Vigil for our Breath

“Do you wanna join us for meditation?”

“I’m too angry.”

I had caught him, mid torrent, his throat still strained and stretched from volleying, “Stop killer cops!” and “Justice for Ezell Ford!” across 1^st Street. But no one responded and the words bounced then rolled still under the shade of trees. Unnoticed by the assembly of mourners. Mourning the French journalists of noxious lure, of churning hate bait breeding new “terrorists” from the Muslim ghettos of relegated scum. Their caricature hands and satire voices were cut short. And this crowd, this massive crowd gathered in the lawn of city hall in front of gallant salutes of LA’s finest in blue. Children perched on shoulders to peer at the pomp and honor showered on provocateurs who had no problem feeding the public fear. Misunderstanding. Zombie mob hate. Immigration Invasion. Mass immigration from the THIRD world. NON European. Fertile infiltration, litters of criminals, North African French Muslims, American Blacks. So their pens, protected. And our brown and Black children’s laughter and play sucked in to avoid reprisal. For living and undoing silence. The vigil for Hedbo reporter lives lost continued. Turning away from the black life and lives taken across the street by police that now pushed papers.

How barbaric and unjustified these terrorist assassins. All Muslims should apologize. How insensitive and aggressive these Black protestors. All Blacks should abide the law, be grateful and settle down. How disgusting to unsee humanity and blink away your neighbors’ suffering, to only grieve those that look like you. To grieve what you claim are the liberties they stood for when it was always and only your right to be blind.

I looked deeply at my Black brother.

 “Everyone needs a break from anger.”

“My anger’s keeping me warm.”

***

I spread out the blanket my Jiji had sewn; royal purples, midnight blues, spring greens to cushion us from the cold of grey. Our circle kept wiggling outwards, making room for more. An elderly woman in a chair. The lead organizer’s four children. I brought the bell from Deer Park. Cedar wood and Rosemary essence. Shawls to cover shoulders. Hafiz. Whatever I could carry to imbue this landmark of loss and injustice with sacredness. It’s hard to temper your voice, know when and how to insert instructions between horns and sirens and concrete geysers. We checked in with what filled us with happiness and out with hands clasped, filling lungs then letting air tumble out in cascades of laughter. Laughing yoga, my 8 year old guru requested. In between we sat. Breathed. Released. Tried. We adjusted numb feet, scratched elbows, straightened and slouched. I asked them to take a break from movement, from crafting and challenging and strategy. A break to catch their breath and let it touch the parts that hurt. 

Conspiring With Love

We met a week before the Gujarat Genocide event in LA. I bought him a ginger beer while I gripped the slender end of a pint of stout. I said I heard he was a healer. He said he heard about the event I was co-organizing, said it seemed to be a dialogue on the history of Gujarat, his native state, that was missing from his childhood education. That, as a Hindu man, it was crucial he come and fill in the blanks of his heritage. That was April 2012.

Now, in March 2013, we’re settling into our new flat across from Parimal Garden in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Every Sunday we sweep and mop the entire place together. Every morning and evening we sit side by side for Vipassana meditation. And when gravity relents and orbits bloat, we facilitate play and healing and conversation with youth.

In one such circle we sit now. In the Muslim ghetto of Jamalpur. Famous for its fruit stands. Different sized palms, an array of gradient browns, cupped and held. Knees a braid of continuity. We sit together in meditation. The children close with a prayer. We marinate in blessings of the most potent. “May we trust in ourselves…” Later we’d be told that all throughout the rest of the afternoon, as other children joined for tuitions, a seven or nine year-old instructor would emerge. “Ok, so you have to sit very still. And then close your eyes like this. Right. Good. Then listen to your breath and just pay attention.” From 2 guides, splinters of seeking and sharing yield a dozen. And sitting with stillness, sitting with self within community becomes joyful. A practice that’s passed like eager turns at kabadi. Spirit heights climb over 3 feet bodies. And the profound wisdom of youth drenches us all in brilliant smiles. 

Strange How a Melody...

Strange how a melody can call you back despite its words. Makes you wonder where this prayer came from? Whether it really originated in you? In your circle, in your crossed legs numb from refrains? Arwa ben’s voice sugary even as it carried the accounts of martyrs from Karbala into the basement gathering in Ohio. Not knowing, I called them songs and was sternly corrected. We didn’t sing, we mourned into infinity. I didn’t join. Then or ever. Even a catchy melody couldn’t draw out my voice, already stuffed into an anxious chest and refusing to be aroused by empathy. Also, the stories fitted to this melody, they didn’t belong to me. Arrows puncture thirsty infant throat. A family outnumbered, one by one slaughtered. Description vivid, yes, but my imagination remained unemboldened. No colors filled in the shadows, no place hugged the characters into reality, not even red oozed from their wounds. I felt. Nothing. Even more nothingness when the sobs broke the melody and were passed around like turns with a razor blade, each person daring to dig deeper into the pulse and pity of the past until it erupted from wrists. The more that sprang, the more secret glee. Sitting shoulder to shoulder with this wave of hysteria I wondered how they related to the faceless. Maybe tragedies of this life, of fathers buried by someone else’s hands, of 7-year old brothers catching death from one skinned knee, were cut and pasted onto those blank faces. Not one line, one phrase stays with me today, but the melody that housed them, when it resurfaces, brings a comfort and a connection I can’t explain.

