Our Present: Healing
Chapter 6: Connect
Unity is the Salve of Our Isolation
Join in the Unity of Our Cumulative Community
I looked into their eyes, drank their wine
through my hands and heard their humming.
Annoying–Aggravating–Agonizing.
I cringed–until–I looked toward Tukayo.
Oh, how eyes can frown ‘n reveal sadness.
Fortunately, no mouth to scowl.
How, unknown, but harmony ‘n beauty
—slowly–very slowly–emerged–
from the cacophony.
‘n I was hooked.
Humming, helping, healing.
Receiving so much from them,
from their water well of abundance,
all shared so readily with all who thirst.
When you get these jobs you have been so
brilliantly trained for, just remember that
your real job is that if you are free, you
need to free somebody else.
If you have some power,
then your job is to empower somebody else.
This is not just a grab-bag candy game.
–Toni Morrison. 1931-2019.
We cannot seek achievement
for ourselves and forget about progress
and prosperity for our community …
Our ambitions must be broad enough to inlcude
the aspirations and needs of others,
for their sake and our own.
–Cesar Chavez. 1927-1993.
Every social movement that I know of
has come out of people sitting in small groups,
telling their life stories, and discovering that
other people have shared similar experiences.
–Gloria Steinem. Born 1934.
You’re never gonna kill storytelling
because it’s built into the human plan.
We come with it.
–Margret Atwood. Born 1939.
So much was exchanged through the resonance,
you know, like when your bones
feel the heavy beat of a song.
We call it Humthrum.
I listened; their stories quenched me;
learned I am not alone ‘n shared my own.
Don’t even remember
when I began to humm with them.
Really liked humming with Tukayo, the most.
Then, darkness.
Heaving in emptiness.
A major relapse: Incredulity.
I balked, Recovery, humbug.
Lack of courage leads to cruelty.
–Lailah Gifty Akita
I think the importance of doing activist work is
precisely because it allows you to give back and
to consider yourself not as a single individual
who may have achieved watever, but to be a
part of an ongoing historical movement.
–Angela Davis. Born 1944.
I sometimes see people say that social change is
impossible. But this is just not true.
Social change is inevitable.
What isn’t inevitable is
the timbre and shape of that social change,
which we decide together.
–John Green. Born 1977.
Have you taken a gander?
Wilst in this pathetic state?
Get on with you! This is not me!
After I fight back ‘n get outta here.
That will be my recovery! My Victory!
Tukayo reached out to console me.
I turned ‘n snarled, Get off me!
But Tukayo pleaded with me to pivot back,
so together we could defeat the alienating hurt.
Tukayo tenderly touched my shoulder.
Didn’t just flinch.
Didn’t just bend.
Jerked with force
to throw her hand off.
What do you want from me?
You don’t get it.
You don’t know I am so empty
I got to get out.
Been stuck here so long,
you have come to accept it.
I pounded my chest! Pounded again!
No surrenderin’ happenin’ here!
I don’t need you.
We need love, and to ensure love,
we need to have full employment,
and we need social justice.
We need gender equality.
We need freedom from hunger.
These are our most fundamental
needs as social creatures.
–David Suzuki. Born 1936.
I’ve found the cure for depression is action.
–Yvon Chouinard. Born 1938.
The thought caused me a good deal of grief.
What a terrible thing it is to
wound someone you really care for
–and to do it so unconsciously.
–Haruki Murakami. Born 1949.
Forgiveness is the needle
that knows how to mend.
–Jewel. Born 1974.
Had to do it. Had to be mean to Tukayo. Had to.
So the one closest to me must feel my pain, too.
Thus, transference of the real contagions–two:
Personalized, tailored cruelty and betrayal.
Complete utter obliteration. Nothingness.
I deserved nothing. No one did.
Made sure. Made sure of that.
–No carin’–No lovin’.
Lingered in my vengeance
against myself–Tukayo—everyone.
