I believe in my dreams

Inspired by my meditations today, the tarot cards I pulled, journal prompts, and the Silk and Sonder daily ritual: I thought of MLK, and this day to honor his life. he believed in his dreams and fought for a better world. I dream of a world without violence, without hate. I dream of leaving the world better than I found it, even if only in my little corner. I dream of creation, I dream of making art and inspiring others. Writing, drawing , cross stitch, piano, guitar, painting, oil pastels…all the art I used to practice and create but have let slip. I dream of peace. I dream of being a force for good, for love. I dream of being confident and fearless. I dream that these dreams will come true and I’ll live a rich and meaningful life. I dream for others to be inspired, too, and live their dreams. For all of us to be happy. To believe in our dreams and make them happen, together.

Read Full Post »

the american dream

I don’t know about you, but I’m growing tired of paying my dues

Living a dream, someone else’s dream
Sometimes it feels like a nightmare

Let me out of this hamster wheel because I didn’t agree to this

This isn’t what I signed up for

Living my life thinking,
I’m halfway there

Just a few days left and I won’t have to come back
For another day

Just a few more days and then I’ll have to go back

And do it all again

See this was someone else’s idea of what life’s all about

I don’t care to keep up appearances

I don’t care if I have the best

I don’t even care if you think I’m white trash

I just want to be happy

I just want to feel sane

I just want to leave this race

I didn’t sign up to go this pace

I’m tired of measuring my life by how many days I have left

Until I can catch my breath

Until I’ll feel like I’m drowning again

See, I had dreams

I have my dreams

But nothing really seems to matter anymore

When I’m living my life just trying to get by

And I can’t even remember what day it is

Or how old I am

Or who I am

I’m tired of living like this

I just want to live at my own pace, say fuck this race

I just want to be happy

And live for me

Read Full Post »

The Great Grief: How To Cope with Losing Our World | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community

I can so relate to this. I don’t think my grief will ever end. The destruction will have to stop first, and I just don’t see it happening. I experience this grief, and it breaks me down and eats me up. And I feel so alone because there are few, if any, in close proximity to me that experience this grief to the depths that I do. Community is missing. Trust is missing. Collective, effective action is missing. I grieve for it all. I grieve for the destruction. I grief for the pain and suffering we cause animals and all of our victims. But what good does this grief do?

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/05/14/great-grief-how-cope-losing-our-world

Read Full Post »

value

What is one life?

How do you measure the worth of one animal, one plant, one life that is not human?
How do you determine if the life is worth saving or letting go? Actively destroying?
How do you measure the value of life in a culture of violence and death?

It’s not going to stop.

The answers are so simple, yet everything would change.
This culture of destruction can’t allow that.

There are enough of us who can’t stand it anymore,
we could change everything if we got organized.
But we are no different from the death culture.
Our petty disagreements keep us from having our shit together.

“Together we stand, divided we fall.”

And we fall, and fall, and fall.

It’s not going to stop.

Things used to be so different, life wasn’t about wealth.
Christianity, white dogma, shifted the course of everything.
Killed the innocent and called it progress.
Set a precedent for centuries to come.

It’s not going to stop.

Going to sleep, struggling to wake up and stop the emotional abuse in that dream, a reminder of the past.
Waking up with sore teeth and jaw, wanting nothing more than to be held.

It’s not going to stop.

Sleeping, dreaming of being an abused animal running from its abuser, heart pounding with fear.
There’s no place to hide.

It’s not going to stop.

Feeling a fear, pain, terror, so deep that all you can dream about is being held close,
maybe it’ll lessen the pain.

It’s not going to stop.

What is one human life?

Rich or poor, black or white, man or women, young or old, healthy or ill.
Depends on who you ask.

Tormented souls, sick minds deciding they can’t stand it anymore.

It’s not going to stop.

One more black man killed by the police.

It’s not going to stop.

One more woman raped by someone she knows, someone she loves.

It’s not going to stop.

One more animal mercilessly tortured, abused, neglected,
simply because it doesn’t have the voice, the size, the ability to fight back.

It’s not going to stop.

Prairie dogs, poisoned to death of the name of building a mall.

It’s not going to stop.

One more child traumatized for life.

It’s not going to stop.

One more (woman) abused at the hands of a (man).

It’s not going to stop.

One more person hungry for attention acts in a rage and puts the fear of an unholy god into everyone in his presence.

It’s not going to stop.

One more species gone extinct in the name of human “progress”.

It’s not going to stop.

One more war for resources in the name of “freedom” and “democracy”.

It’s not going to stop.

In the name of a holy god that I want to exist,
her love and sanity would put an end to this madness.

It’s not going to stop.

We can make it stop, but we are too afraid, too disorganized, too apathetic, too beat down, too privileged, too fucking stupid.

So it’s not going to stop.

It’s not going to stop
It’s not going to stop
It’s not going to stop

What is the collective value of human life that perpetuates a culture of violence and death?

What is the value of life without the living?

Until we can see the truth for what it is, until we realize that life gives life,
it’s not going to stop.

Read Full Post »

Castle Rock Prairie Dogs

Check out this page:
https://www.facebook.com/savethecastlerockmallprairiedogs

Share it. If you are in the area, go there. Bear witness. Take pictures. Document everything. Cover those holes with your body.

The Castle Rock prairie dogs are being killed. Why? For a fucking shopping mall. For consumerism. For money. To fill a void that we cannot fill with more shit.

This isn’t right. We need to make it stop.

Read Full Post »

on trying

I was doing alright today.  Alright enough.  Haven’t slept as much as I should have the past couple of nights, including getting up early today for a CPR/FA refresher.  Not sure it was technically a refresher, but whatever.  I’ve taken it before.  So considering my lack of sleep I was doing okay.  Some stresses piled on, thinking of things I want to work on (activism related) and the like.  But I got a buzz from it.  So all was well…my mind was racing with ideas.  One thing was a bit of a blow for me, but I can’t really talk about it.  I just have some decisions to make and I’m not really sure what to do.  And I won’t lie, I could really use some feedback but I’m not getting any.  I know some people are overwhelmed for their own reasons, and I can understand that.  But damn…where is everyone else?  Anyway…

My dude and I had our appointment tonight.  That’s when my mood took a nose dive.  Got to talking about some things that have been eating at me lately and that was all it took.  The temporary “escape” was nice. At least the holidays were good for that I guess.  The family time was great, too, don’t get me wrong.  Holidays just aren’t the same anymore.  I’m getting old, the magic is fading out of everything.  I hate it.  But that’s aging.

Speaking of aging.  Our therapist asked me, what seemed like out of the blue, how my meds were going.  I guess it wasn’t out of the blue, but it caught me by surprise a bit.  I’m not taking meds (for mood issues anyway).  Her and I went back and forth a bit, her gently nudging me in that direction, or at least reminding me it was an option.  And me saying I react badly to just about every antidepressant I’ve ever been put on.  Especially Wellbutrin, which she was surprised by since that’s supposedly one of the more gentle ones.

But here’s the thing.  I realized when I was on it (perhaps from the med info I got from the pharmacy?) that Uniphyl (theophylline) and Wellbutrin interact.  The psychiatrist from Grand Valley who put me on Wellbutrin knew that I was on Uniphyl.  He went out of his way to mention it, saying “they’re still putting people on theophylline?”, saying that he too had asthma and had been on it when he was younger.  So yeah, he knew.  I looked it up again tonight to see how severe the interaction was and if that could have anything to do with why I didn’t tolerate the Wellbutrin…could be.  The interaction is supposedly “severe”.  So yeah.  The psychiatrist (can’t remember his name) who worked at Grand Valley 2008-2009, who may well still be there, was a fucking dumbass.

But I digress.  In the conversation with the therapist tonight, I tried to explain to her that I’ve never been happy.  Not to have a pity party, but it’s just the truth.  I’ve never felt that “happy” was something I was physically capable of.  I’ve had my moments of joy, peace, and all that awesomeness, but a steady state of contentment…no.  Not that I don’t have reason, because I do.  That makes me feel even more broken, that I can’t be happy when I have so much to be happy for.  I’m fortunate in many ways.  All I can say is this is how I’m built, and also that I feel things deeply.  Other than those two things, I don’t know what my excuse is.  I tried to explain to her my upbringing, my family history, the kind of talk I’ve heard growing up, my experiences.  I tried to explain that a certain level of this “unhappiness” is “normal” for me, comfortable, baseline…you get the point.  And she said she understood, but what if it could be “better” than it is now?  I just can’t imagine that.  It sounds nice, but I’m not sure I’m meant for that.  And could a drug really fix it anyway?  Could a drug really make me feel less pain in response to everything that’s falling apart in the world?  Probably not…and I think I’m okay with that.  I don’t want to be cool with what’s happening, what we’re doing to the planet.  But I can tell you one thing: if depression, or whatever the fuck physically exhausted and practically incapacitated me a few weeks ago became a regular issue, I wouldn’t hesitate to take something.  I can’t live like that.  And I won’t lie, part of me has a bad feeling more days like that are ahead.

The therapist brought up a great point for someone who has been talking to us roughly every month to every couple of months for almost a year.  Something I already knew and have probably even admitted but am not really ready to come to grips with.  This keeps getting worse.  It’s not getting better, and not really even staying stable.  It’s getting worse.

I’ve been striving to get more involved in the activist community again lately, though I don’t want to overdo myself.  She was really surprised to hear I’m doing this given everything else I’m already stressed about.  Vet bills.  My job.  Possibly working full time if shifts get juggled around the way I hope.  Debating grad school.  Relationship stuff.  Some other things that will go unnamed.  Just my mood in general.  Throwing activism on top of it seems like a, forgive the term, crazy idea.

I don’t know how to explain what seems counterintuitive.  The best explanation I can give is this: my life feels increasingly pointless lately.  I feel like I’m wandering aimlessly trying to find my way, but no matter where I look and what I think I can do, nothing looks right.  None of it seems like it will amount to anything.  I need to do something that might outlast me.  All I can do is try.  I want to believe I will do something worthwhile.  I want to make it happen.  It’s just that when I look at everything that’s wrong, it seems like there is not a damn thing I can do to make it right.

There’s also the community aspect of activism, and I brought that up, too.  I need community.  I need friends outside of my marriage.  Please don’t think I’m not grateful for my husband, because I’m incredibly grateful.  He is my rock and I don’t even want to imagine what my life would be without him.  But he can’t be my everything.  He shouldn’t be.  That’s not fair to him, and it’s also not healthy.  But I will be honest, I don’t have a lot of friends outside of my marriage.  I’m kind of a home body, I don’t have much money to go out except an occasional coffee.  And unfortunately most of the people I’d like to or already do hang out with prefer going somewhere than just hanging out together at our homes.  I have people I talk to, but not much of anyone I’m close with.  Part of that seems to be boundaries set in place by them, and some by me.  I have some serious trust issues and have been fucked over a lot, so I’m very nervous about people.  I’ve been told I’m “hard to read”, and maybe that’s intentional.  Maybe it’s me trying to read other people and not believing that I can actually trust them.  I’ve been wrong enough in that arena and don’t want to be wrong anymore.  So it’s better not to trust.

I’ve been reaching out more to people that are struggling.  I did that already anyway, but I’m really trying to make a point of it lately.  Whatever their struggles, they should feel supported.  They should know someone cares.  I know all too well what it’s like to be falling apart and to feel like people don’t care.  In spite of my marriage and my job, I understand feeling isolated.  Maybe not in the same way other people do, but I do understand intense loneliness.  Especially lately.  You could say maybe I’m being a bit selfish by reaching out to others who are struggling because I don’t want to be alone any more than I want them to be alone.  But really, I just don’t ever, ever want anyone to feel that no one cares.  I don’t want anyone in crisis or on the verge of one to feel like they tried to let others know they needed help and no one listened.  I don’t want anyone to feel like death is preferable to life because they have nothing and no one to live for.  We’re supposed to be here for each other…we’re a communal species.  If we don’t have each other, what the fuck do we have?

I’m not gonna lie friends…the future scares the hell out of me.  Nothing is permanent.  And let’s be real, things aren’t getting any better in the world.  It’s a terrifying place to live, really.  We are a scary fucking species.  And everything that’s beautiful continues to disappear because of us.  There are days I am more “numb” to this reality, and there are days it eats me alive.  The number of days that are the latter increase as I age.  And the pain becomes more intense.  Not just emotional pain but physical, too.  I think, if I’m only 28 now, what will it be like in 10, 20, 50 years?  I can’t really imagine that, and I don’t want to either.  I can’t even map out what the next five god damn years are going to look like, least of all anything further out.

