Wednesday Morning Free Writing with earthweal

earthweal weekly challenge: PROTEST IN A TIME OF PANDEMIC  Posted on May 25, 2020

            ". . . Take your pick. Unfurl your banner. Tell us about what keeps you awake at night, what worries you most, what you feel needs to change. What is happening in your part of the world that concerns or appalls you? Give us your outrage or, if you can muster it, give us some hope, and a direction to head in.          "Valerie Kaur has said this time can be viewed “not as the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb”; that we can emerge from this time of transition transformed, and begin to live on Mother Earth as one part of creation, rather than the unthinking, dominant species we have been. We live in hope.

Your challenge: Bring us your protest poem.  Let’s join our voices in this forum to speak of all that is wrong or, conversely, all that we can make right.

I look forward to reading your words.

— Sherry

          Another police shooting of black victims kept me awake last night, this time without guns.  A knee on the neck of a handcuffed suspect cut off the air.  "I can't breathe," the condemned man croaked out again and again as he lay there dying.  Not Corona Virus--no pandemic--could keep the protest in check this time.  Police took out tear gas and rubber bullets when a small portion of the protesters began defacing police property, breaking windows, graffiti-ing cars.  
          If I ever thought restricting weapons would cut back on hatred and violence--no--it would cut back on immediate violence that prefers to keep its distance.  We have to pull out the roots of smug superiority and entitled competition for resources where they are born--in greed and fear.  There is enough for all. If there are bad places to live--and there are--we must divide up those places proportionately so no one class or color gets the brunt of pollutants, floods, crowding, and disease.  Who would enforce this?  I fear the change to fairness will be brutal, but I am ready for a different kind of brutality.  
          Even if I am displaced from the very little privilege I carved out for myself, I am ready.  Let there be reversals, let the pendulum swing to the other extreme.  When unhealthy conditions surround those normally protected from them, people with power will do something about it.  Selfishness can be used strategically.

          And now 68 minutes pre-launch of Falcon 9 and Dragon, a flight test called the Space-X test,  commercial space travel in cooperation with NASA for a trip to the space station.  Here's a change of focus from the protests trying to prove that Black lives matter.  Two astronauts are going, two highly-qualified white men, both Americans.  There is not a hint of racism here despite what's happening elsewhere in the USA.
          This is the first manned space flight from the USA in 9 years.  Demo One already proved that this Dragon vehicle can dock and return.  The addition is human.  The addition is all eyes watching.  I wonder if citizens of other countries are watching too.  Our President flew over the launch pad an hour ago.  He's supposed to be present for this historic launch. I pray he doesn't spoil it by smearing it with tweets.

This reminds me of one of my few published poems:  

Big Earth Ball (the 2017 version)

Lawn party for the March 1970 solar eclipse, me 
sitting on a blanket in an army jacket and long skirt,
embroidering inserts to bell jeans and holding thick
negatives for the sun show when . . .
“Uncle John’s Band” plays from dorm windows lining
the quad and both the stoned and the merely happy
rise in swooping dance, eyes closed, inner harmony . . . 

We needed a break from anti-war demonstration,

the Black platform and certainty of right and wrong. 

Clarity grew from confusion, a sharp diamond set

in too much all at once . . .

“Say it, A Ball of Confusion” “The first days are

the hardest days, don’t you worry anymore . . . “

The disco ball had not yet turned, rock ruled ~

Temptation to “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out”

was hard to resist: I cut all my classes that spring, 

started smoking, played hours of duplicate bridge

in the Student Union . . . 

parted my long hair straight, wore wire-rimmed

glasses, carried Sartre’s Being and Nothingness 

in my pocket, took on Nausea and avoided the gaze

of those who just didn’t get it:   We walk in space.

We build things to destroy people and we walk in space.

We walk and look up at the sun, see its angry glare . . .

Who cares if we go blind?

Sight from blindness grows as clarity from confusion

“You know all the rules by now and the fire from ice”

Darkness rises as the moon bites into the sun.

