I want to write. I want to write something good. The kind of good that moves people to
stop running into walls long enough to sit down and create a garden in the middle of this
chaotic maze we let consume our existence—because who cares about reaching the end
when you can sow the seeds of a mighty forest throughout the journey. A forest no
bulldozer can conquer and no white picket fence can contain.
But when I sit down to write I have no words to scrawl and no thoughts to organize. I go
to bed disappointed with myself, and wake the next morning motivated to write, so I take
note of everything I see and hear and feel—every picture, every clue, every sign that tells
me there are stories to be shared and lives to document. I walk through the day with my
Jar, ready to capture and store every firefly spotted amidst the hours gowned by golden
rays. And when the moon returns to the stage, I retrieve my jar expecting illumination,
but instead I find that the air holes were too small and all light that could have been has
been prematurely vanquished. So I make bigger holes. Holes so big that by the time my
pen and I have united the fireflies have vanished. I’m left with a jar, and nothing to
magnify.
I go to sleep with obituaries to write for the fireflies whose needs I ignored, and
fragmented memories of lost fireflies I didn’t slow enough to see during the time of their
calling. I reflect until the moments blur like counted sheep, and before I drift into my
preferred reality, I tell myself these are the stories I wish I could write:
I woke to typhoon rains. Rains, like the birth of Isaac, which bring peace to a weary
farmer’s anxiety over fields as barren as an aged Sarah. And in an instant I was
transported back to India where a drought was stealing the lives of farmers who believed
suicide would bring them one step closer to their next lives, and one day closer to
possible redemption for their families. So with prayers of desperation tied to their souls
their families bid them goodbye, and the crops continued to die. Until the tears of
mourning wives became too heavy for the heavens to restrain, and their husbands
returned to the earth once again spreading their seeds to the thirsty wombs eager to
harvest and birth.
And the rains made me think about the delicate balancing act that determines which
names have run out of time and which names have a few more years to play. Too much
rain here and world powers are brought to their knees with nothing to surrender. Too
little rain there and even the cockroaches are crushed under the weight of hunger and
thirst. Too much money there and greed jades the mirrors until the only reflections they
offer are those of fear and depression. Too little money here and future scientists,
humanitarians, politicians, lawyers, artists and doctors will never know how to read a
book let alone enter university libraries.
I go to the bathroom and am visited by an occasional friend who reminds me of my
womanhood and confirms I have yet to become a mother. This takes me back to certain
African villages where a girl can’t go to school after she reaches puberty because this
biological life-allowing miracle makes her dirty. Yet, yet, this same magical process
makes her a desirable candidate to be a wife because it proclaims to the world she can
now bear the next generation. And so she marries, maybe too young, and she is lonely
and she is hurt and she is scared and her role has been fulfilled. She is a mother and
because she is a mother, because she is a woman, she is dirt.
And this makes me think of the women who suffer around the world. Those told by
billboards they must be skinnier and whiter and more Barbie-like; those strong women
who sit on the bed while their boyfriends hurl slurs and fists at them when their hope for
the world has been replaced by broken dreams and emptied bottles; those women tied to
tables in kitchens and forced to starve their babies born without a divine penis; those
women who can’t be preachers and prophets; those women who are silenced and ignored
and spoken for.
It makes me think of the women and men who take to the streets in Delhi demanding
rights for women; and the brave girls who sit outside school windows, writing down
every ounce of information they hear penetrate the cement walls telling girls prison is not
a place filled with small cells and locked gates, but anywhere that segregates her from
thought and expression; and the women who wake up and say “I’m beautiful.” For all of
these men women I shed my clothing because I don’t have the rhythmic melodies of
poets or the tact of essayists to share their stories. Naked I stand with my clothes piled at
my feet.
I pick up my shirt and see it’s made in Indonesia. My bra and underwear in China and
my shorts in India. And now I want to write about my outrage with monetary wealth
propelled globalization and the hierarchies stitched into our societies giving the rich
authority to determine the work and lifestyle of the poor. Buzzing machines washed with
the sweat of those trying to evade the mighty jaws of merciless consumer demands for
more ipods, cell phones, and computers.
And as I type this on my Macbook I think of those even less fortunate than the sweatshop
slaves. Those forced to the mines by guns and rape all so we can type on the best make and model. We stay connected with the world and write scholarly papers on a device that requires men, women and children to hunt minerals found in the dark and dangerous depths of the land they should be walking and playing on. They may never see another day, let alone a text book, but our wants and needs are hungry and must be fed.
It’s all too much to process, too much to feel at times, but then I listen to a student read who never could before, or I meet with a group of students and one tells me she wants to end poverty while another tells me he wants to make peace in war torn countries and the good of the world is once again unveiled as visions of the future embrace me through the words and hearts of our youth. There is a story to be written.