This is why I reach out.  Because I know other people feel this way.  I know at least a couple.  And if I know just a couple, there has to be more.  We have to support each other.  But sometimes, a lot of the time, that doesn’t even seem to happen.  I just don’t know anymore.  What I do know is that I just want the pain to stop.  All of it.

Read Full Post »

Drifter

By god girl, you’ve been drinking.  Don’t even try to start a conversation with anyone, they will think you’re mad.

And so, it goes.

 

Drifting through life aimlessly.

Where to go, what to do?

It doesn’t matter what we choose, nothing really matters.

The end result is always the same, beings attempting to adjust to a sick society.

Go to work, be an advocate, try to be a light to those who can’t see any.

Truth is, I can’t see it either.  I try.

Can’t be good for others if I’m no good for me.

But how can I be good for me when everything, everywhere, is falling apart?

 

Screaming silently, out loud, to an audience that isn’t watching, isn’t listening, is too busy looking and listening everywhere but here and now.

Confiding in a few, only to learn they never cared about you.

Reaching out to a few, only so they can slap the outstretched hand.

Try so hard to save a few, only to learn they are suffering from the same madness that eats away at you.

Life got to them quicker.

In an instant, I could be in their shoes.  Life happens that fast.

The line between us and them, me and you, genius and madness, so dangerously fine.

 

Better reach out before it’s too late.

Better get on our feet before time has run out.

Better listen up, open our eyes, see with our hearts.

Better be present right here and right now, before our candle blows out.

Better be the light for others, the light you wish others were for you.

 

Fuck those who don’t listen, who don’t care, who spit on you, who make you regret ever being human enough to want to give humanity a chance.

Fuck humanity.

 

Shit’s turning me hard in all the wrong ways, my fuse is running out.

Shit’s turning me even softer in all the ways I need to be tough.

It destroys me more every day.

All I want is for the pain to go away.

 

Read Full Post »

Snow Leopard

I have tried to find this piece, Snow Leopard, independent of the compilation I originally found it in.  The compilation itself is fucking awesome, but this piece especially spoke to me.  Perhaps Ben personally knows the person who wrote it and that’s why I can’t find it anywhere.  For that reason, I copied it here.  It’s so awesome, so beautiful, so tragic, and yet so hopeful, it’s worth sharing on it’s own.

It’s from the compilation Mental Health and Civilization, which can be downloaded here: http://dgrnewsservice.org/2013/01/11/mental-health-civilization-a-compilation/

 