"Big Earth Ball" is about the March 7, 1970 Solar Eclipse. I was a freshman at Clark U in Worcester, MA.  Here's what I recall: 

1970 was the year "Uncle John's Band" appeared on the Grateful Dead's 4th studio album "Workingman's Dead," and the year the Temptations recorded the hit single "Ball of Confusion (That's What the World Is Today)." Both songs helped shape my take on  world, sun, and moon on that grey day. "Turn on, tune in, drop out" is a 1967 quote from either Dr. Timothy Leary or Marshall McLuhan to popularize a psychedelic counter-culture (of which I was not a part). On 21 July 1969, the  Apollo 11 moon landing with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin was televised live, and we heard Armstrong say his famous words "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."  I watched in a little bar near the Hunter Mountain ski resorts where I was during the 1969 Woodstock Festival (but that is another story).   !970 was the year the Vietnam draft lottery began and set male students on edge. Protest against the US involvement in Vietnam and its undeclared war there had escalated since 1964 and was particularly heated by 1970. It was one year after Black student protests took over the campus, and finally gained them some scholarships and courses. On May 4th, 1970 ~ 2 months after the solar eclipse of my poem ~ the  U.S. National Guard killed four young people during a demonstration on the Kent State campus in Ohio. "As a result four million students go on strike at more than 450 universities and colleges" (Wikipedia).

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  © 2020 Susan L. Chast

Free Writing with Tanya: the May 18th prompt

Story Portal prompt, a line from the poem Anchorage by Joy Harjo:

"We keep on breathing, walking, but softer now,

the clouds whirling in the air above us."

Use this as your opening line and free write for 12 minutes. See where it takes you.

"We keep on breathing, walking, but softer now,

the clouds whirling in the air above us."

We sense beings around us and do not want to wake them.  It is not danger we breathe so much as slight annoyance.  Rather than apologize for our presence, we show respect for theirs.  We are human, but I sense they are not.  As the clouds lift, I see we walk among a grove of trees whose branches intermingle--tall , tall--and made taller by the crest of the hill on which we rise, ever walking to a destination we are unsure of.  We call it safety, but I know it is by common consent East.  We walk East to join others in mind of spirit in the Mecca of sunrise, a place holy to all faiths.  The barriers have come down.  
          I slow as we near the top.  My breath is labored, but I will make it if I release my body to move at its own pace, as if it were a horse I trusted my life to.  I feel encouragement whisper through the lower leaves and the higher needles.  I feel the carpet of moss and pine ends add a bit of spring to my steps.  Maybe we will find safety somewhere ahead, if  even the trees are helping us.  They link our mother, Earth, with everything else, they are the signs and flags of her health.  Over these past months of travel, their anger has changed to pity and annoyance, so this encouragement is like the fresh breeze that rises with the clouds.  It feels my lungs with joy.  
          Now on the top, I burst into song:  "Somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something right."   
          The words are from The Sound of Music, the moment when Maria accepts her relationship with Captain Von Trap, just before they start their family's trek away from Danger.  We must have done something right, something the trees approve of, a sign from our mother.  "Somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something right."  I don't remember the rest of the words.  
          People around me are grinning.  The feeling of respect doesn't leave because I have burst the silence with sound.  No balloon pops.  The mood rises gently with the clouds and I feel a collective sigh of relief.  It is not that we have been holding our breath, but we have been so very ashamed of being human that feeling acceptance and joy is a weight off us.  Here at the hill top, we look down the way dense with trees.  The path is still unclear, but we have renewed energy for moving into the unknown.

We keep on breathing, walking, more confident now, lightly as clouds rising, lightly as burdens fall.

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  © 2020 Susan L. Chast

More Writing with Tanya

Tanya's prompt:

Alice Walker says "writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence."

 "Being saved/ saving" is your story portal for today: Challenge yourself to make it a story with a beginning/middle and end.

10 Minutes.

GO.