My slugs of tar returned, climbed my legs,
torso, out my arms, up my neck ‘n head
–all of me, covered by my seductive slugs.
–imports of the oppression
–vestiges of internalization
Warmth. Ragin’ fire spreading within. Home.
We all return to our ugly sea of tar ‘n misery.
I ran ‘n ran ‘n ran … trying to slaughter my enmity
Tukayo chased–until we–our legs–stopped.
Heaving for breath. Trembling. Knotted.
Tukayo turned me around–slapped.
Held hard; risked contamination
as the slugs of tar enveloped us.
Slithering, sliming, strangling.
We choked ‘n convulsed.
If we really want to love,
we must learn to forgive.
–Mother Teresa.
Never be afraid to raise your voice for
honesty and truth and compassion
against injustice and lying and greed.
If people all over the world …
would do this, it would change the earth.
–William Faulkner. 1987-1962.
We can draw lessons from the past,
but we cannot live in it.
–Lyndon B. Johnson. 1908-1973.
Past-induced feelings
from memories of injury
hold us no longer. No control.
We can weed out those festering
wounds sprouting from regurgitated pain,
compensate and correct their distortion
‘n transform them into fuel to resist
‘n the strength to elect to evolve
‘n into the passion to belong.
Faint at first, our glow increased, peaked,
and the slugs of tar began to sizzle
‘n could not drop off fast enough
as we gave them the boot.
Our capillary pull surpasses
our reality of Isolation by Injury–
the terminal disease of coexistence.
That intermittent pressure on my chest,
the seductive one, oscillating between
embrace ‘n pending suffocation, ceased–
as the last of the little slimy slugs slid off,
‘n slithered away, back to their sea of misery, gone for good.
Justice grows out of recognition
of ourselves in each other–
that my liberty depends on you being free too.
–Barack Obama. Born 1961.
I am no longer accepting the things
I cannot change.
I am changing the things I cannot accept.
–Angela Davis. Born 1944.
We become not a melting pot but a beautiful
mosaic, Different people, different yearnings,
different hopes, different dreams.
–Jimmy Carter. Born 1924.
The mosaic
of regular
‘n irregular forms,
of varied colors,
of large ‘n small shapes
of glass, shell, tile ‘n stone,
where each piece is captivating
‘n their collection is breath-taking,
all held together by the mortar of love.
So Came Their Fourth Gift:
The Feeling of Oneness.
My worst experience
led me here with them.
Within the dark silence,
amongst the faceless ‘n bodyless.
They invited me to heal with them.
A unifying strength through belonging.
True belonging only happens when we
present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world.
Our sense of belonging can never
be greater than our level of self-acceptance.
–Brene Brown. Born 1965.
Home is that person whose touch heals you.
They teach you it’s okay to love again,
and this time, it won’t hurt.
–Kirsten Corley. Born 1993.
They had come to be me, or I had come to be them.
Don’t know which direction: me, them, them me.
Both the same. Just knew they were my people.
Most of all, Tukayo had become my new home.
Forever and ever, I will have to earn her.
We gasp;
our lungs
in ‘n ex–hale.
We feel our hearts beat.
Masses of mouthless, stateless neighbors
begin to humm, to move, to dance, to be.
Sounds, movement, patterns yield ritual.
Embrace, initiate, join, partake, support,
as the communal emerges and forms us,
built upon the individuals, the me ‘n we.
Healing, we heal.
It is when we start working together
that the real healing takes place.
–David Hume. 1711-1776.
The breath is the bridge
which connects life to consciousness.
Breathing in, I calm my body.
Breathing out, I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment,
I know this is a wonderful moment.
–Thich Nhat Hanh. 1975 & 1990.
If we invest in ourselves,
the collective good,
we all thrive.
–Cory Booker. Born 1969.
Join ME and become We;
when WE heal, we will strive;
then WE will become ALL and thrive.
