A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit

"Disasters are, most basically, terrible, tragic, grievous, and no matter what positive side effects and possibilities they produce, they are not to be desired. But by the same measure, those side effects should not be ignored because they arise amid devastation. The desires and possibilities awakened are so powerful they shine even from wreckage, carnage, and ashes. What happens here is relevant elsewhere. And the point is not to welcome disasters. They do not create these gifts, but they are one avenue through which the gifts arrive. Disasters provide an extraordinary window into social desire and possibility, and what manifests there matters elsewhere, in ordinary times and in other extraordinary times."

A Paradise Built in Hell : The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster
Rebecca Solnit, Viking Penguin, New York, 2009

Thanks, by W. S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you
with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

A Plagued Journey, Maya Angelou

There is no warning rattle at the door   

nor heavy feet to stomp the foyer boards.   

Safe in the dark prison, I know that   

light slides over

the fingered work of a toothless   

woman in Pakistan.

Happy prints of

an invisible time are illumined.   

My mouth agape

rejects the solid air and

lungs hold. The invader takes   

direction and

seeps through the plaster walls.   

It is at my chamber, entering   

the keyhole, pushing

through the padding of the door.   

I cannot scream. A bone

of fear clogs my throat.

It is upon me. It is

sunrise, with Hope

its arrogant rider.

My mind, formerly quiescent

in its snug encasement, is strained

to look upon their rapturous visages,   

to let them enter even into me.   

I am forced

outside myself to

mount the light and ride joined with Hope.

Through all the bright hours   

I cling to expectation, until   

darkness comes to reclaim me

as its own. Hope fades, day is gone   

into its irredeemable place

and I am thrown back into the familiar   

bonds of disconsolation.

Gloom crawls around

lapping lasciviously

between my toes, at my ankles,   

and it sucks the strands of my   

hair. It forgives my heady   

fling with Hope. I am

joined again into its

greedy arms.

  ~~ Maya Angelou, A Plagued Journey

Heavy, Hieu Minh Nguyen

The narrow clearing down to the river
I walk alone, out of breath

my body catching on each branch.
Small children maneuver around me.

Often, I want to return to my old body
a body I also hated, but hate less

given knowledge.
Sometimes my friends—my friends

who are always beautiful & heartbroken
look at me like they know

I will die before them.
I think the life I want

is the life I have, but how can I be sure?
There are days when I give up on my body

but not the world. I am alive.
I know this. Alive now

to see the world, to see the river
rupture everything with its light.

 -- Hieu Minh Nguyen, Heavy

Cake, by Noah Eli Gordon

Look, you
want it
you devour it
and then, then
good as it was
you realize
it wasn’t
what you
exactly
wanted
what you
wanted
exactly was
wanting

 -- Noah Eli Gordon, Cake

The Trauma of Everyday Life, Mark Epstein

When we stop distancing ourselves from the pain in the world, our own or others, we create the possibility of a new experience, one that often surprises because of how much joy, connection, or relief it yields. Destruction may continue, but humanity shines through.


We’re all traumatized by life, by its unpredictability, its randomness, its lack of regard for our feelings, and the losses it brings. Each in our own way, we suffer. Even if nothing else goes wrong -- and it’s rare that this is the case, old age, illness and death loom just over the horizon like the monsters our children need us to protect them from in the night.


Ajahn Chah met with us after we share the monastery lunch. We asked him to explain the Buddhist view. What he had learned …. What could we bring back and share with the West?

Before saying a word, he motioned to glass by his side. “Do you see this glass?” he asked us. “I love this glass. It holds the water admirably. When the sun shines on it, it reflects the light beautifully. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring. Yet for me, this glass is already broken. When the wind knocks it over or my elbow knocks it off the shelf and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ But when I understand this glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious.”

What was he referring to exactly? The glass, the body, this life, the self? …

Ajahn Chah was modelling a different way of relating. We could use, appreciate, value, and respect the glass without expecting it to last. In fact, we could use it more freely, with more abandon, with more care …

-- Mark Epstein, The Trauma of Everyday Life 

Another Poem, by Geoffrey G. O'Brien

I bypassed all the compromise,
The first ten problems of speech
And the latest, the sharpest, the contest,
Then began, having already fallen,
To rise just less, weaker than
My chore, yours, made else
By othering, by day by day,
The schedules, the routes, task
Whose claim I forgot to throw off,
Rising less but somewhat up anyway
With a kind of strength for having
Done so several times before.
I mean all times so far
Which is the taste of coffee gone
This latest one, and that it sticks
Like nothing else has ever done.
It isn’t a calamity so much
As a disaster that it’s not one.
Things already were real, are
Never just. Did not just get,
Can’t help being so. This
Massive ordinary cloud
Where I surrendered to
Filling out a form in the rain
That doesn’t come or does,
Sent down or kept in overplus
Till the next storm’s approved,
The face notified of its context,
The sequence continuing west
West I said west, turning up
To receive some all,
To celebrate that share of sense
Breaking into day then run
After it as through gray games
I plan to win by losing only
Every time but one, the next
To last or after that, though
What it’s called when it comes
I don’t, I do, pretend to know.

  -- Geoffrey G. O'Brien, Another Poem