“Snow Leopard” by Mary LA

She wears a long-sleeved sweatshirt to work, despite the stuffiness
indoors. All day she stands at the counter and reminds herself to smile
when customers and managers approach. The air-con buzzing right behind
her, the windows unopened, the electronic ringing of the shopfront
door.
Her smile wobbles as if it has taken on a life of its own.
‘You look like a scared rabbit,’ says one woman, and Erzule
takes a deep breath and looks down at the floor as she packages up the
order. She checks the script again: double-checks the dosage for hyperactive
children. The bearded man next in line complains that Viagra
does not work for him. He says he needs sex to take his mind off things
and he stares at her breasts, not meeting her enquiring look, just straing
at her as if she is in his mind, swallowed up whole. ‘Like anyone else, I
need it,’ he says, tongue thick in his mouth, as if any encounter is better
as ‘it’, the right to dehumanised coupling in some darkened hotel
room.. She calls the pharmacist to reason with him, explains she is
only an assistant. As the Viagra customer moves away, she shivers with
fear or repugnance. A woman comes in looking for ant poison she can
use indoors and out in the garden. ‘Too many insects,’ she says, ‘vermin
underfoot everywhere I turn, filthy creepycrawlies that have no right
to breed.’
There is another customer who jumps the queue, holding out
arms fiery and corruscated with eczema, complaining of stress, the
anxiety that causes her skin to erupt and blister each time she watches
news reports on the television. She has tried every remedy on the
market and nothing works. A couple comes in with a crying baby and
demands child-safe tranquillisers. Teenagers buy cough mixture with
what might be forged prescriptions, a pair of youngsters entwined but
with no expression in their eyes, no tenderness or affection.
When she breaks for lunch and goes out into the street, there
are shouts and high-pitched shrilling, police and ambulance sirens
right there at the corner, an accident between a cyclist and a Volvo
sedan. Deafening noise of sirens, voyeurs gathering in groups to look
at the cracked windscreen and hoping for news of ghoulish death, suffering,
anything to relieve the monotony. The cyclist has been taken to
hospital, says a gaunt angry woman, the driver of the Volvo has been arrested. An elderly pedestrian was injured too, but nobody pays much
attention to elderly pedestrians in the city.
Vermin to the authorities. Dead rats, dead pigeons, the bodies of teenagers
who have overdosed in the alley behind the shopping mall. All
of it garbage. Tasteless slices of pizza thrown into the gutters, a strangled
cat flung thrown over a brick wall. Everywhere she looks, there is
waste and destruction.
This society is unlivable, she thinks, and flinches as if she has
said something too real and too close to the truth.
All afternoon there are more customers lining up for medications
and palliatives, complaining of unwellness, the pervasive depression,
sadness and apathy. Will the new pills enable me to go on without
hope? asks a slender woman with fingernails bitten to the quick. There
are no answers, but the questions haunt Erzule. It has begun to rain and
the streets are dark outside the spotlit shop windows. The customers
keep coming in, spluttering and grey with pain, holding out prescriptions,
holding out the cash for generic medicines. Sometimes Erzule
detects some simmering rage, some suppressed fury, but then she hands
across the sedatives and the flicker of anger has vanished. What would
it be like to feel well in this city? she wonders. To wake up and feel well
enough to want a changed life in a different kind of world? She walks
home along the bridge over the river and grieves at the sight of waterborne
debris, the sodden packing cases, milk cartons and mattresses,
the bloated corpse of a large dog, the sour odours rising from the murky
water. Once there would have been forests here and tall reeds for nesting
birds, a swift clean river flowing south to the ocean. Now there is a
cesspool.
In the basement flat with rent paid two months in advance,
she prises open a small aperture of window. The noise of traffic from
the freeways will keep her awake, but the stale air is unbearable. She
goes to the bathroom cabinet and takes out her bandages and a razor
blades. In the evenings she has begun cutting herself again, letting the
red blood flow so that she can stay calm.
Her mother rings from El Salvador at 8pm each evening. She
takes the call at the kitchen table, hoping her voice will sound calm
enough to fool her mother. Blood pools onto the table, dark slow pools
of blood that shine in the lamplight, as her mother tells Erzule the family
news. Her brother in Chicago has been imprisoned again for dealing
in drugs. Her uncle has poisoned himself by eating contaminated fish
in old tin cans. The army is beating up students who joined the rioting
workers outside the foreign-owned factories. The tap water has been running rust-red all week, nobody dares drink without boiling it first.
Neighbours get up before dawn to queue at the market, but dried beans
are the only food in abundance.
‘We cannot go on like this,’ says Erzule’s mother, a phrase she
has used all her life. But she goes on all the same.
‘You have your papers now,’ her mother tells Erzule. ‘There is
nothing to worry about. Don’t send money until you are made permanent
staff. Are you eating properly? Who helps comb and plait your
hair each week?’
When she puts down the phone, there is blood all over the
table, dripping onto the floor. Erzule wonders if she is going mad, the
