Pau Donés is battling Cancer. I know that he is because I read it, saw it remotely, through the invisible and intricate, radial and far-reaching spindles of our connecting web. This one stays with me, since September, when he first spoke of it and of surgeries and chemotherapies to come. I hold it in my heart and it comes up gasping out of the waters of my horizon when I least expect it. I marvel at this person I don’t know, who sends out nurturing messages for his fans and curses the treatments just a little – enough to help us reach understanding of what a hell it all must be, but not too much so that we realize that his humor and soul are still intact. He is hopeful and proactive. He posts photographs of a pasture – that mythical Plain in Spain? – and of a gorgeous black horse, and I wonder, what must it all be like? His struggle is present in me, and my insides reflexively send something up into the void that will comfort.
A snowy egret starts the dawn with a morsel of tiny fish he has come upon at the shores of Lake Anza. In the afternoon, he feeds on the hard-to-catch, water-skimming insect at Aquatic Park. This is a peaceful place in juxtaposition to the nearby, frenzied traffic of I-80, as it dissects the limit of our East Bay City. Snowy Egret’s daily feeding territory is vast. This is what his belly holds. The sustenance is disparate but to the same purpose.
We all have the infinite capacity to hold.
We are all holding both spirit and love, but also personal tragedies, sorrows, and horrors of war.
These are what our spiritual bellies contain.
There are too many places hit by violence and despair. It is like the dentil pattern of battlements on a fortified castle. We run to cover one opening, and no sooner, another one is in urgent need of protection. Our psyches are being attacked on all sides by the violence on our people, all people, and we can no longer endure. So we go on breathless, in a continual out-of-body experience from a world hemorrhaging in a polarization no one seems to know how to fix.
We hurt for Kenya, for Calcutta. Transgressions are happening every instant, everywhere.
And last Friday, it was Paris.
Censoring someone else’s mourning was one of the ugliest sides of the grief that blanketed the web this week.
As I heard my niece say once on another subject, and an expression of hers that I love, Don’t get it twisted.
A visible show of support after the attacks on Paris that evening was not an exclusion of anyone else in our human community. For me, it was a stern and resolute “I have had it. Not. One. More. Anywhere.” It was a show of solidarity for all places in the world that have suffered similarly. As a mother, as a human, I cannot withstand this carcinogenic, vicious circle of violence and war anymore.
There is sad irony in that the homage for Paris severed and divided people so violently. It was a simple thing, something of this world: somewhere, a graphicky-minded girl/guy spent a few minutes on Photoshop to create the ubiquitous tri-colored filter. The mockery of the method was the start.
And then I think, let’s try to see this as they say in Perú, “Con los ojos del amor.” Literally: With the eyes of love, somewhat akin to rose-colored glasses, I suppose. Let’s filter this all through kindness and compassion. I would hope that if someone sees me texting a small green heart emoji to my sister, they won’t stop and cackle that it is such a cheesy thing to do because the reality, on the recipient’s end, is that my sister will know that the tiny, simple graphic means a hundred things, from “I wish you were here to share this meal with me” to “You are adored right now, today, and every day.” No one needed to justify their tribute. There are so many things that we could have spent our energy on, not ridicule, if we were not shrouded in frustration for the grief of the world.
If I wore a black armband in memory of my Tío Alicho, my sweet, steady and hilarious uncle, no one – let me reiterate: no one – would ever say, “but what about your cousin that passed away?” I can hear my cousin’s caramel voice that afternoon, belting out a Peruvian Vals, while we gathered in his family restaurant eating Choritos a la Chalaca, and everything was fine with the world. A perfect southern hemisphere summer day in 2007. Yes, I wish I could have him back too.
My godson was born in Lyon, France. That flag means, I hope the world will be better by the time you reach 5. Yes, I hold that in my heart. I don't need to explain. But I do today, because I respect you. And you don’t ask for an explanation because you trust and respect me.
It is understandable to feel slighted, but that is not the intent. Exclusion would be a cruel sentiment. If you have ever grieved a loss, and we all have, you know that exclusion has no place in the depths of mourning. Today's tears for Paris are tears for Nigeria too.
A mother is only as happy as her saddest child.
I keep replaying that expression in my mind in the last weeks.
I think of those suffering far away. Those – Like Pau Donés or the nameless war refugee or the person that resorts to horrific retaliations – those whom I have never met. We are only as happy as our saddest child.
I would like a Life in which you didn’t grow up chained to an ancient sorrow, suffocated by an ancient vengeance.
I would like the young Syrian boy and the girl from Long Beach to be sitting in a sunny café discussing astronomy or poring over delicate slivers of balsa wood as they build an architectural model for a children’s center.
If I was watching my child die because of lack of potable water or food, or aching with blistered feet after a 330 kilometer journey along dusty barrenness, it would be a whole different worldview. My needs and my ability to devote of myself to our all would be compromised by the nightmare endured. So I don’t want to Polly Anna this into what it is not. This is a global emergency. That phrase may seem a cliché because we have had to use it so much. But we have had to use it so much because it is our historic and current reality.
The expression Jarabe de Palo, the name of Pau Donés band, seems to mean a big beating, something along the lines of the quintessential Latin American “chancletazo.” It is the big bedroom slipper that your mom is about to fling across the room and at your head when you misbehave. It is that ominous threat that never materializes – like Jimmy’s joke: You are crusin’ for a brusin.’
This worldwide violence is the solid thrashing we need to unite, except this time it is real and it is unbearable.
I think back to afternoons with my daughter, making Papa a la Huancaína and listening to Jarabe de Palo in the kitchen, then sometimes watching Chef José Andrés' quirky cooking show, the one bookended by their song “Adelantando”. Pau Donés' music reminds me of home, of family, even if now his battle conjures up the countless loved ones I have lost to cancer. Pau Donés doesn’t know me; I am not his family. But we are sculpted of the same elements.
How you proceed is very personal, but you know what to do.
I know for myself that I can recalibrate my sights – that I have the power to help somehow, starting somewhere, even modest, that makes change ripple forth.
So don’t lose Heart. And take a break. You cannot maintain accountability for this all at 10 all the time; sometimes you will need to dial it down to 3. Listen to music. Find your strong again. And please post the photo of the leaping Corgi. Please link me the New Wave song that you heard on your way to work, or share the photo of your breakfast burrito. We cannot live encumbered and censored by our world guilt - because we need to stay whole for the purpose ahead.
This that we have been handed - this Cancer - is a call for action. We in our spiritual bellies know that it is no longer about the immobilizing despair of the past. This is our time. Not one more bomb. Not one more daughter or brother. Not one more transgression. And never underestimate your range of compassion. Like the snowy egret, we can hold it all.
We are fully awake.
Today’s music selection is for all of us, and respectfully
For Pau, por tu inspiración y deseándote lo mejor,
For Auguste, in his thriving toddler time,
For Nohemi, who left too soon and is forever in our hearts.
Ode to Joy – by Ludwig van Beethoven, performed by 10,000 humans – Osaka, Japan 2011. A tribute for the Tsunami victims
www.inspiratori.com/music-art/10000-japanese-singing-beethovens-ode-to-joy
Depende – performed by Jarabe de Palo, written by Pau Donés Cirera
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtujUCURgtM