An unexpected and devastating thing happens.
Like in that sappy video on the benefits of sunscreen: you receive a call at 7.32pm on a regular Tuesday night, and the news displaces all the rest in your life. Like a nasty gas, it permeates all corners of your existence. So much so that nothing else seems appropriate to think about or to direct your energy into.
That thing is now here, it is large and frightening, hard to look at, and it constantly demands your attention.
This was us last week.
And at times it felt (and still does) impossible to endure.
But in parallel with the thing that happened, there was also NYI — a 2-week linguistics and cultural studies School that I’ve been part of since 2010.
And the School (professors Polly Gannon and Leah Lowe specifically) offered me two poems, that are in conversation with one another.
And the poems have been a great deal of support for me.
And maybe somebody else out there needs to see them as well. They are at the end of this letter.
P.S. Last night, scrolling through the Facebook feed, staring bluntly at the screen, I came across two photographs in a post about someone’s mother, who passed away at 95. The first picture was a black and white portrait of a young lady, standing up straight, with her cheeks blushing, her lips in a charming smile, and her eyes full of eagerness and mischievous curiosity. The second, recent photo portrayed a elderly woman, very small and fragile, very frail, with a kind gentle face and short grey hair. It was the same person.
Struck by the visual contrast, I spend a long time switching between the two photographs offered to me by Facebook algorithm.
I will be a similar woman one day, perhaps. Not guaranteed. But now I am not her. Most definitely, I look more alike with the first black and white portrait.
It is not quite clear to me, what to make out of this observation. It has been living with me for about 15 hours so far.
I put a winter jacket and go for a walk around Astoria. The sun is shinning very bright against the sharp blue sky.
I listen to ‘I am the Spring’ by Morcheeba.
To the Young Who Want to Die
by Gwendolyn Brooks
Sit down. Inhale. Exhale.
The gun will wait. The lake will wait.
The tall gall in the small seductive vial
will wait will wait:
will wait a week: will wait through April.
You do not have to die this certain day.
Death will abide, will pamper your postponement.
I assure you death will wait. Death has
a lot of time. Death can
attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is
just down the street; is most obliging neighbor;
can meet you any moment.
You need not die today.
Stay here–through pout or pain or peskyness.
Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.
Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.
Sorrow Is Not My Name
by Ross Gay
—after Gwendolyn Brooks
No matter the pull toward brink. No
matter the florid, deep sleep awaits.
There is a time for everything. Look,
just this morning a vulture
nodded his red, grizzled head at me,
and I looked at him, admiring
the sickle of his beak.
Then the wind kicked up, and,
after arranging that good suit of feathers
he up and took off.
Just like that. And to boot,
there are, on this planet alone, something like two
million naturally occurring sweet things,
some with names so generous as to kick
the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon,
stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks
at the market. Think of that. The long night,
the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me
on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah.
But look; my niece is running through a field
calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel
and at the end of my block is a basketball court.
I remember. My color's green. I'm spring.
—for Walter Aikens
Dinara
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