What saved me from the inconvenience of violence?  So many things!  But let me share a story I know about a woman I will call Joan: 

          Joan was pretty messed up by the violence of the Vietnam War--back when images of war were not censored from the USA, when we could see blood and burns and body parts and naked girls running down the street arms uplifted and crying.  She went for various psychological treatments, all geared to lift her from depression and try to make her want to live.  Needless to say, violence does not cure violence.  What finally helped Joan was finding her way to a commune where even eating became a path to learning non-violence.  She stopped eating animals and made friends with many of them, though she still ate animal products like eggs and milk.  She always asked permission for eating anything, giving back in care and love as a true steward of life in all its forms.  

          But war continued.  And Joan couldn't listen to the radio news without re-triggering depression and even convulsions.  One day a friend suggested that her response to violence could be a political action if more people could see it, if she transformed it into public action.  After several shy attempts to make her concerns into narrative, Joan decided to show what happens to her in the face of violence.  She created a solo performance.  

          She came on stage in peace, hanging up a sign with the 4-H pledge.  Do you know it? 

4-H Clubs, Cornell Extension

The sign backed all the action of her piece.  
          She brought with her a basket with materials to demonstrate how to re pot a plant and also carried a transistor radio--a cassette player that looked like a radio.  She unpacked her basket and began the demo, switching on the "radio." It played--I actually don't remember what she played--but my memory tells me it was something soft and Simon and Garfunkel that transitioned into Joan Jett's "Born to be Bad"--which can't be, because that song came out years later--unless she WAS Joan Jett?  Anyway, when the music switched it was interspersed with news of war--Oh--maybe we were in Desert Storm by that time?  I don't remember.  When the sound changed, she began mutilating the plants, slowly picking up the violence until pieces flew.  
          I was in the audience.  I remember moving into a gasp and then a silence.  The show ended with a freeze of her, exhausted, slumped over the mess.  We sat there quietly too. Then Joan unfroze, went to the corner where there was a straw broom and cheerfully began to sweep up the mess.  
          Did she talk to us?  I don't remember.  But it was a relief to walk out into the fresh night air with my friends, tears streaming down our faces.

The End.

 © 2020 Susan L. Chast

(12 minutes including looking up the 4-H sign and Joan Jett Songs.  Then slightly edited.  )

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Writing with Tanya: Two Prompts

Female Nude with Green Shawl Seen from Behind - Käthe Kollwitz (1903)

  (1)

 Story Portal Prompt: at what point in your life did you feel least like yourself? How did you get back? 10 mins. Go.

Least like myself?  When most depressed back in the 1990s, I feared melting in tears and despair, so began taking anti-depressants.  I am still on them.  I've tried going off them twice, and each time, it wasn't more than a week before I felt again like there was no reason to get out of bed.  So which is the real me?  The one more in control or the one in a sobbing mush on the mattress?  As a medicated person, I've been able to retire from a non-traditional teaching career that I am both proud of and humble about.  I made it through a losing tenure battle, two moves, and two job changes--which included leaving behind the educational theatre for which my experience and PhD in dramatic arts had prepared me.  As a medicated person, I've become a friend of the truth and of Jesus which led to membership in the Religious society of friends and a life as a poet.  Daily, I feel myself becoming more comfortable.  Is this my self?  It is a self that gives me confidence and peace and only the kind of troubled mind that helps me see what way is opening for me.  I love that.  When I look back at the roles I played through the years, they often seem like separate people--Susans I cannot imagine ever being.  

(2)

Story Portal Prompt:  Dorothy Allison wrote: "Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I'd rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me."

Write a story about going naked rather than wearing a coat the world (or a family member, teacher or culture) made for you.

Try for a beginning/middle and end. Ten minutes. Post if you like.

