Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.
Dear, oh dear. I’ve been writing for Them. I don’t mean that in some incendiary or offensive way… the writing is about ME! ME! ME! ME! If I cannot have this all to myself here if my thoughts cannot be all my own in this little wood-heated shed with these black lines splitting across the creamy white page then I can have nothing at all. The land doesn’t belong to me and I don’t want it and the thoughts of others don’t belong to me and I don’t want them nor do I want their behaviors or desires or dreams… It’s why I’m walking away from it all. I’ve had enough of my teetering thoughts. Gaza. GAZA! GAZA! That Palestinian-American woman with her rage and her white-American artist friend with her rage by proxy… there’s such sad violence in it all and yes I support their hearts but I can have my thoughts I can feel them and splatter them across the page and feel peace within me while feeling sorry for the violence outside of me that is not my own. And I don’t need to feel it. It isn’t my own. The faraway things are boring holes into my soul. The blooming frost asters in my meadow and the chirping of Blue Jays and Chickadees should carry my thoughts aloft on these early mornings tinged with the smoke of oak. It is recycling day. Every other Thursday. I send my plastic back to the same hell I’ve never seen before and my thoughts do not escape that burning fire. Plastic plastic plastic everywhere. Make your yogurt—stop the plastic! But the milk comes in a plastic jug… Buy the milk in glass! But the dairy farmer selling her grassy milk at the farmer’s market doesn’t use glass. There comes a point the forever oscillating line where I may not wash my hands of dirt but allow them to be dirty.
“It is true: I earn my living
But, believe me, it is only an accident.
Nothing I do entitles me to eat my fill
By chance I was spared. (If my luck leaves me
I am lost)”
(TO POSTERITY; Bertolt Brecht D. 1956)
Yes, yes by chance I was spared. I am a card-carrying embodiment of white shame white guilt white this and white that and that changes nothing I was born in this body provided warmth wrapped in this skin what is choice? What is freedom? I do my best and that will never be good enough. To the world. So I’ll leave it there on my doorstep. By God I will celebrate my immaculate thoughts in the warmth of my skin! I will rejoice! Leave the rage of the oppressed at my door. I need to care for my children. They need my love. And in my love they will learn to love themselves and in their self-love there will be born a place in which they will love the world. They will eat from their table of nourishment and in that nurturing there will be stewardship and in that stewardship all the world will be protected from sins of man.
“Colonizers write about flowers
I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks…”
(Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People are Dying; Noor Hindi 2020)
I will keep my meadow of frost asters and wish that you too could walk through it. Whenever bad news from distant lands reaches me… But I’m saying goodbye to the sadness of the world. I’m saying goodbye to global rage. I’m saying goodbye to globalized thoughts. Wouldn’t you if you had a meadow in bloom? Wouldn’t you if your mornings were perfumed with the smoke of oak instead of bombs? I have my guilt and my purring tabby cat on my lap. And just then I was interrupted by my little A. slowly turning the handle to enter the shed: “Papa! The chickens are out!” And we went to gather them from the road and back into the yard and gave them a bit of grain and fixed the gate and suddenly a great flock of thousands of migrating common grackles descended into our trees the sight and sound an event to behold flying from tree to tree to tree further south until they disappeared. You don’t think I know how lucky I am? I made this life the one I wasn’t born into. You. And who are you, you, you, you, you the silent voice I’ve made up screaming at me inside my head?
“If you’ve ever wondered what you’d have done in times of American Slavery…” began the Palestinian-American, Jenan Matari, “Take a look at whatever you are doing now for Gaza, and know it is exactly what you’d have done in times before…”
What you would have done… The voice in my head. What would you have me do that I’m not doing already? Goodbye global rage. Goodbye globalized thoughts. Goodbye goodbye goodbye.
“They tell me eat and drink. Be glad you have it!
But how can I eat and drink
When my food is snatched from the hungry
And my glass of water belongs to the thirsty?
And yet I eat and drink.
I would gladly be wise,
The old books tell us what wisdom is:
Avoid the strife of the world
Live out your little time
Fearing no one
Using no violence
Returning good for evil—
Not fulfillment of desire but forgetfulness
Passes for wisdom
I can do none of this:
Indeed I live in the dark ages!”
(TO POSTERITY; Bertolt Brecht D. 1956)
Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye global rage. Goodbye globalized thoughts. I have my frosted meadow in aster bloom. I have my daughters and my wife. I’ll avoid the strife. Forgive myself for my luck. Perfumed in oak my thoughts are mine my thoughts are mine my thoughts are mine. Though today, because I feel, my heart is with you Israel. My heart is with you Palestine.
This 1,000 times thank you for this perfect expression
And can I just tell you Paul I couldn't read all of it it was a vast plain of words and I haven't had my coffee yet this morning but the end of it is enough for me.
I have 18,000 friends up on LinkedIn who come from every part of the world and of course every part of the world is speaking out about this issue.
I also married two Israeli men and one of them was named Zion. The name literally meant welcome to Israel. I had a mid East restaurant named Sabra and three cats named Sabra.
I'm engaged now to a man who was actually with the Israeli Olympic team that went to Munich and he left the team came into my life 10 years later. We have all been talking about this and everyone has their own viewpoint.
The thing that matters to me right now is that I have friends over there and Palestine and in Israel who are trying desperately to hold on to animals that are at risk. One of my friends in Palestine has packed up 120 cats to take to safety and for some reason he is being able to do it. Another one is been crying because he had no idea where he was going with the 75 he was taking care of. Aren't these the other victims in this?
So his components also have 400 dogs including several that are handicapped to have been hurt from the incidents they have brought those injuries about. Everyone forgets the animals in this. I don't cuz I'm a rescuer and I've been a rescuer since I was five. It's in my blood.
I want to see a ceasefire and I want to see cooler heads prevail and I want to see some kind of sanity step forward through the dust and the smoke of this.
I talked to my friend in Jordan this morning and she was crying. She said the world is cut in half. I say that it can be righted.
Perhaps if we think of the animals as the common denominator and that my friends in Israel try to get over into Gaza to help the ones who are working so hard there to take care of the cats and dogs there may be a balancing of scales and there may be reason and logic that enters into this.
In any case you inspired me to write all this without a cup of coffee and I give you a lot of credit for that. Have a great day and I think you and I are on the same page. We just need to add another one with the animals in it and think of them too.
🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