This Connection of Everyone with Lungs

by Spahr, Juliana

  Some say thronging Warrior combat vehicles, some say foot soldiers, others call a fleet the most beautiful of sights the dark earth offers.

  Some say that the fairest thing upon the dark earth is a host of antiarmor AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, and others again a fleet of ships.

  Some say that the most beautiful thing upon the black earth is an army of AS90 self-propelled guns, others infantry, still others ships.

  On this dark earth, some say the thing most lovely is the thirty thousand assault troops from Britain today joining the sixty-two thousand from the US mobilized in the past ten days and a further sixty thousand from the US on their way.

  On this black earth, over the coal-black earth, some say all of this and more.

  But I say it’s whatever you love best.

  I say it is the persons you love.

  I say it is those things, whatever they are, that one loves and desires.

  I say it’s what one loves.

  It’s what one loves, the most beautiful is whomever one loves.

  I say it is whatsoever a person loves.

  I say for me it is my beloveds.

  For me naught else, it is my beloveds, it is the loveliest sight.

  I say the sight of the ones you love.

  I say it again, the sight of the ones you love, those you’ve met and those you haven’t.

  I say it again and again.

  Again and again.

  I try to keep saying it to keep making it happen.

  I say it again, the sight of the ones you love, those you’ve met and those you haven’t.

  January 28, 2003

  Yesterday the UN report on weapons inspections was released.

  Today Israel votes and the death toll rises.

  Four have died in clashes in the West Bank town of Jenin.

  Yesterday, three died in an explosion at a Gaza City house.

  Since last Monday US troops have surrounded eighty Afghans and killed eighteen.

  Protests against the French continue in the Ivory Coast.

  Nothing makes any sense today beloveds.

  I wake up to a beautiful, clear day.

  A slight breeze blows off the Pacific.

  It is morning and it is amazing in its simple morningness.

  I leave the house early so I miss the parrots but outside the door I stop to listen to the ugly song of the red-bottomed bulbuls.

  It is so calm here and yet so momentous in the rest of the world.

  Amid ignorant armies and darkling plains, the news has momentarily stopped trying to make sense and the stories appear with a doubleness.

  Israel said the four killed today were armed men and were killed in a series of clashes.

  Palestine claims they were shot in running battles.

  Palestine claims the bomb explosion in Gaza was caused by a missile from an Israeli helicopter.

  Israel claims it was a Palestinian bomb that exploded prematurely.

  In the Ivory Coast some schoolboys sing, “France for the French, Ivory Coast for the Ivorians. Everyone go home. We are xenophobes and so what.”

  Others carry signs that say “Down with France, long live the US” and “No more French, from now on we speak English” and sing “USA, USA, USA” against the French.

  Later today Bush will speak.

  How can we be true to one another with histories of place so deep, so layered we can’t begin to sort through it here in the middle of the Pacific with its own deep unsortable history?

  I left our small apartment that is perched at the side of a dormant volcano that goes miles down to the ocean floor, perched on layer after layer of exploding history.

  It wasn’t just our history of place but the contradiction of the US taking unilateral military action to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction that entered our two small rooms and we just wanted to leave and get on with the day’s mundanenesses—email and photocopies and desk chairs and telephones.

  While driving away from our small apartment, beloveds, I turned on the radio.

  Today on the radio, Christie Brinkley exists and her worries about Billy Joel’s driving abilities exist.

  A lawsuit exists where Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas are suing Hello! magazine for publishing poor-quality wedding photos.

  U2 spy planes exist flying over the Koreas.

  Supermodel Gisele Bundchen’s plan to eradicate hunger in Brazil exists.

  Heart disease in women exists.

  John Malvo’s trial exists.

  Aretha Franklin exists and a subpoena for her exists.

  Hackers of the Recording Industry Association of America website exist.

  Thalidomide exists.

  Zoe Ball exists.

  And Fatboy Slim exists but now without Zoe Ball.

  Bronze Age highways in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey continue to exist.

  Renée Zellweger and Richard Gere, lead actors in Chicago, exist.

  Cell phones and tunnel vision exist.

  Cable problems exist in a crash in Charlotte.

  A dismembered mother, the shoe bomber’s letters, Scott Peterson’s wife and girlfriend, Brian Patrick Regan’s letters to Hussein and Gadhafi, nineteen thousand gallons of crude oil in the frozen Nemadji River, all of this exists.

  The world goes on and on, spins tighter and then looser on a wobbling axis, and it has a list of adjectives to describe it, such as various and beautiful and new, but neither light, nor certitude, nor peace exist.

  February 15, 2003

  Here is today.

  Over eight million people marched on five continents against the mobilization.

  Here is today.

  Three million in Rome.

  Two million in Spain.

  One and a half million in London.

  Half a million in Berlin.

  The list goes on.

  Millions.

  And if not millions then hundreds of thousands.

