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Destruction and Transformation
KIS.list: Week 6
Tuesday, September 11, 2001
Destruction of the World Trade Center
New York, NY
==KIINI'S REJECTION/ACCEPTANCE O'METER: August 2001 - present
Rejections: publications: 1, grants/fellowships: 0, residencies/workshops: 0
Acceptances: publications: 1, grants/fellowships: 0, residencies/workshops: 0
==KIINI'S REJECTION/ACCEPTANCE O'METER: August 2001 - present
I have nothing to say. There are statements I could make, political accusations, speculations on cause and involvement, blame, but all of it has been said already--over and over again. I assume that each of you is receiving opinions and information through your own channels, channels that are probably aligned with your own perspectives. Anything I would say right now would add to the propaganda--it would either be too far left or too far right of what you think. Or maybe it would be exactly aligned with what you believe. Either way, at this point, you would read it with your judgement cap on. You would take the opportunity to assess and judge and decide whether or not you think I was right. And none of it would get to the heart of how I really feel, how I really felt.
I felt as if I was choking on life. I felt as if the world was gagging, gasping for breath. I felt suddenly linked, if only for a moment, to the terrors of those living in war-torn countries. And when I got home, left the war zone, trecked across the Brooklyn Bridge with the rest of the fearful ones, I felt fucked in the head.
If I am giving you too few details, it is intentional. My particular story doesn't matter. My presence in a subway tunnel when the first building collapsed is somewhat irrelevant. Irrelevant because my life is irrelevant on the scale of international terrorism and war. To world leaders, my life is collateral. Should I die in an air strike or a bombing or a terrorist attack, my life is/was collateral damage. What is there to say? I lived. I was not down there that day. I was close enough to breathe in the fumes, to cough on the pulverized glass and asbestos and human remains and whatever else is flying in that thick cloud looming over and around disaster area. Close enough to be coated in ash by the time I left downtown Manhattan, but not close enough to be hit by the wheel of a dismantled airplane, a body as it fell (or jumped) out of a 105th-floor window, not close enough to see scattered body parts such as the severed hand pictured amongst the rubble in the newspaper the day after. Yet it all left me speechless. Not angry, not fearful, not vindictive, just speechless.
I find myself unable to focus on the individual perpetrators. Maybe it's because of what I've recently been seeing: Life and Debt. Maybe it's because I've traveled to places and been shaken, inalterably, by the way much of the world is living. Maybe it's because I'd just read an interview of former U.S. attorney general Randall Clark who broke down international affairs in a shocking and terrifying way. But I felt the walls between us and the rest of the world breaking down. And what is out there, beyond our shores, is hardcore. It is as if the world's realities had come to smack us in the face.
I have compassion for those who are in a murderous rage. It is the rage of the hurt, it is the rage of the shaken, it is the rage of one whose world has been threatened. I felt that rage once. I was home alone in Fiji. Half awake because I was uncomfortable living in this house on the hill, surrounded by beautiful foliage, but ultimately open, vulnerable to anyone who wanted to climb up the hill. There was always rustling through that foliage, and with my bedroom light on I couldn't see who might be out there looking at me. Around three in the morning, I heard a clicking at the gate. I got up sleepily to let my friend in, thinking she had finally made it home. And when I looked, I saw that it was not my friend. It was a young man, shirtless with cutoff shorts. His hand was in the gate and he was clicking the lock as if to say, I've seen this work before, why isn't the gate opening? My heart went wild. I hid. Crouched by the couch, I called every friend I could. Eventually he disappeared. Later that morning, when the police came with a young man with white cutoff shorts, I told them I didn't think that was him (his skin looked too dark, the perpetrator had lighter skin), but I couldn't be sure. And the thought rioted through my head, why don't you just beat him up and find out if he's telling the truth? This young man hadn't run an airplane into a building, hadn't killed thousands of people. Even if he was the perpetrator, he hadn't done anything to me. He hadn't entered the house, he hadn't hurt me, he hadn't even touched me. But he was POSSIBLY the one who threatened my safety, obliterated my ability to sleep, made me need others around me to feel safe and I thought he should suffer for that. These are not rational thoughts, but victims are not rational beings. We are tender, destroyed things who often can think of no other thing, but retaliation to set our world straight again.
Of course retaliation won't set our world straight again. There are people who still don't know where their mothers are. Lower Manhattan is covered with flyers, flyers with photographs of the missing. "My sister hasn't been seen since Tuesday, she worked at Windows on the World. Please call me if you've seen her." "Our loving father is missing. He worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. He was last seen in building 1." There are children, too many children, who lost their parents. There are those in full possession of their lives who won't be able to erase that terror from their minds. There are those, I'm sure, who will go insane.
