In a comment to yesterday’s post, S gifted me with this clip.
I watched it 3 times, and laughed so hard I cried.
Watch it. Go ahead and pee yourself.
Laugh the window wide open.
March 14, 2011
Tsunami of the mind.
I wrestled with this post.
I wanted to tell you about how I have felt the rising surge of a tsunami inside of me. I wanted to explain to you the embarrassing similarities I see between the crack of a seabottom fault line that sends waves of repercussions through an entire country, and the hungering for air that becomes a sea of despair engulfing the island of a single human. One occurs on a grand scale of destruction, terrifying the entire world. The other, a small, singular event, less noticeable than the clapping of a butterfly.
I wanted to tell you about the panic attack I had driving up the 5 freeway, or the time I was stuck in the middle seat of a grounded plane, without space or oxygen, or the most recent source of panic: waiting for an upcoming sinus surgery, seeing the CT scans of what my sinuses look like compared to what they are supposed to look like, air siphoned into my nostrils as if breathing through needle thin straws. I imagine the quicksand sludge of my sinus passages. I imagine the dank recesses of the sinus cavity, my nose, behind my eyes, in my cheeks and forehead: deep, dark, airless, and stuck. No air, and the waves overtake me.
I wanted to tell you about how easy it is to get swept away by the immense power of panic. It fills, sloshes, and drags me through the water, leaving me breathless and weak until I’m deposited, sometimes after a few moments, sometimes after several hours, adrift in lapping waves. I wanted to tell you about this because I don’t know how to acknowledge the unfolding crisis in the way it deserves, because I don’t know how to make the universal personal, other than to tell you about the sea inside.
How do we enter the heart of the Japanese mother whose life has been swiftly carried away like blown dandelion seeds?
How do we walk in the shoes of the barefoot elderly woman from Natori, lifted out from under piles of debris, her face strained in–what? Pain? Horror? Resolute survival?
The snapshots of destruction and loss line my eyelids, and all I think about is that unstoppable swell that rises as naturally as the sun, indifferent to our desires or grief. I watch the distant chaos grow. The waves of panic, particular to my own little life, jostle more violently . I look for something to hold on to, as if something exists that can keep us safe. I feel anchored by my family and a few friends, my familiar home, streets that make sense, a clinic that knows me and won’t let me fall through the cracks. Stupid child, asking for mommy, believing in a mercy that was never promised, wanting these pushpins to press me in to life, to secure me from falling off the edge of the world.
There is nothing holding us in place. But still I try. Don’t you? Doesn’t every last one of us?
There is a field near my daughter’s school, wild and deserted. Filled with tall grasses and wildflowers, the scent of honeysuckle is sharp enough to break through my blocked sinus passages. I gulp the scent in and it somehow stills the waters. And another relief that came as a surprise. In writing this post, reliving the panic through the telling of it, I had to open a window with trembling fingers and submit myself to cool air. To my left, sitting on the ledge of our roof, I noticed a mourning dove sitting calmly. The sound of the window opening didn’t frighten her, and my loud grasping for air didn’t disturb her either. Her black grieving marble eye surveyed the world below. Her perfect stillness steadied me. I watched the dove and held the windowsill, held on for dear life.
I am so sorry for your pain. And your pain. And yours, and yours, and yours.
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Nature’s Indifference. (click link to read entire poem)
When I am Asked by Lisel Mueller
When I am asked
how I began writing poems,
I talk about the indifference of nature…
