On Finding Balance and Reclaiming Past Lives

(Heads up: Sappy Overload coming your way, Sap Attack, Super Sap ~ the following post is pretty damn sappy. Read at your own risk.) Tonight I drove up to the Berkeley campus to meet a student at the Free Speech Movement Cafe and help him with his personal statement for his law school applications. It is so incredibly warm here, and school started last month, so as I drove around looking for parking, groups of undergrads in shorts and Cal t-shirts and backpacks crowded the sidewalks ~ it made me want to be back in school, back at the I-House with my friends, taking a nap on my books, pretending to know something about a lot of things, excited to learn. It's a privileged existence, really, and I miss that blissful angst. Meeting with my student-client was also an eye-opening experience, creating more questions for me than the answers I provided him for his essay and academic/career development. We spent a couple of hours discussing his many achievements and travels, his fight against cancer, and the many questions he has about what he wants to do with his life. It's humbling to have someone look to you for answers about life, and law school, and the legal framing of social issues ~ what do I know, right?. I felt a little overwhelmed ~~ but you know how damn sensitive I am. Here I was speaking with yet another human being, connecting again with someone on a very personal level, but this time not about politics ~~ just about him, and his struggles and studies and society and what the hell it all means. And I drove home, thinking about him and how young he is and how his entire life seems to be in front of him ~ and realizing that mine is as well ~ I have this exciting opportunity I yet have to tell you about, a new beginning maybe, a new chapter in this chaotic life ~~ and when my student-client and I were discussing his personal statement, that's how we broke things down into manageable pieces: the chapters of his life. What chapter am I in? Did I just get out of that creepy dream-sequence, and is the real part about to begin? Am I in the middle of a flashback sequence? There's a lot going on ~~ segments of my past creeping up and sneaking past my present, maybe into my future, but do I want that? On the drive home I thought about part of a poem Saul Williams wrote and included in his "Slam Diaries":

if i could find the spot where truth echoes
i would stand there and whisper memories of my children's future
i would let their future dwell in the past
so that i might live a brighter now

now is essence of my domain
but it contains all that was and will be.....

The "Slam Diaries" are part of the journal that Saul and the other filmmakers kept during the making of the film, Slam. The first time I saw this movie, I was left speechless by its magic ~~ Saul Williams' poetry in particular hit me hard ~~ I mean, brutally honest and passionate and sheer raw emotion ~~ the art of living a way most people are terrified of living.....raw. The filmmakers got real poets to play poets (you must see Beau Sia perform live!), cons to play cons, went to prison for their prison "set" and made real prisoners forget for a few days that they were locked in cages, as their reality was incorporated right into the film during shooting. Slam tells the story of Ray Joshua, an original, gifted young rapper trapped in a war zone housing project known as Dodge City. Unable to find a job, Ray copes with the despair and poverty of his neighborhood by using his wits and verbal talent. In the Slam Diaries, there is this quote by Ray Joshua: "This ain't no metaphor. This is my life."

And do you see now the connection I am finding between George Lakoff's "Metaphors We Live By" and this movie ~ the social constructs of politics ~ the political framework of poetry? So, I have all this whirling around in my head, it feels, like with the force of those waves Hurricane Ivan is hurling at the Coast....and I remembered, went way back into my past and my subconscious, to find this other poem I adore by Saul.....this poem down below which meant so much to me years ago, which my friend Ginger read aloud to me once ~~ and, finally, I reclaimed it ~~ revisited a particular portion of my past, and brought it square and center into my present.....wanting to shape it and remold it into a part of my future ~~ a way to weave love into political activism, the art of awareness, connecting politics to real life. In the Slam Diaries, the Editor writes, "All films are political. If there is zero political consciousness in a film -- that's its politics." And so I feel these days that all life is political ~~~ I don't want my life to have zero political consciousness. And I came home and found the poem ~~ the poem that shouted out at me from the movie screen, the poem I saw Saul Williams perform live, the poem he told me about in person, the poem that meant so much to me in a certain time in my life. And I re-opened the pages, re-uttered the words, rephrased its metaphors, and am reclaiming its imagination:

The Wind's Song

the square root of kiss is a hum
i hum under my breath when i contemplate the drum
of your heartbeat
and my heart beats for your breath
i revel in the wind for mere glimpses

i'm tornado over you
would you look into the eye of my storm
i whirlwind through your life like breeze
and fill your lungs
as we achieve the second power of a hum

i love...

as instruments come to life
through breath
the wind sends my high notes to indigo communions
with Coltrane's Favorite Things

...this is my body which is given for you,
this is my blood which is given for you...

my love like the wind, uncaged
blows time into timeless whirlpools
transfiguring fear and all of its subordinates
(possession, jealousy, fear)
into crumbling dried leaves

my love
is the wind's slave
and, thus, is free

my love
is the wind that is shaped
as it passes through the lips of earthly vessels
becoming words of wisdom
songs of freedom
or simply hot air

my love
is the wind's song:
if it is up to me, i'll never die.
if it is up to me, i'll die tomorrow
one thousand times in an hour and live seven minutes later.
if it is up to me, the sun will never cease to shine
and the moon will never cease to glow
and i'll dance a million tomorrows
in the sun rays of the moon waves
and bathe in the yesterdays of days to come
ignoring all of my afterthoughts
and preconceived notions
if it is up to me, it is up to me
and thus is my love:
untainted
eternal
***
the wind is the moon's imagination wandering:
it seeps through cracks
explores the unknown
and
ripples the grass
my love is my soul's imagination
how do i love thee?
imagine

Comments

[cindylu]

i really liked this entry. i loved working with undergrads, and of course being an undergrad. i kinda want to go back to it. i know grad school is gonna be different.