This Connection of Everyone with Lungs (5 page)

I speak of David Letterman’s shingles, which he got from someone else.

Even the Broadway musicians are on strike together.

There is no alone as the Sri Lankan Navy sinks a Tamil Tiger ship and eleven are killed.

There is no alone in the food shortage in North Korea and Bush apologizing to Karzai.

It is an uneventful day overall as we sit here waiting for the news.

The television promises updates on the situation with Iraq on the half hour.

Our apartment is small and is buried between two other apartments, one above and one below.

Beloveds, my desire is to hunker down and lie low, lie with yous in beds and bowers, lie with yous in resistance to the alone, lie with yous night after night.

But the military-industrial complex enters our bed at night.

We sleep with levels of complicity so intense and various that our dreams are of smothering and drowning and of the military outside our door and we find it hard to get up in the morning.

I try to comfort myself with images of exile on this small piece of land in the middle of the large Pacific.

That view from space, this view now that seems so without promise, so empty of hope.

But I know there is no alone anymore here in the middle of the Pacific.

There is no uninhabited tropical island anywhere.

We live, after all, on the gathering isle.

Oh this disrupted center with all its occupied forces.

Oh the thirty Navy and Coast Guard warships docked on the shore of this island.

Oh the eighteen nuclear submarines docked on the shore of this island.

Oh the five destroyers docked on the shore of this island.

Oh the two frigates docked on the shore of this island.

Oh this on the map, off the map feeling.

March 16, 2003

In the last few days I have watched mynas gathering materials for their nests.

Yesterday I saw one pick up and carry off a big clump of dried grass.

And then I saw another struggling with a big piece of napkin at the side of the road.

Such optimism, beloveds, such optimism.

We went to the beach yesterday not in optimism but in avoidance and spoke about the birds around us and their constant singing of small songs, some of them ugly to us and some of them beautiful.

We were just talking because we could.

Because we could spend this time together in the sun and we knew that was something that mattered but as we spoke of birdsong we also spoke of Bush’s summit Sunday with the leaders of Britain, Spain, and Portugal in the Azores, and the prediction that there was a less than 1 percent chance of avoiding war.

When we spoke of birds and their bowers and their habits of nest we also spoke of the Israeli military bulldozer that ran over Rachel Corrie, the mysterious flu that appeared in Hong Kong and had spread by morning to other parts of Asia, Elizabeth Smart’s return, and Zoran Djindjic’s death.

We reclined as we spoke, we reclined and the sand that coated our arms and legs is known for a softness that is distinctive in the islands and the waves were a gentle one to three feet and a soft breeze blew through the ironwoods and we were surrounded by ditches, streams, and wetland areas, which serve as a habitat for endangered waterbird species.

There are other sorts of beauty on this globe, but this sort of beauty is fully realized here.

This sort of beauty cannot get any more beautiful, any more detailed, any more rich or perfect.

But the beach on which we reclined is occupied by the US military so every word we said was shaped by other words, every moment of beauty occupied.

We watched the planes fly overhead from the nearby airbase as we spoke of birds and their bowers and their habits of nest and we were also speaking of rolling start and shock and awe and two hundred and twenty-five thousand American forces and another ninety thousand on the way and twenty-five thousand British forces and one thousand Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps combat and support aircraft in the area.

And because the planes flew overhead when we spoke of the cries of birds our every word was an awkward squawk that meant also AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, UH-60 Black Hawk troop helicopter, M2A3 Bradley fighting vehicle, M1A1 Abrams main battle tank, F/A-16 Hornet fighter/bomber, AV-8B Harrier fighter jet, AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopter and that soon would mean other things also, the names of things still arriving, the B-2 stealth bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base, the B-52 bombers that are now in Britain.

March 17, 2003

We slept soundly during the night, beloveds, and when I woke yous were wrapped around me and I thought it was this that had let me dream of windows and doors opening and light entering, a relief from my recent dreams that have been so full of occupations.

But we wake up and all we hear in the birds’ songs is war.

When the birds sing outside our window they sing of the end of negotiations with the UN, of the Dow soaring on confidence of a short war, of how rebel forces in the Central African Republic have dissolved parliament and suspended the constitution, of the resumption of the trading in oil futures in London after protestors broke into the building and fights broke out on the trading pit.

They sing of how someone makes Natalie Maines apologize for her shame that the president of the United States is from Texas, of seven people, killed in Palestine, of drug-resistant pneumonia that continues to spread, and of the worldwide mourning for Rachel Corrie.

