I’ll spare the general introductions and jump right into ‘blogging’ the ins and outs of daily thoughts and reflections.
On Tuesday evening I accompanied my Mom and her friend Ayse to hear Alice Walker speak at a church in Oakland. The drive began with chatter between the three of us ranging from traffic to movies and books to Ayse’s children and so on. The mood bounced around the car, very light and excitable, not at all prepared for the haunting accounts and images we would soon face.
We found the church with ease, and with a bit more trouble managed to slip into a parking spot. Upon entering the church I realized how long it had truly been since I had stepped foot into one, in fact, I am not sure I remember the last time, perhaps as far back as my last trip to Ireland. The beauty of cathedrals always takes me aback, the stained glass, the pipe organs, the wood-grain stage and vases of fresh flowers. I can see the magnetism people may feel towards these sanctuaries.
After finding a place to sit, we traveled out and each bought books and shirts, various keepsakes of the evening, things that planted a seed a thought perhaps within each of us. Flyers were passed out, and sobering the excitement they flashed images of half missing children strewn about the ground and haunted eyes with bright, blood letters begging to help end the war in Palestine. Even flyers from ‘Jews Against Occupation’ were landing in my hands, outraged and ashamed at their association with these monsters capable of turning their own history, the nightmare of genocide, on others.
Though I had known Alice had just returned from Gaza, I still had the preconceived notion she would speak about the things I had known of her – African oppression and racism, the South, slaves… but now I realized I was not here for a history lesson, but rather, an account of a modern day horror our own country held responsibility for supplying. The images danced in my mind, taunting the wheels to turn and wrapping themselves around empathy, squeezing his little heart.
After a brief film presented by Code Pink, in which locals in Palestine shared their stories of the bombs, the tanks, the guns, and more importantly, the deaths they had to live with everyday, mothers and children, fathers and cousins, Alice took the stage. Her opening comments to her interviewer were witty, staking claim on the chair to the left (the usual spot for the questioner) due to her blind eye, but followed up by a I-do-what-I-want type remark. For a moment, the sobering effect had almost lifted itself back into that excitable bounce, almost…
Instantly, Alice’s energy transitioned from the light, cheeky jests to the reflective, somber tone that seemed to remain for the majority of the talk. That’s not to say flickers of Alice were not apparent in almost every word spoken, it was just clear there was much weight on her mind, and much thought on how it was presented to the crowd.
One thing I noticed about her delivery was the amount of care she took not to offend, or press her opinion on others, but rather she used her words to paint an image of what she saw, what she felt, and more importantly, that murder, weapons and war are never right – except in self defense, which was clearly what witness she had bared. Never was a finger pointed into the crowd demanding to turn skeptics into believers, or demand a certain way of thought or eternal damnation; Instead, it was one woman’s beautifully tragic account of the raping of a people, the violation of happiness and a way of life.
I spent the majority of her speech in tears, slowly working their way across my eyes and down my cheeks. I could feel the weight of her words pressing against my throat, and breaths did not come as easy as they had back in the lightness of the car ride. It only doubled as she relived her account of the man who had held up a bombshell to her, displaying the telltale brand of ‘Made in the USA’. My stomach rolled in disgust.
I took a moment to flutter past the horror that had become the church, glass now faded into the night, no longer sparkling with color and beauty but rather black and dull… its transition paralleling my mood quite well. Once past the painful haze that had settled in the house of worship, I traveled in my own mind and really thought about what it meant now, to ‘Be An American’. Is anyone really proud of the monsters we have become, or the behavior we all condone by turning our heads and allowing it all to happen? How can we call ourselves the ‘land of the free’ when even our thoughts are controlled, our news stories butchered and portrayed in the light head politicians see fitting, our youth taught from government issued books, everything so completely dripping with political brainwashing and blinders it begs to scream out the truth and yet we turn a selectively deaf ear- For shame.
Before I explored much further into the anger that had misted my thoughts, I pulled myself back to face her words once again as a clipboard was placed in my hands. ‘Code Pink Email List’, I dutifully filled in my information and was surprised when I reached the last column, ‘Interested in a Gaza Trip?’. Before I thought to much, I checked the box and scribbled out the following on the back of a receipt…
Bombing of Humanity
A single shell
exposed,
once breathing in its breast
explosion
hunger for humanity,
born of hatred
and in descent -
half cracked
emitting a phosphorus grin
swallowing families,
roots,
homes,
hearts,
consuming life
so absolutely
its legacy
lay agape
exhausted and satiated
with hate.
From birth to death
feeding upon more
than just the obvious pile,
bodies strewn in its feast
its mere presence,
a subtle suckle
on the teat of the world
poisoning her very bosom,
melting her away
from existence
in a warming of her globe,
how exposed
a broken shell…
A broken humanity
This was half spawned from the previously mentioned things and half from the talk of what the actual production of weapons of mass destruction does to our planet. It’s a double blow to every bit of the existence we are barely grasping on to.
I continued to listen, soak up the remainder of the images she thrust forth, and those of the next speaker, the head of Code Pink, and realized that was about all I would retain for the night… I was at capacity until I was able to sort, reflect and channel what I had just taken in.
The car ride home was much different, voices a bit more shrill, still excited but not with undertones of pride for family members or happiness for memories, but instead just below the surface lay outrage, disbelief, disgust, and for me, mostly the empathy for a nation forced into the rubble of what was once their only home, unable to leave or even get medical attention, and the fact that this country is condoning that behavior. I am not sure how people even think this is in the same realm as justified…
And at that moment, my faith in humanity suffered a sudden slip and I found comfort in Alice’s words from a poem I had read only earlier that day…
Earth
Mother
will win
in the
end
absorb
us casually
&
grow
perfect
creations
from
our
mistakes
-Alice Walker A Poem Traveled Down My Arm