Each time its not the story, but the weight and sway of the notes. The repetition of nostalgia that rouses me. And it comes unexpected. A different basement. Hollowed out shopping center re-walled with play. Races dipped in colors and tracked on the walls. Their prayer evokes no solitary suffering. Doesn’t bang on chests demanding blood rise and fall with battles of ancestors. It crescendos to present joys, to the hopes of children enchanted by a single ajwain plant thriving from a humble clay base. Framed by rare squares of sun. In this circle, hands are little yet kinetic conductors of greatness. Chorus overcomes. Familiarity sinks my knees deeper. A reincarnated melody sputters my heart to restart. And prayer comes to life.  

My Spine

July 21st, 2012

In my spine I imagine a brontosaurus tail

Ancient, petrified and rigid

Bone segments hovering in space

Arcing into endpoints

Finite

In my spine I remember the future fears

Of inheriting his

Shrinking him by inches at age 18

Forever capping growth

And disintegrating cartilage connectors

Potential fused into a handicap sticker

Dangling from the dashboard

In my spine I seek aliveness

Sensation beyond a structure

That keeps me standing

Beyond a beam that bolsters my gait

In my spine I unlock fluids of vitality

Twisting, wringing out toxins

Arms and legs splayed and extended,

I reach past length

And find immaterial

Forever

In my spine I envision a trail

My heart walks

From hip holding sacred sensuality

To crown of synaptic power

Massaging in awareness and compassion

With each kiss

Conjuring fertile soil

This sitting, a portal

*First week of Ramadan 2012*

I take my pastel musalla[1]

Match the edge to yours

Flower arches lifting off into

Three-dimensional domes

This sitting is a portal

Feet settled is magic

Next to you is divine remembrance

Tuck orni under chin

Make sure it’s secure

You help me without condescension

As you always do

This sitting is a portal

Feet settled is magic

Next to you is divine remembrance

These days you use a chair

12 hour shifts serving others

sucked out calcium from bones

Both of our hands blossomed with knowledge

Here is our niyat[2]

This sitting is a portal

Feet settled is magic

Next to you is divine remembrance

I look over at the musalla cover

Nani had sewn for me

And I never use

Pearl-beaded, gaudy pink

Crumpled at the bottom of vain dispossession

Later in Bombay I’d hear of her agile, crafting hands

Giving, giving, just like you

This sitting is a portal

Feet settled is magic

Next to you is divine remembrance

I take my time

Wanting to pronounce with my new

Arabic prowess

We meet at the tahiyyat[3]

Turning heads at ancestors

Ghost limbs growing nerves

In an instant

This sitting is a portal

Feet settled is magic

Next to you is divine remembrance

---

[1] Prayer mat

[2] intention

[3] direct translation: greeting; last prayer of namaaz or salaat 

End of vision

 

Length. Length of string and extended hopes of flight. The invisible connection between this grilled rectangle rooftop and a square of colored paper stretched over wood sticks and set against the unknown, as if to say, it’s possible to rise. Careful measure of slack and tension, both ends tug to give you shape though you continually defy us and carve your own path in the sky. I hold an end of you in my hand, feeding more of you into infinity, lengthening you with my intentions.

And when the head of your purpose bursts off like a plump bud, you plummet as well but without the violence of falling. You drift gently towards the familiar element of earth; bound to its gravity just as you’ve floated above it, it is another home. I wonder where you land and trace your journey back to my hands.

I wind and reel and retract and you inch along the streets. Knotted around and amongst the coarse and crumbling barked branches. I pull you through a Banyan tree, the tree that named my first home in India, where roots crowd in curtains, draping down and dangling towards the soil they’ve left, making beginnings ambiguous in this swarm of life and growth. You run across the back of a street dog, cradled in dirt, her home wherever she can be unnoticed for a little while. You dip into the communal steel pot, triangle cuts of white plastic falling near the gas cylinder, mouths of milk releasing sharp streams, leaves loosening brown/red color in a seething bath. This moment is home for all those whose thoughts press into glass cups.

You weave a dance past commotion, sliding between the feet of four people staggered in the backseat of a shared rickshaw, feeling for ripeness on stacks of round and taut skin. The movement that crosses you never ceases your steadiness.

And soon I see your tail crawl up the side of the building, over the terrace wall, the spool in my hands containing your ephemeral journey and all I can think of doing is launching you out again and again because you don’t belong here, so tangible and material in my hands.

Cantaloupe Carcass

*Summer 2008*



You’ve carved out

Any flesh

Clinging to the lacey,

Pink,

Walls

Of my melon hopes,

Gourding my insides

Ravages of pulp

Splashing on the floor,

Lines of life

Following

Veins in tiles.

I need a thicker skin

To kiss here.

This flimsy farce

Of protective pricks

Turn inward,

Puncture brutally,

So-called roughness

Betrayed

By excessive bruising.

I’ve drained my respect

To wet too many lips.

Craving fleeting romance

Because it flees

So I can lay alone afterwards

Suffering,

Drying my penetrated sanctuary

With salt and endless sun,

Too petrified and hallow

To be vulnerable

To intrusion

Anymore.