherent? It is built? Is it practiced, as mindfulness is? I am currently reading Toni Morrison's The Source of Self Regard and in one of her essays, remarks of the remarkable resilience of the artist/writer/journalist. Though I believe she was writing at a time that is not our own - perhaps ten or twenty years ago, there is a real contemporary resonance here. Perhaps there's something about committing one's life to an artistic pursuit that engenders resilience; after all, an average artist's life is filled with more criticism than praise, more failure than success. And this is maybe why resilience becomes a practice for them because it is necessary. Maybe there are other contexts that are conducive towards building resilience.
When we travelled to the USCIS processing center in Virginia for our interview, I thought about this practice as I observed all the other people in the waiting room. Elderly people, perhaps grandparents of citizens waiting alone or with their families. Students, perhaps attempting to renew their visas or hoping to change their status from student to employee. A few attorneys here and there. Couples like us. Whole families from aunts and uncles to children, the latter more engrossed by coloring books or iPads that had been brought along to distract from the numbing boredom of the waiting room. Because after waiting months for your summons, even when you arrive to the scene of your summons, what awaits you is...more waiting. This orderly scene seemed converse set against the backdrop of news reports and witness accounts of terror at America's southern border. But there was a quiet and insidious sense of similarity between one and the other; the indignity felt by the applicant. One needs to have built and practiced a strong sense of resilience to weather this kind of indignity.
Resilience to me seems different from its sisters, such as strength, or tenacity. I can't quite put my finger on why, though it may have something to do with the peacefulness of it. I am thinking of the dearest people in my life who I've observed exhibiting what I think is verified resilience and it appears meditative, almost routine. Making constancy out of the absurd, building consistency and respect out of the demeaning. I recently heard a radio story about a Dutch designer who uses air pollution to create synthetic diamonds. He built a tool, a vacuum of sorts, that in the process of sucking up the polluted smog to refine for the stone, also filters the air, separating dirty particles from fresh ones and re-releasing the clean and breathable air into the world. Perhaps that is what everyday resilience is - acknowledging and filtering evil and in the process creating something pure and essential.
As the days pass, I find myself clinging more and more to what little clean air I and my community can muster. I can only hope that we can collectively provide enough for all the lungs yearning to breathe clear air.
Solar Eclipse
Diane Glancy
Cherokee poet, author, playwright, professor
"Each morning
I wake invisible.
I make a needle
from a porcupine quill,
sew feet to legs,
life spine onto my thighs
I put on my rib and collarbone.
I pin an ear to my head,
hear the waxwing's yellow cry
I open my mouth for purple berries,
stick on periwinkle eyes.
I almost know what it is to be seen.
My throat enlarges from anger.
I make a hand to hold my pain.
My heart a hole the size of the sun's eclipse.
I push through the dark circle's
tattered edge of light.
All day I struggle with one hair after another
until the moon moves from the face of the sun
and there is a strange light
as though from a kerosene lamp in a cabin
I put on a dress,
a shawl over my shoulders.
My threads knotted and scissors gleaming.
Now I know I am seen.
I have a shadow.
I extend my arms,
dance and chant in the sun's new light.
I put a hat and coat on my shadow,
another larger dress.
I put on more shawls and blouses and underskirts
until even the shadow has substance"
I've abandoned this space for a long time and so much has changed since I last made an entry. I have chapters sitting in drafts that I left prematurely, perhaps lacking the confidence that what poured from my mind to the pen (or in this case, keyboard) was anything worth reading and thus anything worth sharing.
In 10 months I am getting married. Actually, I'm already married in the most wrote, legal sense of the word, choosing to leverage an institution and its systematically enshrined privileges to take the steps to secure my own happiness. This was a choice made, an application completed, a check signed, a manila envelope mailed into a bureaucratic abyss so expansive and so consuming, one feels that the gravity grounding one's life to beginnings and ends and the plans that span between simply dissipates into nothingness, leaving only a sense of untethered purgatory.
In the end it took eight months to reach the goal (a green card). And I think only now am I feeling the residual trauma of that untethered eight month sentence. The whole experience has me now meditating on the idea of resilience and what it means in this world of unrepentant weariness. How somehow at the same time, the forces of evil that seem to gain only more and more power day by day show marked resilience in their ability to withstand the most ardent and public criticism. Yet also the forces of resistance, both organized and microcosmic are still further resilient, standing firm at the gates of a universe of ideals that are worth protecting and fighting for. Is resilience inherent? It is built? Is it practiced, as mindfulness is? I am currently reading Toni Morrison's The Source of Self Regard and in one of her essays, remarks of the remarkable resilience of the artist/writer/journalist. Though I believe she was writing at a time that is not our own - perhaps ten or twenty years ago, there is a real contemporary resonance here. Perhaps there's something about committing one's life to an artistic pursuit that engenders resilience; after all, an average artist's life is filled with more criticism than praise, more failure than success. And this is maybe why resilience becomes a practice for them because it is necessary. Maybe there are other contexts that are conducive towards building resilience.
When we travelled to the USCIS processing center in Virginia for our interview, I thought about this practice as I observed all the other people in the waiting room. Elderly people, perhaps grandparents of citizens waiting alone or with their families. Students, perhaps attempting to renew their visas or hoping to change their status from student to employee. A few attorneys here and there. Couples like us. Whole families from aunts and uncles to children, the latter more engrossed by coloring books or iPads that had been brought along to distract from the numbing boredom of the waiting room. Because after waiting months for your summons, even when you arrive to the scene of your summons, what awaits you is...more waiting. This orderly scene seemed converse set against the backdrop of news reports and witness accounts of terror at America's southern border. But there was a quiet and insidious sense of similarity between one and the other; the indignity felt by the applicant. One needs to have built and practiced a strong sense of resilience to weather this kind of indignity.
Resilience to me seems different from its sisters, such as strength, or tenacity. I can't quite put my finger on why, though it may have something to do with the peacefulness of it. I am thinking of the dearest people in my life who I've observed exhibiting what I think is verified resilience and it appears meditative, almost routine. Making constancy out of the absurd, building consistency and respect out of the demeaning. I recently heard a radio story about a Dutch designer who uses air pollution to create synthetic diamonds. He built a tool, a vacuum of sorts, that in the process of sucking up the polluted smog to refine for the stone, also filters the air, separating dirty particles from fresh ones and re-releasing the clean and breathable air into the world. Perhaps that is what everyday resilience is - acknowledging and filtering evil and in the process creating something pure and essential.
As the days pass, I find myself clinging more and more to what little clean air I and my community can muster. I can only hope that we can collectively provide enough for all the lungs yearning to breathe clear air.
Solar Eclipse
Diane Glancy
Cherokee poet, author, playwright, professor
"Each morning
I wake invisible.
I make a needle
from a porcupine quill,
sew feet to legs,
life spine onto my thighs
I put on my rib and collarbone.
I pin an ear to my head,
hear the waxwing's yellow cry
I open my mouth for purple berries,
stick on periwinkle eyes.
I almost know what it is to be seen.
My throat enlarges from anger.
I make a hand to hold my pain.
My heart a hole the size of the sun's eclipse.
I push through the dark circle's
tattered edge of light.
All day I struggle with one hair after another
until the moon moves from the face of the sun
and there is a strange light
as though from a kerosene lamp in a cabin
I put on a dress,
a shawl over my shoulders.
My threads knotted and scissors gleaming.
Now I know I am seen.
I have a shadow.
I extend my arms,
dance and chant in the sun's new light.
I put a hat and coat on my shadow,
another larger dress.
I put on more shawls and blouses and underskirts
until even the shadow has substance"
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