And as I write this my girlfriend calls me shaky-voiced to say every time she closes her eyes to sleep, she's back at the World Trade Center, on the 105th floor, where she once worked, and the plane is coming right at her. And I am filled with morbid thoughts. And a gym bag is no longer just a gym bag, it's a bomb carrier and I wonder what it's doing in my office building. And two people holding hands are no longer just a couple, they are lovers holding on to each other in the face of terror and destruction and pain. And those white men reading the paper across from me on the subway and that Chinese woman sitting next to me, they are no longer "others" whose lives I cannot image, they are human beings who may have lost someone in that attack. We are all suddenly so human again.
We are all so human. Human is the woman who writes from the Middle East of the heightened campaigns against her safety while the world is mourning for America. Human is the man who asks when you bomb Afghanistan, what are you going to bomb? It's been done already, we've already been destroyed. Ironically, those we suspect of committing this crime, those we believe harbored the criminals, the nations we are certain have created these terrorists are already paying. They are paying in a way we Americans can not relate to. They have been paying for years and I suspect that is why they paid us a visit. Murder, death, and destruction in the war zones, murder death and destruction in downtown Manhattan. This is our world. What are we going to do?
The silence is amazing. The quiet of people who have just had the wind blown out of them. Speechlessness. A silent New York. The patience is unprecedented. The lack of sucking teeth and loud complaining when the train isn't showing up on time. The unity of conversation, we are all talking about it. How could we not?
And I don't even know why I am writing this. I'm writing this because I've committed myself to communication about this life, this writer's life. I'm writing this because it would feel false to move on to the next topic without some word, some nod, to the hole that has been ripped through so many lives. I'm writing this, I suppose, because I write.
Can you imagine what it would take to make a human being fly a commercial airplane into the top of a skyscraper? I'm sure you don't want to, but this is what addles me. What conditions of life could come together to make someone, anyone, choose that path of action? What depth of poverty? What poverty of opportunity? What closeness to death? What familiarity with war? What pain? What confusion? What terror? What desperation? What, as the media is naming it, hatred? And why do these conditions exist in our world?
In the tarot deck, there is a card called The Tower. The image is of a tower, a ray of lightening is striking it and it is in the process of crumbling. People are falling out of the tower and plunging to their deaths. It is a card of transformation. Literally it is the card of personal habits and beliefs being broken down by circumstances beyond the individual's control. The situation has reached boiling point and something has to give.
I spoke to more people the day of and the day after the disaster than I had spoken to in months. It seemed the only thing to do: be with people. I spent the entire day after on foot, pretending I lived in a village, visiting everyone I could reach. I brought nothing with me, I took nothing when I left. Nothing save the solace of being together. It seemed everything else was a waste of time.
I feel as if someone close to me has died. The questions I battle with everyday as I work a 9-5, totally obliterated my ability to function last week. Today I am better. And I had to wait to write this to not simply advertise hysteria. Last week I felt suddenly that my plans are stupid, silly, frivolous. I felt that the anal, mechanical division of art during my commute or for a stolen hour before work is insane. My life had become (and knowing myself as a human being will probably again become) a meaningless merry-go-round. I felt like a rabbit or mouse, stealing tiny packets of time to live in. And when I got those packets of time I stuck them in my cheeks and squirreled them away for the winter. But I had/have become a slave to my own plans. NOW-ness was totally lost on me.
It was a blessing to not have a plan. After the attack, I did not know what I was going to do in the next minute, the next hour, the next day. Only in that emptiness, only in this state of shock could I recognize what was lacking in my life. Only by being shaken to my foundations, could I recognize I had sentenced myself to mental lockdown. I was doing every THING I needed to do to be fulfilled. I started my novel, worked a 9-5, edited my stories, wrote an essay, edited someone else's novel, and maintained three electronic groups. I socialized, having a grand time. But death stopped me. Death stopped me and said, if you were die tomorrow, would you be happy with how you lived today? In the past, I answered that question with things: have I attended this event, have I published this many stories, have I traveled to this many countries? Today, this year, the answer is different. It is not just what I achieved, but how.
I have to look under those layers of achievement now, I have to go deeper. Not do more, but be more profoundly aware or interactive or present in all those things I do. I am attempting to dismantle my habit of planning my weekend before I get to it. I am trying not to be dominated by my date book. I have given myself permission to seek nothingness as often as possible. Before the planes hit the buildings, nothingness was wasted time. Nothingness was a lack, a lack of productivity, a lack of preparing for my future. But in the painful silence nothingness is once again nourishing to me and I seek it with others.
