(no subject)
a reflection on my experiences in jamaica.
You must touch the ground with one hand
while reaching for the sky with the other.
-- Me
In other words, you must do the most basic of work-holding orphans, running wheelchair races, hauling buckets full of pebbles, laughing with handicapped kids-while working towards systematic change-putting Mrs. Kaye through the teachers’ college, challenging Jamaicans to see some white people differently, treating hotel staff as the human beings they are-at the same time. This is the struggle that has captured me this summer and it is one that I think I will be working through for the rest of my life.
I start with this idea because it is my own huge metaphor for what I realized while in Jamaica. It is also a metaphor that can be applied to my own work here in Louisville, KY. As a new teacher, I am most definitely touching the ground with one hand. Most of my students live in poverty and fit almost all of the stereotypes associated with their socio-economic status. I am just now beginning to struggle with the challenge to reach for the sky at the same time-wondering how to change an educational system that is so out-of-touch with reality and trying to identify a positive place for myself within what is already occurring.
This metaphor is also one of balance-you must do both types of work at the same time despite the obvious complication of possibly tearing yourself into two parts. In her reflection, Gina asks, “What does it mean when people become too tired, too overwhelmed to continue in the fight?” To me, it means that you’ve lost the balance that I believe you must have in order to continue in this fight. Personally, it is the reaching for the sky aspect that overwhelms me. Looking up at the stars from the Grandiosa patio one night all that was running through my head was how small I am and how big the changes that I am working for really are. And I constantly have to remind myself that, in the words of Helen Keller, “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.” So I return to touching the ground, creating small changes when and where I can, loving the smallness of individual kindnesses, and understanding that love will never be enough, but without love there is no point in the struggle.
All who look up
To see-how many
Faces? How many
Seen in a lifetime? (Not those
That flash by, but those
Into which the gaze wanders
And is lost
And returns to tell
Here is a mystery,
A person, an
Other, an I?
Count them. Who are five million?)
- from “When We Look Up” by Denise Levertov
As the days I’ve spent in Louisville since returning from Montego Bay accumulate into weeks, I fear that I will grow distant from the realities of Jamaica, that I will become a tourist in my memory and think that the hillsides dotted with dilapidated buildings are quaint and that all of Jamaica that is worth seeing can be seen on the “hip strip,” that I will forget the faces and the emotions and the hearts and blood and bones and skin that make Jamaica real to me. But then I remember that I have looked up, that I have seen so many faces, and those faces did not flash by. I lost myself in their faces and their hearts and I have returned to tell anyone who will listen that those persons, those others, those I’s are real.
Sandra is real. She may never get her visa to visit her son in the United States and she has not had a day off in more than four years, and she is real. Mrs. Kaye is real. Her resilience is beyond comprehension and she is the type of teacher I can only hope to be, and she is real. The newborn baby girl at Blossom Garden is real. She is still so small and new to the world that her whole hand cannot wrap all the way around my pinkie finger, and she is real. Marlon is real. When I pat his back I cannot feel his spine through the tumors and I know I will never see the world in the ways he has, and he is real. Sylvester and Lefty and Roy and Dijory and William and Keno and Nokee and Petagay and Trish and Christopher and Tony and Roy and Mr. Kaye and so many more are all real. They exist. Jamaicans are real and they exist-apart from the tourists and corrupt politicians and the World Bank and near-third-world status and so much more-they are real. They are much too easily overlooked in Jamaica among the luxury resorts with their walls to keep Jamaicans from seeing their own Caribbean Sea and stupid tourists whose boat is docked next to an oil tanker in the bay gawking at the man with his coconuts for sale next to Margaritaville. And here in America they are much more easily ignored among i-phones and cars driving into airports in Britain and an unending war in Iraq and Paris Hilton being released from jail for good behavior.
But they are real. They exist. No one has the right to deny their existence or to overlook it or ignore it. They live in a fucked up system that is far beyond their control. They live within that system not by choice, but because thus far there has been no other choice. We, with all our privilege, owe it to ourselves and to them to, as Gina puts it, “shatter the glass bubble of our safe snow globe worlds.” It’s a terrifying concept in many ways-to “give up what is pleasant, to make your heart vulnerable… for what? To feel something more, to make our voice heard, to be real.” Yes, it is “frightening, challenging, and exhausting… but it is also necessary, beautiful, and genuine.” We open our eyes and we wear our hearts on our sleeves and we take it all in because sometimes that is all we can do. We are vulnerable and exhausted. We love and we love and we touch the ground and reach for the sky and we love some more. We are sometimes lonely and oftentimes too full to make sense of most of it. But we are real and we are struggling and we are moving forward even when we don’t quite know what direction we are going in.