  People in London, Dublin, Edinburgh, Reykjavik, Paris, Berlin, Leipzig, Stuttgart, Amsterdam, Brussels, Madrid, Seville, Andalusia, Barcelona, Girona, Granada, Rome, Bern, Stockholm, Gothenburg, Warsaw, Lisbon, Porto Codex, Bucharest, Moscow, Athens, Thessaloniki, Budapest, Helsinki, Ankara, Kiev, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Istanbul, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Amman, Beirut, Rafah, Ramallah, Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Babylon, Baghdad, Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Srinagar, Hong Kong, Dili, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Jakarta, Seoul, Bangkok, Damascus, Canberra, Newcastle, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington, Calgary, Buenos Aires, Rosario, Bogotá, Mexico City, Guadalajara, Santo Domingo, Guatemala City, Tegucigalpa, Anchorage, Arcata, Fresno, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Monica, Vallejo, Portland, Santiago, Lima, Caracas, Chicago, Normal, Detroit, Lansing, Minneapolis, Las Vegas, Santa Fe, Austin, Salt Lake City, Bellingham, Seattle, Tacoma, Toronto, Raleigh, Philadelphia, Ottawa, Quebec, Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Quito, Montevideo, San Jose, San Juan, Havana, gathered.

  Even those on Antarctica gathered together.

  Even we on this small island gathered.

  Of course other things happened.

  Dolly the cloned sheep was killed yesterday owing to premature aging.

  A bomb exploded an Israeli tank and four were killed.

  Cardinal Etchegaray visited Saddam Hussein but neither would say what they discussed.

  Child protection campaigners called for the removal of Polanski’s The Pianist from the Oscars because of the fugitive director’s child sex conviction.

  But mainly people gathered.

  March 5, 2003

  When I wake up this morning the world is a series of isolated, burning fires as it is every morning.

  It burns in Israel where ten died from a bomb on a bus.

  Yesterday it also burned in the Philippines where twenty-one died from a bomb at an airport. And then it burned some more a few hours later outside a health clinic in a nearby city, killing one.

  It burns and the pope u
rges everyone to fast and pray for peace because it is Ash Wednesday.

  It burns in Cambodia, which has closed its border with Thailand.

  It burns in a fistfight between delegates at the Islamic emergency summit.

  It burns in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

  It burns in the form of Israeli-imposed closures that cause severe economic problems for Palestinians.

  It burns in North Korea.

  This is the stuff of the everyday in this world.

  In this never-ending twentieth-century world.

  This burning, this dirty air we breathe together, our dependence on this air, our inability to stop breathing, our desire to just get out of this world and yet there we are taking the burning of the world into our lungs every day where it rests inside us, haunting us, making us twitch and turn in our bed at night despite the comfort we take from each other’s bodies.

  Beloveds, weeks ago the doubleness of the news broke me down and I stopped writing and stopped loving all humans, mainly myself.

  Heriberto wrote in his blog that US citizens should leave like German citizens should have left Nazi Germany.

  I spent days thinking on this one.

  Whether we could do anything here with others.

  Or whether it was better for all of us to leave the nation to whatever strange fever has overtaken it.

  The unanswerable questions of political responsibility.

  The call to act despite the lack of answers.

  As I thought about this, life went on.

  As I thought, the shuttle crashed on its return home, North Korea restarted its plutonium reactors, two close friends broke up, another tried to kill himself, another checked himself out of rehab for the third time in order to return to his ice habit, and water continued to be wantonly used despite warnings that a lack of water will probably lead to severe crop shortages across the globe in the near future.

  Beloveds, before all my hope is burnt up, I should also remember that eleven million people across the globe took to the streets one recent weekend to protest the war and this gave us all a glimmer.

  We talked on the phone about this glimmer.

  We read each other’s reports.

  We said optimistic things.

  Those who broke up suddenly discovered new lovers and their new sensualities in this glimmer despite all the burning.

  Friends got arrested for posting signs and they were suddenly heroes.

  After the protests, I flip through as many images from as many different cities as I can find on the Internet.

  Picture after picture, crowd after crowd.

  The images differ only in the surroundings.

  City streets or town squares; bright light of heat or the clear light of snow; naked or clothed protestors; mittens or halters.

  Those on the space shuttle sent back images of the calm quietness of the planet before they crashed.

  Those images give the comfort of distance, a lack of detail.

  These images of the protests are busy, detailed with all the glimmers of individuals.

  There are crowds covering blocks of city streets and squares, taken from above.

  I imagine the bodies of friends in the crowds of various cities, feel moments of connection with the mass as I imagine it down to individuals.

  March 11, 2003

  Beloveds, the UN resolutions and counter-resolutions have become so endless that I can’t make sense of them anymore.

  One day Turkey will not open its doors to US troops, the next day there is an election and negotiations start all over again.

  Our hopes that the inevitable will not come true are endlessly dashed.

  Bush keeps saying he will go it alone if he has to.

  Huge protests continue, protests without alone and against alone.

  It is the word alone, beloveds, the word alone.

  When I speak of alone I speak of how there is no alone as Pakistan claims it is moving in on bin Laden, as Iran’s nuclear plant is nearing completion, as Oscar organizers announce that the show will go on in the event of war.

  I speak of how there is no alone even with fuel cells and the deloder worm and the car lover’s brain.

  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.