Suzanne Falter-Barns, author of How Much Joy Can You Stand, says "What I am left with in the aftermath of this tragedy is a deep, gnawing sense of need -- to love harder, make more noise, take more chances, and really fulfill this life that God has kindly not yet taken from me."
I claim this attack as a call to love. It is a call for international love, national love, and personal love. Love and compassion for our fractured nation. Love and compassion for those with missing, dead, or wounded loved ones. Love and compassion for those who are themselves missing, dead, or wounded. Love and compassion for the witnesses. Love and compassion for the perpetrators. Love and compassion for the systems and acts and motivations and fears and hurts. And most importantly, more love and compassion in our immediate worlds. I trust that everyone will make the theoretical adjustments their world views demand, I know that we will all support whichever political measures we deem to be correct, and we will all judge the people and entities we have decided are guilty. But I challenge us all to heighten the love in our lives, right now. Be more expressive of it, revel in it, create more of it, act because of it, live in it. Because when the plane hits your building, what else is there?
Be well. Be love(d).
Kiini Ibura Salaam
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The one piece of propaganda that I do want to counter is the propaganda that Palestine as a nation is celebrating America's loss. I'm upset with myself for swallowing that one, hook-line-and-sinker. I should have believed that even where there are glad hearts at terror and destruction, there must be mourning hearts too. I want to share a Palestinian woman's letter and the link to some images of Palestinians in solidarity with American loss.
Dear Friends,
I've had numerous e-mails from people asking me to help interpret the scenes they have watched of Palestinians "celebrating" after the event. Yes, there were some gatherings of people, particularly in Nablus, who were shown in the very early hours of the horrible attacks in the US on the street, dancing and cheering, and passing out chocolate. But, these expressions were few and certainly did not represent the feelings or mood of the general population. The deep shock and horror of the Palestinian people, the real sorrow for all the dead and wounded, was, and continues to be, unseen by the world, particularly in the USA. It is the story unheard.
Because those few scenes were disturbing, the easy response is to cast judgment on the participants, naming those "celebrating" as inhuman, despots, or despicable. The more difficult response, though, particularly in the midst of grief, is to ask the questions about what might drive people, men, women and children, to such actions. One might remember that the people who were seen "celebrating" are a people who for almost a year have been under a brutal siege, who due to the siege have been unable to feed their families and hover on the brink of poverty and despair, who have watched their children and their parents killed by bullets, tank shells and guided missiles, most of which are supplied to the Israeli Occupation Army by the USA. One might remember such things as one watches those images. Attempting to understand motivations doesn't discount our feelings of anguish at such scenes, but does allow us to keep humanity a bit more intact in a time of such utter brokenness.
But, more importantly to me is what has mostly gone unseen by the American public. I have to ask why these scenes of a few Palestinians been shown again and again and again, as if they capture the "truth" of Palestine. How few cameras have caught the spontaneous sorrow, despair, tears and heartache of the vast majority of the Palestinian people. As the news unfolded here on Tuesday afternoon about the extent of the attacks, people gathered, as people did everywhere, in front of television screens to learn as much as possible. My phone rang and rang as Palestinians from around the West Bank called to express their horror and their condolences.
Yesterday following a prayer service held at St. George's Anglican Cathedral, I talked briefly to the US Consul General in Jerusalem. We talked about the scenes from here which were most prevalent on the TV. He told me that his office had received a stack of faxes of condolences from Palestinians and Palestinian Organizations "this high" (indicating a stack of about 12 inches). He asked his staff to fax a copy of every last one of them to CNN to give a different visual image from Palestine.
When we left the cathedral after the service, we drove by the American Consulate in East Jerusalem. Gathered there were about 30 Palestinian Muslim schoolgirls with their teachers. Looking grief-stricken, they held their bouquets of dark flowers and stood behind their row of candles. Silently, they kept vigil outside our Consulate. But no cameras captured their quiet sorrow.
When I got home, my neighbor explained that her son who is in 8th grade came home in the afternoon and talked to her about the student's reactions at school. He told her that everyone was talking about what had happened. He said that many were asking "How could someone do that?" "Is someone human who can carry out such acts?" He went on to tell her that many of the girls were crying. Friends, then, began stopping by my home. Palestinian Christian and Muslim came together, visiting me to express their sorrow and to ask what they could do. Again, the phone rang incessantly with Palestinians asking if everyone I knew was okay and asking if they could do anything to help.