A strong woman is a woman determined
To do something others are determined
Not to be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
Of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
A manhole cover with her head, she is trying
To butt her way though a steel wall.
Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
To be made say, hurry, you’re so strong.
…
Strong is what we make
Each other. Until we are all strong together,
A strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.
- “For Strong Women” by Marge Piercy
It has taken me a long time to become a strong woman. I lost my strong woman-self when I was raped at fourteen. I lost my strong woman-self when I began mutilating my arms and stomach years ago. I lost my strong woman-self after coming out as a lesbian and realizing that I may never get to live my life out in the open like almost everyone else. I lost my strong woman-self to relationships that were unhealthy and to friendships that dead-ended in me caring too much and others not caring at all. But I am a strong woman now. And maybe it is because I am such a strong woman that I am having so much trouble processing what my experience in Jamaica really means to me.
I feel as if I am trying to butt my way through a steel wall and my head hurts. I have placed a manhole over many of the raw emotions from Jamaica and now I don’t know how to remove it. But the pressure behind it is growing and I’m afraid it might just explode and turn me into a no-longer-strong woman. I am a strong woman, and even though I am surrounded by other strong women (and strong men), and together we are made strong, I am a woman strongly afraid. Afraid of losing the precarious balance I am temporarily maintaining between touching the ground and reaching for the sky and afraid of abandoning one struggle in favor of another.
This work, this struggle, is hard no matter who it may benefit. I have my own struggle, my own injustices and inequalities to live every single day. I don't make a big deal out of being a lesbian because I’m used to it. I’ve made the choice to not be actively engaged in the outside struggle for gay/lesbian rights, even though I live the invisible struggle every single day. But now there's another struggle that my eyes have been opened to and that I feel innately connected to. The struggle of the poor, the struggle of the Jamaicans, is real to me now in a way that it never was before, but it's not my difference and it seems disconnected from my struggle here in Louisville. There's more out there in the world that is important and necessary. How do I reconcile the difference I live and the injustice thrust upon me as a lesbian in America with the difference I have witnessed and the injustice that my so-called “people” have thrust upon someone else for centuries? Do I choose to be selfish and focus on my own difference while neglecting the difference of others? Or do I choose to ignore my own struggle in order to focus on the struggle of the poor? Can I do both?
Keep writing in the dark:
A record of the night, or
Words that pulled you from depths of unknowing,
Words that flew through your mind, strange birds
Crying their urgency with human voices,
Or opened
As flowers of a tree that blooms
Only once in a lifetime:
Words that may have the power
To make the sun rise again.
-- from “Writing in the Dark” by Denise Levertov
I find myself writing in the dark-even though it is currently 6:30 pm in the middle of the summer and nowhere near nightfall-and I am writing without a safety net and without a security blanket. I have been pulled from the depths of unknowing and now I am staring this struggle in the eyes. I will not back down, I will not forget, and I will not shut up. I’m not entirely sure where the hell I’m going or what the hell I’m going to do when I get there, but no person and no thing can make Jamaica disappear for me. Sometimes I wish I could close my eyes to all of this and return to my isolated snow globe, but I know that would mean giving up all the beauty that comes with so much heartache. No amount of comfortable familiarity can ever be worth leaving behind the beauty of the raw humanity and the hopeful struggle of the Jamaican people. I am in awe of their strength, their reality, their resilience, and their struggle.
My hope is that someday we-a collective we that has no single face, but is made up of those who have embraced this struggle despite the loneliness and heartache it often brings with it-will be able to make the sun rise again. Someday, we will no longer write in the dark. Someday, we will all be strong together. Someday, we will truly see every face of every person as he or she actually exists. Someday, we will no longer struggle. Someday, we will be able to touch the ground and reach for the sky without feeling torn in half. Someday, we will find a place in this world where love is really all we need because the struggle is over.
You must touch the ground with one hand
while reaching for the sky with the other.
-- Me
In other words, you must do the most basic of work-holding orphans, running wheelchair races, hauling buckets full of pebbles, laughing with handicapped kids-while working towards systematic change-putting Mrs. Kaye through the teachers’ college, challenging Jamaicans to see some white people differently, treating hotel staff as the human beings they are-at the same time. This is the struggle that has captured me this summer and it is one that I think I will be working through for the rest of my life.
I start with this idea because it is my own huge metaphor for what I realized while in Jamaica. It is also a metaphor that can be applied to my own work here in Louisville, KY. As a new teacher, I am most definitely touching the ground with one hand. Most of my students live in poverty and fit almost all of the stereotypes associated with their socio-economic status. I am just now beginning to struggle with the challenge to reach for the sky at the same time-wondering how to change an educational system that is so out-of-touch with reality and trying to identify a positive place for myself within what is already occurring.
