This Connection of Everyone with Lungs (3 page)

I speak of the weight of the alien planet.

And I speak of the benefits of swaddling sleeping babies.

Beloveds, all our theories and generations came together today in order to find the optimum way of lacing shoes. The bow tie pattern is the most efficient.

I want to tie everything up when I speak of yous.

I want to tie it all up and tie up the world in an attempt to understand the swirls of patterns.

But there is no efficient way.

The news refreshes every few minutes on the computer screen and on the television screen. The stories move from front to back and then off the page and then perhaps forward again in a motion that I can’t predict but I suspect is not telling the necessary truths.

I can’t predict our time together either. Or why we like each other like we do.

I have no idea when our bodies will feel very good to one of us or to all of us together or to none of us.

The drive to press against one another that is there at moments and then gone at others.

The drive to press up against others in the same way.

December 8, 2002

Beloveds, those astronauts on the space station began their trip home a few days ago and sent ahead of them images of the earth from space.

In space, the earth is a firm circle of atmosphere and the ocean and the land exist in equilibrium. The forces of nature are in the blue and the white and the green.

All is quiet.

All the machinery, all the art is in the quiet.

Something in me jumps when I see these images, jumps toward comfort and my mind settles.

This, I think, is one of the most powerful images in our time of powers.

Perhaps it isn’t lovers in our beds that matter, perhaps it is the earth.

Not the specific in our bed at night but the globe in our mind, a globe that we didn’t see really until the twentieth century, with all its technologies and variations on the mirror.

Beloveds, when we first moved to this island in the middle of the Pacific I took comfort from a postcard of the islands seen from space that I bought in a store in Waik
k
. There was no detail of the buildings of Waik
k
in the islands seen from space. No signs of the brackish Ala Wai that surrounds Waik
k
. Everything looked pristine and sparkled from space. All the machinery, all the art was in the pristine sparkle of the ocean and its kindness to land. The ocean was calm.

Beloveds, this poem is an attempt to speak with the calmness of the world seen from space and to forget the details.

This is an attempt to speak of clouds that appear in endless and beautiful patterns on the surface of the earth and that we see from beneath, out the window from our bed as we lie there in the morning enjoying the touch of each other’s bodies.

This is an attempt to speak in praise of the firm touch of yours hands on my breast at night and its comfort to me.

An attempt to celebrate the moments late at night when yous wake up with kindness.

An attempt to speak away.

And when I say this what I mean is that I am attempting to speak to yous of these things in order to get out of our bed in the morning in the face of all that happened and is yet to happen, the spinning earth, the gathering forces of some sort of destruction that is endless and happens over and over, each detail more horrific, each time more people hurt, each way worse and worse and yet each conflict with its own specific history, many of them histories that we allowed to be formed while we enjoyed the touch of each others in the night.

But the more I look at the pattern of the clouds from our bed in the morning, the more it seems the world is spinning in some way that I can’t understand.

Oh this endless twentieth century.

Oh endless.

Oh century.

Oh when will it end.

In recent days, I hear rumors that ships are being fueled and then are slipping out of port slowly at night.

I hear rumors from mothers in the street talking to other mothers.

I hear rumors from lovers in line at the grocery talking among themselves.

I hear rumors from friends at parties.

I hear rumors of ships refueling and of ships slipping out of port while we sleep in our bed, even as I can’t see them in the news.

In the news I learn that Iraq is ready for war but most people there are too busy to notice the refueling of ships here in my corner of the world and their beginning of that long journey to their corner of the world.

Even as I can’t see the refueling of ships I see ten killed in the Bureij refugee camp by shells from Israeli tanks on Thursday and then one more killed in Gaza on Sunday and then five in east Nepal by a bomb that might have been set by Maoists and then one hundred and twenty in Monoko-Zohi by various means because of civil war.

Beloveds, how can we understand it at all?

Oh how can the patterns stop.

All I know is that I couldn’t get out of bed anymore at all without yous in my life.

And I know that my ties with yous are not unique.

That each of those one hundred and thirty-six people dead by politics’ human hands over the weekend had numerous people who felt the same way about them.

Chances are that each of those one hundred and thirty-six people dead by politics’ human hands had lovers like I have yous who slipped yours hands between their thighs and who thought when their lovers did this that this is all that matters in the world yet still someone somewhere tells ships to refuel and then to slip out of port in the night.

Chances are that each of those one hundred and thirty-six people dead by politics’ human hands had parents and children with ties so deep that those parents and children feel fractured now, one or two days later, immersed in a pain that has an analogy only to the intensity of pleasure.

Chances are that each of those one hundred and thirty-six people dead by politics’ human hands had pets and plants that need watering. Had food to make and food to eat. Had things to read and notes to write. Had enough or had too little. Had beautiful parts and yet also had scars and rough patches of skin. Had desire and had impotence. Had meannesses, petty and otherwise. Had moments of kindness. Were nurtured for years by someone who was so devoted to them that they sacrificed huge parts of themselves to this nurturing and who today feel this loss of what they nurtured so intensely as to find their world completely meaningless today and will for some time after today.

And yet still someone somewhere tells ships to refuel and then to slip out of port in the night.

And it doesn’t even end there.

The Greenland glaciers and Arctic Sea ice melt at unprecedented levels and still a ship fuels up and slips out of port.

Winona Ryder has thirty prescriptions for downers from twenty different doctors and still a ship fuels up and slips out of port.

Marc Anthony and Dayanara Torres renew their vows in Puerto Rico and still a ship fuels up and slips out of port.

Light and aromatherapy might help treat dementia, a patient sues a surgeon who left in the middle of surgery to pay his bills, cruise passengers continue to have diarrhea and nausea and yet continue to go on cruises, fires burn in Edinburgh, Hussein apologizes for invading Kuwait, United Airlines continues to lose eight million a day, Mars might have been a cold, dry planet when it was first formed, the Cheeky Girls knock Eminem off the charts, and still a ship fuels up and slips out of port.

January 13, 2003

Beloveds, I haven’t been able to write for days.

I’ve just been watching.

Days ago North Korea unsealed its nuclear weapons reactors.

Days ago troops were moved into various positions. Gathered at various borders.

I traveled around the East Coast of the American continent hoping it would never begin but watching it begin at the same time.

We did not speak about it.

We talked on the phone from various locations and we used soft voices and spoke of loneliness and being apart and difficulties in sleeping and the coldness of our beds at night and then went on about our days and listed in great detail all its mundane troubles—missing staplers, cars driving too fast, endless snow, difficulties in getting fresh vegetables in the neighborhood—and we did not speak about it.