As we talked many went on to tell of stories of their loved ones who are in the States - relatives they were worried about having been injured or killed or who had been subject to harassment in the last couple of days. Others talked of having received e-mails from people who had been supporters of their work who wrote saying "I can never again support the Palestinian people," as if somehow Palestinians everywhere were suddenly responsible for the attacks in the States.
The remarkable thing to me, though, was that despite such messages, these same people still wrote letters of condolences, made phone calls to friends, and asked what they could do to help. Despite the world, and particularly the American world, not seeing them or seeing them only as "terrorists," Palestinians continued to express their common humanity with people everywhere as they shared in the heartache and dismay.
Trusting in God's everlasting presence, Rev. Sandra Olewine
United Methodist Liaison - Jerusalem
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Dear Friends,
We have prepared some pictures which show the Palestinian solidarity with the American people during these very painful times for them. You can see the pictures here
http://www.infopal.org/docs/spics.htm
Please send this URL to your friends
Thank You
-InfoPal
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Dear KIS.list readers, I hope you can forgive me for these mountains of words. These are a few of the communications I found thought-provoking and healing. If you are inundated, you are free to stop reading now. This week's KIS.list is officially complete.
Kiini Ibura Salaam
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A comment by Benjamin Rosenbaum:
A friend of mine forwarded me a thoughtful essay by some new age kabbalistic rabbi, about dealing with our rage about the bombing, and it contains a bit about the Torah which stuck with me: "The Torah is not a pacifist path. It is a warrior path. We are permitted to fight. But we are not permitted to hate."
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Shattered: 9/11/2001. An amazing photo-essay.
http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/shattered/index.html
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The Deeper Wound
By Deepak
As fate would have it, I was leaving New York on a jet flight that took off 45 minutes before the unthinkable happened. By the time we landed in Detroit, chaos had broken out. When I grasped the fact that American security had broken down so tragically, I couldn't respond at first. My wife and son were also in the air on separate flights, one to Los Angeles, one to San Diego. My body went absolutely rigid with fear. All I could think about was their safety, and it took several hours before I found out that their flights had been diverted and both were safe.
Strangely, when the good news came, my body still felt that it had been hit by a truck. Of its own accord, it seemed to feel a far greater trauma that reached out to the thousands who would not survive and the tens of thousands who would survive only to live through months and years of hell. And I asked myself, Why didn't I feel this way last week? Why didn't my body go stiff during the bombing of Iraq or Bosnia? Around the world my horror and worry are experienced every day. Mothers weep over horrendous loss, civilians are bombed mercilessly, refugees are ripped from any sense of home or homeland. Why did I not feel their anguish enough to call a halt to it?
As we hear the calls for tightened American security and a fierce military response to terrorism, it is obvious that none of us has any answers. However, we feel compelled to ask some questions.
Everything has a cause, so we have to ask, What was the root cause of this evil? We must find out not superficially but at the deepest level. There is no doubt that such evil is alive all around the world and is even celebrated.
Does this evil grow from the suffering and anguish felt by people we don't know and therefore ignore? Have they lived in this condition for a long time?
One assumes that whoever did this attack feels implacable hatred for America. Why were we selected to be the focus of suffering around the world?
All this hatred and anguish seems to have religion at its basis. Isn't something terribly wrong when jihads and wars develop in the name of God? Isn't God invoked with hatred in Ireland, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, and even among the intolerant sects of America?
Can any military response make the slightest difference in the underlying cause? Is there not a deep wound at the heart of humanity?
If there is a deep wound, doesn't it affect everyone?
When generations of suffering respond with bombs, suicidal attacks, and biological warfare, who first developed these weapons? Who sells them? Who gave birth to the satanic technologies now being turned against us?
If all of us are wounded, will revenge work? Will punishment in any form toward anyone solve the wound or aggravate it? Will an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and limb for a limb, leave us all blind, toothless and crippled?
Tribal warfare has been going on for two thousand years and has now been magnified globally. Can tribal warfare be brought to an end? Is patriotism and nationalism even relevant anymore, or is this another form of tribalism?
What are you and I as persons going to do about what is happening? Can we afford to let the deeper wound fester any longer?
Everyone is calling this an attack on America, but is it not a rift in our collective soul? Isn't this an attack on civilization from without that is also from within?
