Tuesday, November 16
from TO BE IN A TIME OF WAR To transform matter into spirit. To cross the threshold. To abolish all signs, then go after them. To decode the future. To rust. To wonder how to digest defeat instead of vomiting it in the middle of the night, and go back to one's bed and pull the covers. To try to be convinced that New York is an interesting place. To throw a disillusioned regard on the courtyard, to call that a garden! To be exasperated and leave for the Park. To try to avoid little pools of melted snow. To stand under a tree and try to count spots of snow on its trunk. To admire light-yellow broom trees. To follow a trail. To slow down, returning to 90th Street. To enter left, then right, push a button in the elevator, fetch the key, enter . . . enter a void. To sweep the living-room in order to disperse all the cluttering angels. To think of California which is receding. To be bored. To fling a vision, into the air, of Baghdad disappeared. To lose energy on anger. To encapsulate the present. To be agitated in order to not be more restless. To give way to the body's floodgates. To observe intensely the picture of Iraqi corpses lying on their land. To wish the end of everything, oneself and others. To return to those images and transform them into icons. To pray. To move forward into parading indifference. To bury one's feelings. To feel relief at the hairdresser. To stroll. To clean out some memories and allow death to manifest itself. To project the movie of things that just happened, let bitterness invade the soul. To fight regrets and lose the battle. To know that when it's nighttime here it's early morning in Baghdad. To think of Badr Shaker al Sayyab. To descend into his tomb to inform him that Bassorah is being destroyed. To wash blood off its people's faces. To leave Badr in his sleep. To fly back to New York the indifferent, the wounded. To remember Innana's poems. To call Babylon's gods. To wish that they join the fight, and know that that won't happen. To foresee vengeance in death. To face the iridescent inner chaos. To start a grey day. To lose the limit between the self and its environment. Buy two newspapers in order to double the horror. To reach the bottom of horror. Turn distances into a tunnel. Receive a package. Read Bobby's letter predicting world-wide cataclysm. Believe him. To enter Time's movement. To walk around the block. To remove wet shoes. To watch one's heart-beats. To give up writing the letter, give up everything. To need some sleep. To swallow the pill. To wait for Ruth and Annea. To let the body do the thinking about the war. To buzz with fatigue. To dream (almost) of canals and planted fields. To climb mountains, but it's not true. To be glued to the ground. To hurt because they are hurting. To bury the living-dead. To lower one's mask. To clean the bath-tub with disgust. To feel guilty and blame it on the war. To be puzzled by the enormity of what is happening. To live in a kind of luxury, avoid the idea that it could be different. To wait for the end of that which will not end. (Etel Adnan, 1925-2021)