The birds also sing of how celebrities in Los Angeles are getting their manicures and their hair done as they always do.

March 27 and 30, 2003

During the bombing, beloveds, our life goes on as usual.

Oh the gentle pressing of our bodies together upon waking.

Oh the parrots and their squawking.

Oh the soft breeze at five to ten miles per hour.

Oh the harsh sun and the cool shade.

Oh the papaya and yogurt with just a little salt for breakfast.

Oh the cool shower that we take together.

This makes us feel guiltier and more unsure of what to do than ever.

We watch it all happen on television.

We go to protests as they happen.

We write up reports of our protests and send them out to friends who then send them on to friends and we read the reports of others with pleasure and hope.

We count numbers attending and numbers arrested.

This weekend …

one hundred in Sanaa

five hundred in New Delhi

fifty thousand in Athens

ten thousand in Cape Town

twenty-five thousand in Boston

one thousand and five hundred in Chicopee

three thousand in Los Angeles

three thousand in Santiago

one hundred and twenty thousand across Australia

one hundred in Beijing

ten thousand in Edinburgh

ten thousand in Paris

fifty thousand in Berlin

thirty thousand between the cities of Osnabrück and Münster

and then others in Cairo, Amman, Jakarta

in Brussels, in Athens

in San Francisco, New York, and Chicago.

Still a huge sadness overtakes us daily because of our inability to control what goes on in the world in our name.

And we comment on the pleasures of our own lives sardonically to try to take back this sadness, these nightmares that happen in the world while we are sleeping and show up in our dreams, pinning us down to the bed, on our backs squawking.

We say ironic things to each other.

Oh go get your war on we say when one is being too boastful.

Oh sure, we say, oh yeah, we say over and over while watching some general talk about something, as if mocking inarticulate expressions of dissatisfaction from our childhood will save us.

Today, as this war begins, every word we say is caught—every word, whether it is ironic or not, whether it is articulate or not—and we feel it all in the room all day long.

When we speak of Lisa Marie Presley having sex with Michael Jackson we speak of JDAM and JSOW air-to-surface precision bombs.

We speak of the stinger antiaircraft missiles and the massive ordnance air-blast bombs when we speak of SAP AG and the Microsoft RPC hole and the Denial of Service attacks.

When we mumble about whether the mystery disease is a statutory communicable disease or not we can’t keep the words M1A1 Abrams battle tanks, M2A3 Bradley fighting vehicles, M6 Bradley linebackers, and Humvees from stumbling out of our mouths.

When we speak of Robert Blake back in court we speak of GBU laser-guided bombs, of GBU-28 bunker buster bombs.

We speak of Daisy Cutter fifteen-thousand-pound bombs as we speak of both the MK82 five-hundred- and two-thousand-pound bombs and we also speak of thermobaric weapons, Tomahawk/AGM-86 cruise missiles, and Have Nap missiles when we speak of Snoop Dogg’s decision to include in his latest song a message left on his answering machine by Big Jim Bob that taunts Suge Knight.

When we talk about how the Florida nurse died of the smallpox vaccination and how sperm may sniff their way to eggs we talk also of M109A6 Paladin Howitzers and the M270 multiple-launch rocket system.

We get up in the morning and the words “Patriot missile systems,” “the Avengers,” and “the US infantry weapons” tumble out of our mouths before breakfast.

When we marvel at the new one-hundred-billion-dollar theater for Celine’s new show at Caesar’s Palace we marvel also at the maverick air-to-surface missiles, the HARM antiradar missiles, the AIM-120 air-to-air missiles, and the Hellfire air-to-surface missiles.

And it goes on and on all day long and then we go to bed.

In bed, when I stroke the down on yours cheeks, I stroke also the carrier battle group ships, the guided missile cruisers, and the guided missile destroyers.

When I reach for yours waists, I reach for bombers, cargo, helicopters, and special operations.

When I wrap around yours bodies, I wrap around the
USS Abraham Lincoln
, unmanned aerial vehicles, and surveillance.

When I rest my head upon yours breasts, I rest upon the
USS Kitty Hawk
and the
USS Harry S.Truman
and the
USS Theodore Roosevelt
.

Guided missile frigates, attack submarines, oilers, and amphibious transport/dock ships follow us into bed.

Fast combat support ships, landing crafts, air cushioned, all of us with all of that.