way so many immigrants go mad when they finally get a toehold in the
New World. Back at home life is so much harder, the desperation and
uncertainty. Her uncle stockpiling cans of imported food in the cellar,
corrugated drums of petrol hidden behind the bedroom partitions. The
stinging air gritty with pollution, the rumours of toxic dumping, the
rubbish pits burning through the night. Armoured vehicles driving in
convoy through the streets, the plazas barricaded. The forests are being
cleared in the valleys around the city, a pall of smoke rising from
the ravaged clearings, mudslides into the stagnant river, the land gutted
and broken. Young boys go out to scour through the undergrowth,
hoping to capture exotic birds, iguanas, toads and snakes for export as
novelty pets to the rich foreigners with their gilded cages and aquariums
in skyrise apartments.
And she is the lucky one, able to live in a wealthier country,
able to walk home without passing through armed checkpoints, not
waking to the noise of gunfire at night. Here the war is invisible, like
internalised conflict, a war everyone chooses to ignore. She takes a
clean blade and slices again, going in too deep. The blade hits an artery
and bright scarlet blood gushes all over her sweatshirt. This is bad. No
tourniquet can stop the jet spraying her clothes, the floor, the walls.
A fter several minutes of fumbling with soaking bandages and
towels, feeling the dizziness and knowing she will lose consciousness
soon, she calls for an ambulance.
Coming around groggy, furious at herself, she stares up into the
neon glare of emergency casualty. The nurse is angry with her, telling
her to hold still. Her arm is numb. ‘Are you crazy?’ says the nurse as she
takes Erzule’s blood pressure. ‘To waste other people’s time and money
on your own madness. You could have died if you had not called for
help. It is criminal to damage yourself this way, you owe it to the state
to stay alive and contribute.’ Erzule looks up at the tired worn face of the nurse, the frustration
etched into deep grooves on either side of the mouth. The nurse
reminds her of her aunt who worked with battered women in the shelter,
would end a long day by raging at the women themselves as they
left the safety of the shelter and returned to the men who hurt them.
Women needing money for bread and rent, staying on with brutal men
because that is what their mothers had done, because that was all they
knew. Her aunt who had wanted to help and had found herself helpless.
We age so quickly, thinks Erzule, the masks that stiffen into
place, the habit of defendedness and turning away, turning against ourselves
and one another. We train ourselves not to feel because we cannot
go on enduring the pain and fear. She wishes she could sit down
with this tired woman and have a cup of tea, say things that might
break through the barriers, explain why she needs to cut, why she is
going mad. But the nurse is hurrying, there is another patient waiting,.
Wheeled in, a small white face against the coarse bedsheet, tubes coiled
above an oxygen mask.
A fter the stitches and blood transfusion, Erzule has to talk with
the psychiatrist. A tall greyheaded man with an abstracted manner, as
if he is not really here, is somewhere off by himself, in an easy chair beside
the fire with a detective novel open and his pipe lit. Avuncular and
genial, a man believing himself to be harmless. Clearing his throat as
he reads, amused by the fiction, the unsurprising murder in the vicarage,
the elegant solving of fictional murders, a parallel universe where
everything has a solution for those clever enough to decipher the clues.
More tea, vicar? He has the air of a father confessor, a kindly scientist, a
man who can finish crossword puzzles. Erzule knows immediately that
she will not be able to communicate with him, this white-coated priest
of the psychiatric wards. So many professional and irrelevant questions.
His name tag is partially concealed by a crease in the white
coat. Dr Whar-, perhaps Wharton or Wharburton. To war with Whar,
she thinks, bracing herself. Dr Whodunit, a senior psychiatrist who can
pigeonhole Erzule with clinical definitions. He frowns and makes some
notes, then tells her she may be bipolar, rapid cycling bipolar, treatable
but lifelong. The moods go up and down, he explains, too high and
too low. He muses about the likelihood of previous psychotic episodes.
Does she feel the world is an unsafe place? Does she suspect she is being
followed or watched? Has she ever thought she might have unseen enemies? All the time, doctor, says Erzule, all the time. Paranoia, he says. He will give her medications to take each
evening and assures her she will feel better once the meds kick in. A
counsellor will see her once a week and a community social worker will
be appointed to help her adjust, refashion her lifestyle, learn smarter
techniques of self-care. It will all get better. Life is what you make of
it, he says, that practised crinkly smile. He would pat her shoulder but
does not touch disturbed females in his wards, sets clear boundaries between
the staff and the patients, the sane and orderly versus the insane
and disorderly. Although Dr W does not use the term ‘hysterical’, it
stays with him as he does his rounds. How these sick women spill over
into messy emotional disorder, like cats giving birth to too many kittens,
like shrieking furies that lash out at themselves with knives, the
smashed mirrors in the cloakrooms reflecting only fragments, women
flying along corridors like trapped birds flinging themselves against
sealed windows, the walls of the consulting rooms smeared with pathetic
