I am wondering about the milkweeed seeds I’d planted last spring. I think I did it too late and this commonest of wildflowers that lines every ditch and abandoned garden plot refused to grow in mine. I wonder if these seeds, now properly frozen, will finally decide to sprout this year. I wonder when crocuses will come this year and how many there will be. I wonder when will be the first day I will feel spring and who will tell me about it.
I managed to squeeze a short walk into my morning routine. What a Friday! The light was a pale, comforting yellow it only ever gets on a morning after a proper snowfall. It wasn’t cold, at least until the wind picked up speed and force, but I kept thinking about a line from Ada Limon’s poem I’d read last evening: “It’s cold today so the sun’s a lie.” I love poetry because it’s the only language I know for telling the truth. What is truth if not a tangled knot of contradictions? And where, except poetry, can we find as much space to hold all these contradictions together?
I actually hesitated, not knowing whether I should write “it was snowing,” “it snowed,” or “we had snow.” What a strange thing to say: we had snow. What a human thing to pretend to own something that could never belong to anyone. No, we didn’t have snow. The snow fell from the white expanse of the sky, quickly and angrily at first, chased by the wind, then slowly, as if apologising for earlier brutality. “It snowed” has a sad finality about it and, not liking the past tense in general, I settled on “it was snowing.”
I got caught in the angry part of snow, while I was walking to my therapy session. During the session, Maya said “you’ve never allowed yourself to fall apart.” She said it without a hint of judgment, but not as if it was a good thing. And I had a moment of recognition, not only of myself, but of my mother, her frail figure at the kitchen table when dad had his accident. She would come home after ten or twelve hours of senseless, back-breaking work, disappear into the kitchen and smoke, smoke, smoke. But never fall apart, not once during those seven years. I recognised her mother, whom I saw only on photos. How old was she, about twenty or younger, when Germans took her from her family and forced her to work at the rope factory as a de-facto slave. Falling apart is not in my genes, we simply don’t do this. There will be nobody to pick us up.
Still, I wonder, what it would feel like. I wonder, if I’d let myself fall apart, just a little, if I allowed myself some deep rest, would the effect of it reverberate back to my mother? Would it travel in time to heal the wounds? Would it actually help?
When for the past three months I was seeing only darkness.
I have not expected everything to hurt as much as it hurts right now. I have not expected to feel so helpless and so angry. For a brief moment last year I fancied myself wise, almost invincible in my wisdom, an elder in the making. Now I look at myself in brief distorted reflections in windows and toilet room mirrors and see a scared thirteen year old, her life stolen from her by her father’s freakish accident and immigration laws.
This morning I read about Trump’s demands for Ukrainian rare earth mining rights in exchange for aid. I felt breath leaving my body. Of course, I thought, this was coming. They will never be sated. They will never have enough. They are the Windigo. They will consume us.
The land that is source of my memories, my identity, the land that is source of my love and connection, my birthright, the land that has birthed us, that in these past three horrible years has opened again her womb to cradle the bodies of our sons and daughters, of our youth and our elders, the land that is worth dying for is just a source of rare materials to them. These materials are not even rare, but their extraction and refinement will transform the land into a dead landscape. They will kill my land to make more Teslas. To give our children a chance to survive, they will force us to sacrifice the children of our children. I cannot even start describing the feeling of violation.
As I was ruminating, the train suddenly stopped and remained immobile for a very long time. Everyone was relatively calm, absorbed in their books and phones. Everyone, except a large, burly older man, dressed in rocker’s attire with massive silver rings on each fingers and dirty hair, a kind of person I instinctively dislike. “Goddammit” said the man quietly to himself. And then, more loudly and insistently over and over and over “goddammit!”
They made us get out of the train, wait on the platform, then get into another train and still nothing was moving. The angry man now found a seat, but kept cursing. Then we heard a loud, clear child’s voice: a mother with a boy around six squeezed into the already full and motionless train. The angry man got up immediately, no longer cursing. “Here, sit kid!” The kid ignored him. Instead, he weaselled through the crowd to the front of the train where I was standing. I want to be in front when the train moves, announced the kid. I nodded. I do the same, I said. The boy had the most beautiful curly hair that looked almost like wool and large dark brown eyes. Just as he positioned himself in the front, facing the window, miraculously, the train came to motion. Maybe it’s thanks to you, I said. He considered my suggestion and nodded his accord. I will drive the train, he said to his mother.
