5/6/2020
#9
I mourn those I do not know; those who don’t know me at the Texas border, men, women, children. How about those Angelians in my home town or the folks in the Laurels here in Pittsboro. Is there any stranger when grief surrounds us and defines us? Some will aim their fear at Others and still they will grieve deeply and try to gauge their hate to the pain of their loss. In all this struggle we still have only each other. I read the Chatlist to hear voices of caring.
I hear words of hope in the lists of the positive in the Chatlist. I sometimes feel that way, for a moment shoving away my inner most suffering, triggered by these lists. In balance I offer this quote from Judith Butler about our lockdown, our isolation:
“Sequestering enforces both a sense of ambient death and a shared practice of deflection: “Let’s not focus on the negative!” Learning to mourn mass death means marking the loss of someone whose name you do not know, whose language you may not speak, who lives at an unbridgeable distance from where you live. One does not have to know the person lost to affirm that this was a life. What one grieves is the life cut short, the life that should have had a chance to live more, the value that person has carried now in the lives of others, the wound that permanently transforms those who live on. What someone else suffers is not one’s own suffering, but the loss that the stranger endures traverses the personal loss one feels, potentially connecting strangers in grief.” Judith Butler – https://truthout.org/articles/judith-butler-mourning-is-a-political-act-amid-the-pandemic-and-its-disparities/
You are not untouchable to me. The simple generosity of Jim and Jay twice weekly expands the whole world for those who need this food they bring so freely. Their simple action produces such hope. I matter. You matter. If we don’t all matter, no one matters.
Speak. I’m listening.
Please, wear your mask, truly take care while that child inside craves beaches, mobs and mobs of singers and dancers and more than the safety of your closed door. My wish is to see you one day. Across a picnic table and to laugh out loud with you.
Working On Friendly
by brad page
Imperfection rages through this perfect Mind.
Enlightenment chooses they who sit on mountains.
Mountains escaped me somewhere in the foothills.
Oh, Lord, why did you make this Middle Man?
I carpentered and loved in the friendly way.
The hammer rose and fell, beauty came,
Love grasped lust, slid between my fingers.
Then my children woke my magic.
I could only build, not burn down,
Watching the child grow…into his time.
Sister grew to tend and laugh and love ,
Death walks the halls of her hospital.
And bits off her fly down to the morgue.
Those she nursed slowly cooled,
Taking all they were,
All they would be, all they could be.
She gives anew each day,
Her heart struggles not to struggle,
The energy of health necessary
To bring the ill into each future.
Date: Wed, 6 May 2020 15:06:23 -0400
From: Brad Page
Subject: Corona Journal #9