Luckily, most of the roles I have played throughout my life came with their own costumes: daughter, student, hippy radical, wife, editor, organizer, professor, director, teacher--and those are only the offstage roles!  Now, retired, I have my lounge-around look which is another costume.  Which of these were assigned me and which did i choose for myself?  That's a nonsensical question, given the expectations I--and most humans--have internalized about what success at any moment looks like.  That's all part of the narration, and I was never one to rebel against it when other issues were more important.  Going naked may have more to do with naming--choosing to be called Susan rather than Ms. Chast or Dr. Chast.  Just Susan, a small person of no importance.  What do you do?  is the question that most often greets me, and even now I try to answer it.  "I am a writer," I say.  Not,  

I am retired.  I have no political or religious affiliations.  Here I am, just me, a brown-eyed older woman with a wrinkled neck and a slouch, here I am just doing this thing with you.  Let's enjoy this worship, this film, this performance, this dinner, this task.  Let's grin and enjoy (or frown and enjoy) how we pass the time together."

I imagine my companion lingering a little longer, and then looking for me again when we are in the same place. And again.  And again.  But so far, that does not happen. Nor do applying the hooks of story from experience, the normal clothes I try on to impress people.  I tell myself that people make these connections when young classmates.  During those years, I just kept moving on.  And people make those connections in their families, but my brothers and I are very, very different.  Pursuing this line of inquiry makes me sad, so I laugh myself out of it.  I enjoy being a hermit in the company of cats.  I enjoy writing this and that and reading short poems and long novels and not having any demands on my time.  And so I don the clothes of a relaxed stay-at-home or I sit here naked as I wish.  There is no one to make me rush for cover.  I love being naked.  But that, my dear imagined readers, only leads me to another story.

   © 2020 Susan L. Chast

Writin with Jesse

Vast and particular

Fascination and anger

Clown

In this vast pandemic the world seems united, smaller than usual, though we still have the haves and the have nots. I just heard from my Bengali friend, the Indian poet who was my partner at Poets United for three years. There the poor have been laid off work and are struggling to get back to their families, struggling to stay alive. In comes the winds and floods—cyclone runs, and she is grateful for her strong roof. I am grateful for mine. It is a white box I sit in, with a grey top. The winds take down the deadwood but the house withstands the battering of the dead and the dying. All that dark red is outside, swirling like a scream, and in here I have a calm, a golden flame that is amazingly steady despite the wind. How odd that it persists whether I feel fear, anger, despair or giddiness. I pray that everyone has it, this little house of heart that shelters their flame whether walking the road, drenched and hungry or sitting ensconced in front of media, full with enough or hoarding against fear. Sumana is in almost constant prayer with a mantra that takes the edges and escapes off her absorption into the universe. She cannot write, barely eats, though, oddly, she sometimes watches the NY Governor talk and hopes he becomes president. She cannot write, and neither can I. She has had to let her servantrs go, as they wanted to join the mecca back to their family homes. She loaded them with money and gifts and gratitude. I who have never had servants struggle to understand her NORMAL. It is not the same as serfdom or English manors where nobility are responsible for towns. It is more intimate, like sharing the home with another family. I gave up sharing a home when I became a professor. Cats and books and paper and media became my only companions, and they are still. I have given nothing up, but I've grown smaller anyway. No more public performance. No more attempts to publish. No more excursions to rallies and large gatherings. 

I have become my grandmother, sitting surrounded by art and my own work, but looking with longing out the windows to the world. In here it is modified paisley and subdued greens, soft like feather blankets, each seat a pleasure. Outside the universe and viruses are dancing, wild and free, as if humans had never constrained or tamed them and turned them to their own use. They are recalling their ancestors, hoping to resurrect them.  Oh, yes, I am reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind a tome by Yuval Noah Harari.  He puts words and philosophy to particulars I've long suspected.  I know what we have done.

Blue succumbs to red

The sky a mirror of blood

we shed, pretending.

I hide in pine tree

havens where soft browns and greens

soften existence.

Can I live here forever?

I ask white pine. Only if 

you entwine roots with everyone.

Jesse says that I Seek Justice for a larger world even when writing personally. 

 She noticed when I noticed color.