"We do not fit together like puzzle pieces"

We do not fit together like puzzle pieces.
There is no “click” and lock.
We fit together like skin against skin,
Warmth radiating,
Communicating in a rare way, our
Speech filled with new words, our
Vision filled with new tones, our
Hearing made sensitive to the sounds of silence.

I miss the flowers

I miss the flowers
I remember the smell of ferns at summer camp
I wish that words could better describe that smell.

I wish that I could read the smell of a water lily, read the sight of a field of lavender
What is a water lily? What is a field of lavender?

I wish that my gift to you were a flower without a price tag

I gulp at words and cannot quench my thirst.

I drank the stars, drank the constellations and the planets, drank the moon
But I remember a clear night sky in the middle of the desert

A Toast

Take a breath.

I propose that we raise our cups to this. This fleeting pause. This moment of silence between sentences.

Let us toast being here together, in this place, among these words.

8

8
This is not my story. It is a story that was told to me by an Aymara man in the extreme north of Chile, in a place that was part of the Incan Empire before it was part of the Spanish Empire, in a highland valley in the mountains above the driest desert in the world:


“Listen. I have a story for you. It begins with the Spanish invasion. In the beginning, there was trust. But very soon, there was conflict. And the conflict grew and our people were dying. There was fighting and there was more dying. Two brothers, leaders, saw their people dying and walked into the desert. They walked and walked and when they stopped, they called out to the sun god Inti.

“Great Inti! Why have you abandoned us? What have we done wrong?”

And in a vision, Inti appeared to them.

“Great Inti! What must we do? How can we fight back against the white men?”

And Inti replied, “I cannot beat them back. Their god is more powerful than me. They will win this war.”

“Great Inti! Is there nothing that we can do?”

And Inti replied, “You have been great leaders. You have been wise and kind and just leaders. But I cannot defeat their god. So I will give you a plant. After much fighting, you will lose to the white men. They will take your land and they will dominate your people. But this plant will be a blessing for you and a curse for the white men. It will make you as strong as it will make the white men weak. They will make you work and work and when other men would fall, it will sustain you. But upon them, it will be a blight.

And do you know what that plant was? It was the coca plant. And Inti’s prediction came true. The white man won the war and put our people to work. They forced us to work in deep underground mines, but we chewed the coca leaf and we were strong. They forced us to work planting and harvesting food, but we chewed the coca leaf and we were restored. We chewed the leaf at celebrations and after years of hard work, we are still alive, we are still strong. But for the white man, their greed turned the coca leaf into cocaine.”

7

We are like the steel and concrete and fiber optic bones of this country –
A type of alloy, stronger for the number of different components.

You see, refugees built this country. Refugees
Struck by the siren song sung by the Mother
of Exiles, Who called them in with her lamp held high
And offered her bounteous breast to comfort all,
Only to stand helpless as Uncle Sam judged
With a disapproving silence.

“We will make you proud Father!” they vowed
And they worked for that vow:
They built the railroads, stretching their backs
They built aircraft carriers and fighter jets and still he looked on angrily
They brought wonders crafted painstakingly by cramped hands seeking love
And sometimes His silence crept into them.

Let us not forget the lessons of history
Let us not forget the wonders of Rome created not by the warriors, but by the Etruscan artists who shared their homes and their precious geniuses
Let us not forget the majesty of the Ottoman Empire conceived not by the lawyers and politicians, but by the humble travelers
And let us not forget how the wonders crumbled under the weight of fear

-----
That's not done (as with all of these), but it's been brewing in my mind for about a month. Recently, I've felt more patriotic, more hopeful, and more fragile than I ever have before.
Coming back to Tufts has been more of a culture shock than arriving to Chile. In Chile, the culture was gradually revealed to me. But I knew Tufts. I knew what to expect. And coming back after a year of serious changes, I immediately saw things revealed in a very different light.
The most positive surprise has been my Perspectives group. I'm teaching a class to freshmen this fall with my friend Todd and we were "Orientation Leaders" for our incoming students. The university had a number of programs, some of which we attended with them, and some of which we led on behalf of the university. Despite corny sounding topics, I was really amazed at how well some of them went.
At one of the programs, a senior girl made a comment along the lines of "I love Tufts. I believe that if I were stuck in an elevator with any other student at the university, I would listen, I would learn, and I would come to love them." And as she said that, I realized that was true for me as well. I've come to realize that I love almost all of the people that surround me as I move through life. Not in any sort of romantic way, but feeling more than ever that these people have a large piece of my (poetically used) heart. And right now, I'm overwhelmed by that in the best possible way. For whatever reason, I am full of love right now and I want to hold onto that.
(Stepping back down from the poetic and open to the socially acceptable,) I was very impressed and pleased this weekend with my students-to-be. I asked them off-script at two of the events we led to make our discussion work. The discussions covered fairly personal thoughts, feelings, and experiences and I told them that the responsibility for whether or not the discussions are taken seriously is entirely in their hands. The first person that makes a defensive comment that is hurtful or sarcastic will send everyone else scattering back into their shells. And much to their credit, they took it seriously and really treated each other with a lot of respect. I honestly don't know if I could have done that back when I was an frightened, smart ass, anxious, uncomfortable freshman.
To finish the topical circle, I'm really pleased with the diversity at Tufts. There are some interactions, especially across class barriers, - or more than interactions, there are some understandings - that I can't imagine happening as easily where I came from in Chile. Or New Jersey. I don't know how well that will hold up as I adjust back to the university, but we'll see. Whatever the case, I believe that Chile has changed me permanently in a way that I'm not sure that anything else could have. I feel fragile, I feel like an exile twice over, and I feel welcomed back from my self-exile to the Valley of Paradise.

"Ars Poetica?"

Ars Poetica?
When I was little, I would make up songs -
Tiny silly songs about a giraffe or
The way the branches move in the breeze
And as I’d start to sing, I’d choke up and tear.

The words would absorb all the moisture in my throat and
Stick to the sides, making it hard to breathe.

Deprived of oxygen, the words died out for a time.


I’m not sure how I started writing
But I know that when I write, it is like dancing

You become weightless, faceless, as the experience fills you
You communicate unconsciously, swaying, spinning, laughing
What “feels” right becomes all-important as everything else is laid aside.

Writing is a release, it is an expression
Writing is a way to scream into a pillow or scream at society
Or scream at yourself; or perhaps scream for ice cream.
Writing is memory too

Writing is power
Quiet power, subtle power, deep power
What powerful magic these symbols have to evoke
To evoke
To remind, to enrage, to crush, to woo, to paralyze with sentiment
Dangerous power.

Writing is beautiful
It is vulnerable

"Beware of poets"

Beware of poets
Be careful of poets
Knowers of words
Artists of language
Wooers of souls
For they choose:
To sculpt life
Or to sculpt death