messages in blood. Bedlam, madness uncontained, avenging
women threatening to burn down the hospital, run out into the streets
and commit murder or worse. Women who seem hellbent on destroying
civilization, all that has been built up over generations, the decency
and morality and prosperity of the civilised nations. Homewreckers, arsonists,
dambusters, bombmakers, all of them lunatics needing restraint
and confinement.
Last week as he had been crossing a recreation room near one of
the locked wards, smiling at the quiet rows of patients watching game
shows on television, an obese and unkempt woman named Sarah had
accosted him and told him she was on a personal mission to destroy the
nuclear family, put an end to the farce of mothers and fathers and twoand-
a-half children. ‘I’d rather we ran free as tribes in the wilderness,
I’d rather we lay down homeless on the dark earth each night listening
to the stars whirling overhead,’ Sarah had shouted at him, her tangled
wiry hair falling over her face, her eyes black with hatred. DrW had
kept his cool and had the woman restrained, then sedated. But the incident
had left him unsteady, reluctant to move around the building
unescorted.
‘It will get better if you take your meds and be sensible, cooperate
with us, be a good girl,’ he says again, already moving on to the
next bed, the next sad but typical case history. Erzule nods, because she
cannot say to him that the madness is out there, a collective cultural
insanity. Nobody escapes the madness out there.
A flashlight in the face. She wakes from a drugged stupor and
watches the night nurse moving between the beds with a handheld torch, fixing the beam so that it catches the patients full-face. Surveillance,
a system of well-intentioned spying. Lie still and fake sleep, keep
your eyes squeezed shut, do not move on pain of death.
Erzule opens her eyes in the half-dark and recalls a school trip
into the mountains, years before, an educational outing to see the new
dam, then to visit the trout hatcheries filled with imported rainbow
trout. Walking along the raised walkways, watching the fish gasping
and threshing together in the hatcheries, shallow pools encased in
mesh. The rose-red and white blooming of ulcers and lesions on the
trout, those dappled flanks dulled and diseased, the damaged scales cascading
into the foul water. She could not move, could not look away. These suffering sentient beings tortured and confined in such appalling
conditions. She could feel her own body memories surfacing, hands
gripping her wrists, the probing between her legs, convulsing with fear
and shame, the certainty she would be killed, condemned, blamed and
driven away from the family home, a disgrace. There is nowhere that
does not hurt in this body that is not her own, is used and tormented by
others.
A new terrible language comes into her mind and she hears it
clearly in the dying throes of the trout: They are suffering as I have suffered
but I am alive to tell the story, I am just standing here and they
are dying. This will never leave her: the agony in her chest when she saw
the trout struggling in vain. How she could not breathe properly, sucking
in fear as if the day had become airless, a refined zone without
enough oxygen, the river somewhere deep down blocked and twisting
above the towering dam wall, the observation viewing stations and the
pillared bridges over the dam, the power thwarted, the life force ebbing
out of the depths. The river too in its death throes, the fish dying in
meshed pens, the humans oblivious.
In an hour or two it will be dawn and they will drug her again.
To go on seems impossible. If she can get to the window, she might be
able to open it and breathe fresh air or at least glimpse the sky, something
to give her courage for the day ahead. She might even find the
courage to leap into the void.
‘Listen to me,’ says the patient in the next bed. All she can make
out is his black hair on the pillow, a young strong voice.
‘Up in the mountains of north Kazakstan there is a snow leopard
crossing a ravine to reach the far slope. A fully grown female leopard
able to spring at her prey from a distance of 25 feet, lithe and agile
and uncompromising. She lives and hunts between the tree line and the
snowline and against a snowy outcrop she is one with her background,
moving out only at dawn and dusk when visibility is poor. At night
she sleeps with her tail curled around her face for warmth. There are
bullet tracks healing on her flanks. She has survived the murder of her
parents, her sisters, her cubs, and right now, just for this moment, she
is indomitable. Lie back and listen to her treading snow, moving in that
stillness, learn from her.
‘Her fur is the colour of smoke spotted with black markings
and she could stand unseen beside you on a slope of mottled screed.
She can outwit all but the most heartless of enemies. Keep your mind
fixed on the survival of the snow leopard, listen to her moving through
the ravine, padding between boulders with her long tail swishing. Keep
watching her. Her survival makes sense, her survival is the key to our
sanity.’
He goes on talking, speaking of allies and conspirators and another
kind of future, a world independent of what crushes us now, but
Erzule has fallen asleep. She sleeps deeply until the day nurses come on
duty and when she wakes the bed is empty. But she is not alone now
and the insanity out there does not matter. The boy in the next bed is
gone, but she knows how to find him. And in her mind’s eye there is
the snow leopard crouching on that rocky outcrop, free and dangerous,
waiting to spring.

 

 

Read Full Post »