gaza grief

Yehuda Amichai, “Wildpeace” 
 
Not the peace of a cease-fire,
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill,
that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floating, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds--
who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.)
 
Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.
 
“Wildpeace” from The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, copyright © 1996 by Yehuda Amichai. Reprinted by permission of University of California Press Books.
 
 
POETIC THEMES
           This entry was written for Veteran's Day, but I brought it into classes this week because we needed a lil' Amichai. Which is not to say there is some anti-Palestine statement here - fer Chrissakes. All this polarization, where one's duty is to make a grandiose proclamation about the rightness and wrongness of things, in order to feel we are adequately "doing something" about the state of the world... Bayo Akomolafe calls this "frontal solidarity," and argues for the importance of alternate political choreographies. In a moving, tearful 3-hour gathering yesterday, Bayo and Resmaa Menakem spoke to the importance of the pause, the importance of making space for halting, exploratory, uncertain, fugitive movements alongside the tensions of the moment. The sacred pause where we back off the inclination to DO as the only solution to upheaval, and instead take a moment to be with our grief, to listen to what it has to teach.
           So let's continue with our wayfinding crabwalk, allowing for complexity and always, always, making way for feeling first. Here are the affirmations we have been synching with our movements this week, adapted from a meditation by Chani Nicholas: "May I remember the ways I'm free. May I remember the ways I'm at peace. May I remember the ways I am safe. May I remember the ways I am loved." We have closed each class by expanding this supplication to encompass all beings in the familiar invocational mantra: "May ALL beings everywhere be free from suffering and have joy." This has been our version of the Tonglen practice described below. I am deeply grateful for your presence in class this week, and I am feeling the weight of the trust you've put in me, to create a holding environment for all this pain. May we continue with this prayer, casting its spell in our hearts and across the oceans. 

            I don’t have a lot to say about Veterans Day. It gives me the same feeling I had in middle school when I encountered Randall Jarrell’s gut-punch poem, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.” Like the wind is knocked out of me and I can’t say much. Like when I threw up after watching “Gallipoli” with my dad (who was in the military). Maybe wartime losses should feel like that: nightmare and black flak. Animal. And Jarrell’s decimating last line that washes out the body with a hose.
            But the thing is, the jolt and shock of violence that America feeds on all day, every day has dulled us to the point of inaction. It serves to bolster Empire. So instead of rolling around in violent imagery all day, we could try for a little reparation. Amichai survived the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, then World War II, only to face his country’s future—endless violence with no promise of a ceasefire. Amichai’s perspective is the wisdom of a “great weariness,” when face to face with no aftermath, no healing for wounds. “Wildpeace” instead just hopes for some kind of rest, rest from the exhaustion of running a race where the baton passed from generation to generation is an orphan--an orphan whose baby doll is a talking toy gun. And isn’t exhaustion one way peace finally graces the body? Suddenly the fight goes out of us, and with no drama, no “big noise,” a sense of exhausted surrender descends “like lazy white foam.” Maybe instead of celebrating war heroes today, we might instead, “as in the heart when the excitement is over,” let our psychic field lie fallow to make a space for peace. “Let it come / like wildflowers.”
 
 
PRACTICE
            It feels apt to embody the attrition of “Wildpeace” by fatiguing the fight-or-flight muscle (the psoas) until it releases. The psoas is more than the connection between upper and lower body; it actually becomes the diaphragm, which is in turn tethered to the adrenals, all functioning as a whole system to rev up the violence. In order to catch a moment of reprieve from the flood of stress hormones that amp up the nervous system, we’ll try to soothe the psoas by wearing it out. Stand next to a wall and rest one hand on it for a sense of orientation, support, and solidity. Place the foot proximal to the wall on a large book (or step on a staircase or yoga block). Swing the outside leg forward and back in a modest arc for a minimum of three minutes on each leg. Use minimal muscular effort, allowing the weight of the leg to provide the required momentum. Be sure to keep the hip points level and allow the rocking motion to tip the pelvis in its anterior/posterior plane.
When you’ve pooped out the psoas, and hopefully its connection to the fight reflex, come to sit quietly and witness the mental field. One way to welcome the wildflowers is the practice of Tonglen, which is typically a kind of reversal of violence. Picture someone you know who is suffering. Holding their image very concretely in your mind, envision taking in all of their pain and darkness on the inhalation and sending them all your light, joy, and power on the exhalation.