I overhear many conversations about fathers, mothers, children. Illness, love, fragility, death. And how sad it is that we think our tears will burden someone else’s. So we hold it all in.
We censor our own pain with fear and carefulness. And we become afraid of it.
Round and round we go.
A message pings up from Al on Saturday. He sends this from a forest on the outskirts of Berlin:
saw some hooded crows yesterday and was pretty cool. They were scrapping with each other in mid air and pretty busy up to things I didn’t really understand because I’m not a crow
Have you also noticed how the birds are louder lately? And how the wind keeps changing direction?
*
When I finally make it outside, there’s a quiet gentleness in place of the usual hurried blankness and jostling.
People helping each other at the bottleneck of the bus doors. Bags. Buddies. Buggies. Directions offered.
I overhear a familiar phone call (again) about which shop has the latest deals. The caller says to their friend, “and if you can’t make it out that way, I can pick it up for you, ok?”.
*
Shaun thinks my niece’s drawing looks like a rainbow wig. I’m using my last mouthful of porridge as glue for the first time. We laugh that mould is just more evidence of what’s still alive.
We chat about language. About the different ways in which people ask “what did you do on/at weekend?” in place of “how was your weekend?”. How these small subtleties can signal who’s ‘native’ and who’s not.
*
In his home city, the bus companies have started putting stickers over the Hebrew language option. I felt a tingling in my feet as Shaun spoke about this. About how disturbed he felt the first time he saw this. And how he rarely hears Hebrew spoken outside these days.
He says:
that’s how hate works – all the attention goes into annihilating the people.
*
I think of the chip on my shoulder I’ve been polishing smooth out of my sightline over the years.
How I noticed again lately that its chippy hairline crack is still there, rivering into deeper wounds. I’ve noticed the ways the fearful surround-sounds have seeped inside me, thickening the water, thinning the air inside, straining a paranoid breath.
Outside, it’s raining again.
My impulses are a bit more impatient lately. My tenser neck and pacing around is the first sign from my body whispering: I don’t like this, come closer please.
*
⭕ A wren reminds me of my deal with the moon on Friday:
to not let the ugliness of my pain curdle with a moral sanctimony so ugly that it tarnishes truth. Truth spiked with so much salt that it scolds my wound and yours too.
*
It’s (a) shame: the pull to hide from what we don’t want to or can’t face. And all we end up doing is amplifying the ways it hurts.
Lauryn’s painting of a moonlit landscape returns. Memories seep back to conversations of our ancestors:
Perhaps we can only exist in the nighttime?
Away from the watch
Of those who gave us the names we have now?
The ones who severed our roots in the daylight
Do you feel the shaking in your bones too?
It’s still in our bodies… somewhere…
The water runs deep, doesn’t it?
Another bus passes the window on my side of the world. It’s not rush hour and it’s full.
I wonder if this is because buses are the more affordable option in London these days?
And what are the ways that *scarcity* might breed *scared-cities*?
As we say bye-for-now, we tell each other how grateful we are to have each other. And that we’re alive and living.
I make a note of one of Shaun’s many treasures about language:
In English, we might say “I dreamt *about* you”. And apparently in Spanish, people say instead – Soñé contigo – I dreamt *with* you.
Help(ful)?
How does language form and re-form to embody our histories yet to be lived?
“Reform”
Also known (/noun) as:
改革 [Goi2gaak3]
改 Goi2 : to remedy, transform
革 Gaak2 : a critical illness
I want *re-form* too. But not at the cost of our humanity.
Who gets to claim and reform language and meaning?
Who gets to create the words, sounds and images that dance with our eyeballs and eardrums?
If it were not imagined
It could not be made
Therefore imagination
Must not be afraid
– Lemn Sissay
So hide if we must. Cry when we need to.
But let’s not surrender our imagination to despair.
“Yi Dai Goo, how windy is windy?” – Niece, 8 years aged
How was your weekend?
I began writing this after my tiếng việt teacher instructed us to take 5 minutes to write 3 sentences about our weekend. And to challenge ourselves to write more if we can – especially if we don’t have the words yet.
Because she’s here to help us.
Cảm ơn chi. Chúng ta sống đủ lâu để gặp được nhau. Và đó chẳng phải là một điều rất kỳ diệu hay sao?
Thank you sister. We live long enough to meet each other. And isn’t that a miracle?
*
What would happen if our gaze was to meet those small cracks that opens up 5 minutes with another stranger?
Maybe it’s too risky to try anything these days?
But this I know to be true:
That the hate we fear so much, that eats and feeds our a-tension: it’s not listening anyway.
If it was, it’d know that tomorrow ain’t promised to any of us.
So we may as well do what we do x
🎵 Song 🎵
We are boat people, building rivers across open skies