When we have secured our safety once more and cared for the wounded, after the period of shock and mourning is over, it will be time for soul searching. I only hope that these questions are confronted with the deepest spiritual intent. None of us will feel safe again behind the shield of military might and stockpiled arsenals. There can be no safety until the root cause is faced. In this moment of shock I don't think anyone of us has the answers. It is imperative that we pray and offer solace and help to each other. But if you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world.
Love,
Deepak
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From Rob Brezny
Week of September 10, 2001
Dearly Beloveds,
In the wake of Tuesday's painful break in our collective trance, I make the following pledges:
* I will feel every feeling that surges through me without jumping to conclusions about what it means or how I should act on it.
* I will pray to our Spiritual Allies, seeking their inspiration and guidance in finding the redemptions that are seeded in the tragedy.
* I will lend my strength and love to the thousands of souls who have so suddenly had to make the transition from this earthly realm to the other side of the veil.
* I will relentlessly steer fear in the direction of love every chance I get.
* I will watch TV just enough to keep track of the official story that's being perpetrated by the hysteria-inducing mass media, but mostly I will tune in to more reliable sources: to the dreams of my 10-year-old daughter Zoe and to other deeply sensitive empathizers; to the emotion-rich intuitions of compassionate artists who use language carefully and creatively; to the meditations that sprout in me as I walk through the world, not as I sit in my room; to the Divine Intelligence that is at the diamond heart of every one of us.
* I will hold open my heart and imagination to the possibility that we now stand at the cusp of a breathtaking leap forward; that for all we know, this mini-apocalypse has cracked open a hole in our crippled, shrunken reality so as to let juicy eternity pour in, healing our beleaguered souls with direct perceptions and intimate knowledge of the truth that We Are All One.
* I will propose that this is a perfect moment to break through to a deeper level of understanding about who you really are and why you are here.
Blessings,
Rob Brezny
P.S.: Please keep me posted on the transformations that erupt in you as you weave your way through the aftermath of this blinding flash.
http://www.realastrology.com/
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The Joy Letter #39: After September 11
September 13, 2001
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A tri-weekly electronic newsletter from
Suzanne Falter-Barns,
author of "How Much Joy Can You Stand?"
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It is hard to know how to begin discussing the events of September 11, as their impact was so huge, so dark, so overwhelmingly sad. Like everyone else, I literally shook with fear as I watched the television, cried as I listened to the radio, and floundered as I tried to explain these incredible crimes to our children. I have asked myself what God could possibly have meant by this. All I can come up with is that we are being reminded of the intense fragility and preciousness of life.
It is so easy to sit at our desks, day after day, tapping the keys and getting lost in a thousand mundane details. Our minds become focused on 'what's really important' --closing a deal, getting a promotion, beating our way over to the bank before it closes. Too often we operate in the haze of the ordinary, letting all the stuff of life clog our minds and our schedules to the point of exasperation. We begin to see our lives as a long, tedious journey instead of an exciting ride; we lose our sense what's truly important.
And then everything familiar suddenly crumbles.
What I am left with in the aftermath of this tragedy is a deep, gnawing sense of need -- to love harder, make more noise, take more chances, and really fulfill this life that God has kindly not yet taken from me. For now I understand. We are not as helpless as we think. Once we've given blood, waited, prayed, and grieved, there is something else we can do. We can live our lives as if they really truly matter. For, in fact, they do.
Let us use this time as a way of remembering that every one of us was put on earth to share our own special skills. Parenting, singing, negotiating, life saving, teaching, designing, coaching, building, healing, cake decorating, preaching, selling, repairing, counseling, entertaining ... the list goes on and on. Let us honor the dead by using our gifts and our lives as fully as we possibly can. And let us give these gifts freely, fearlessly allowing them to pass through us to touch others.
In memory of the thousands of victims and their survivors, I have created a bulletin board on my website at howmuchjoy.com. On the Joy Board titled "After September 11", post a message listing at least three ways you intend to use your own precious life -- whether that means pursuing a dream, reading to your kids, finally learning how to tap dance, or joining the Peace Corps. (Don't stop at three -- list as many as you want!) Then from time to time, check back with that list, and let us know how you're doing. If you need support, go to the bulletin board titled "Dream Support" where kindred spirits gather to urge each other on (there are almost 500 messages posted now!)
Even if you don't choose to use the Joy Boards, please make your own list and keep it at hand where you can see it often. Then begin, using your wit, your intuition, and your great, guiding Spirit to put your gifts to work.
Perhaps more than ever, God's love is around us at this dark and tragic time. Let us be wise enough to seize it and be the people we had always intended to be.
Please feel free to share this message with anyone you know.
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