The boy started making train sounds. I watched him for a while, then looked around and saw many people looking at him and smiling, as if they were truly grateful to this little stranger for driving us towards destination. Be careful, said his mother, now also involved in the game, the train will enter the tunnels, you have to slow down. The tunnel, the boy exclaimed with unabashed enthusiasm, oh yes! And this is the exact moment when my heart decided to break into a thousand pieces and the tears flowed.
We had a soft, fluffy, abundant snow today. The world is so quiet. As soon as my kids settle down, I have to step outside and take a picture. Breathe it in for a moment.
Of all the shitty news of the past weeks, the one that has hit me the hardest, strangely, is the news about shutting down USAid. I can’t believe it is all ending like this. All symbols of power and progress of my youth shattering before my eyes. They weren’t very good symbols, but without them I feel unmoored. I can’t believe it is ending like this. Not in a bang, or a whisper, but in an incomprehensible ramble.
I feel resentful. I certainly feel the loss of what little agency I’ve built over past year and the years before and I feel fucking angry. All this work, all this sacrifice, all this trying to become someone – just to find out, twenty years later, that this someone doesn’t exist. Maybe, never existed in the first place. The irony – my first scholarship program, the one that sent me to Alabama, was called Freedom Support Act. Now there is neither support, nor freedom. I am thinking of the ones who are twenty now. What do THEY believe in? Are they smarter than we were?
My daughter today said that she wished she’d lived at the time before the colonisation of the Americas. I don’t think she really means that, but who knows. I said, carefully, that life was not that easy at that time. She said, I know, but at least I wouldn’t be afraid of the end of the world. I still don’t know if I’m doing it right. Would it be better to let her believe that everything is alright? Or could I do a better job at teaching her how to live as the world is ending?
Today was surprisingly good. Then why I feel this particular sadness in the evening? I miss my family, I miss home, I am afraid of all these things that are happening that may happen. It is never not hurting.
Tonight, as I was helping my son to change into his pyjamas, I noticed that the tiny blond hairs between his shoulder blades grow in a spiral pattern. The same pattern that I saw long time ago in a shallow pool on the seashore. The same pattern that, whenever I notice it, anywhere, makes me feel at the same time important and insignificant.
Tonight I dreamt that I was saying good bye to my colleague. It was in a cafe with white walls and white furniture, near a large bright window. She was wearing a light wool top of light greenish blue, I never saw one like this on her, but it looked good. It was one of these strange vivid dreams where I was crying so hard that I felt my whole chest contract. The contraction lasted long after I woke up, laying very still, very quietly, thinking how I can be kind.
I picked up another book of poetry at the library. It wasn’t even planned. I was looking for something, anything, by Ross Gay. Turned out that something was his poems. Turned out that his poems are even better than his essays, which I dearly love. I am surrounding myself with layers upon layers of poetry. I am keeping very quiet. I am spending long time staring at my screen, thinking of everyone I want to write to, writing nothing. I am wintering.
I borrowed the book of poetry. I decided that I have to read poetry, to read more poetry, not occasionally, but on purpose. So, I borrowed this book of poetry and started reading from page one. It seemed weird and disjointed, but also strangely rhythmic. And only when I got to page four, I swear it’s not a metaphor, I’m making nothing up and I am not dumb, but it was page four as I finally realised that I was reading the contents. I said it was not a metaphor, but it must be a metaphor for something. I feel very lonely these days and miss my communities fiercely.
It is very cold outside, but if you endure the first ten minutes of discomfort the pain will pass and you start enjoying the crisp air and the absolute silence.
Today is the first day of the second Trump’s presidency, but the worst news is the passing of Leonora, a bright, smart, brave young woman who was a fierce advocate for her community and for all immigrant women. I can’t believe she is gone, just as I can’t believe we have circled back to trump madness. Today is also Martin Luther King Jr. day and with all respect, I disagree with MLK on one thing. The arc of history doesn’t point towards justice. It doesn’t point towards anything. History has no driving force. Of course, MLK, Baptist pastor, believed in the second coming of Christ and the final judgment. I used to believe it too. I used to think that I lived in the world where good people’s prayers were heard and where bad people somehow got their punishment. Now, as an adult, I live in the world where good people get hurt or simply fail, whereas bad people seem to thrive and prosper. And I have to teach my children that even if we don’t win in the end, we still can choose to be good people. This in itself is a victory.
Small Rebellions 