This metaphor is also one of balance-you must do both types of work at the same time despite the obvious complication of possibly tearing yourself into two parts. In her reflection, Gina asks, “What does it mean when people become too tired, too overwhelmed to continue in the fight?” To me, it means that you’ve lost the balance that I believe you must have in order to continue in this fight. Personally, it is the reaching for the sky aspect that overwhelms me. Looking up at the stars from the Grandiosa patio one night all that was running through my head was how small I am and how big the changes that I am working for really are. And I constantly have to remind myself that, in the words of Helen Keller, “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.” So I return to touching the ground, creating small changes when and where I can, loving the smallness of individual kindnesses, and understanding that love will never be enough, but without love there is no point in the struggle.
All who look up
To see-how many
Faces? How many
Seen in a lifetime? (Not those
That flash by, but those
Into which the gaze wanders
And is lost
And returns to tell
Here is a mystery,
A person, an
Other, an I?
Count them. Who are five million?)
- from “When We Look Up” by Denise Levertov
As the days I’ve spent in Louisville since returning from Montego Bay accumulate into weeks, I fear that I will grow distant from the realities of Jamaica, that I will become a tourist in my memory and think that the hillsides dotted with dilapidated buildings are quaint and that all of Jamaica that is worth seeing can be seen on the “hip strip,” that I will forget the faces and the emotions and the hearts and blood and bones and skin that make Jamaica real to me. But then I remember that I have looked up, that I have seen so many faces, and those faces did not flash by. I lost myself in their faces and their hearts and I have returned to tell anyone who will listen that those persons, those others, those I’s are real.
Sandra is real. She may never get her visa to visit her son in the United States and she has not had a day off in more than four years, and she is real. Mrs. Kaye is real. Her resilience is beyond comprehension and she is the type of teacher I can only hope to be, and she is real. The newborn baby girl at Blossom Garden is real. She is still so small and new to the world that her whole hand cannot wrap all the way around my pinkie finger, and she is real. Marlon is real. When I pat his back I cannot feel his spine through the tumors and I know I will never see the world in the ways he has, and he is real. Sylvester and Lefty and Roy and Dijory and William and Keno and Nokee and Petagay and Trish and Christopher and Tony and Roy and Mr. Kaye and so many more are all real. They exist. Jamaicans are real and they exist-apart from the tourists and corrupt politicians and the World Bank and near-third-world status and so much more-they are real. They are much too easily overlooked in Jamaica among the luxury resorts with their walls to keep Jamaicans from seeing their own Caribbean Sea and stupid tourists whose boat is docked next to an oil tanker in the bay gawking at the man with his coconuts for sale next to Margaritaville. And here in America they are much more easily ignored among i-phones and cars driving into airports in Britain and an unending war in Iraq and Paris Hilton being released from jail for good behavior.
But they are real. They exist. No one has the right to deny their existence or to overlook it or ignore it. They live in a fucked up system that is far beyond their control. They live within that system not by choice, but because thus far there has been no other choice. We, with all our privilege, owe it to ourselves and to them to, as Gina puts it, “shatter the glass bubble of our safe snow globe worlds.” It’s a terrifying concept in many ways-to “give up what is pleasant, to make your heart vulnerable… for what? To feel something more, to make our voice heard, to be real.” Yes, it is “frightening, challenging, and exhausting… but it is also necessary, beautiful, and genuine.” We open our eyes and we wear our hearts on our sleeves and we take it all in because sometimes that is all we can do. We are vulnerable and exhausted. We love and we love and we touch the ground and reach for the sky and we love some more. We are sometimes lonely and oftentimes too full to make sense of most of it. But we are real and we are struggling and we are moving forward even when we don’t quite know what direction we are going in.
A strong woman is a woman determined
To do something others are determined
Not to be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
Of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
A manhole cover with her head, she is trying
To butt her way though a steel wall.
Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
To be made say, hurry, you’re so strong.
…
Strong is what we make
Each other. Until we are all strong together,
A strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.
- “For Strong Women” by Marge Piercy
It has taken me a long time to become a strong woman. I lost my strong woman-self when I was raped at fourteen. I lost my strong woman-self when I began mutilating my arms and stomach years ago. I lost my strong woman-self after coming out as a lesbian and realizing that I may never get to live my life out in the open like almost everyone else. I lost my strong woman-self to relationships that were unhealthy and to friendships that dead-ended in me caring too much and others not caring at all. But I am a strong woman now. And maybe it is because I am such a strong woman that I am having so much trouble processing what my experience in Jamaica really means to me.
I feel as if I am trying to butt my way through a steel wall and my head hurts. I have placed a manhole over many of the raw emotions from Jamaica and now I don’t know how to remove it. But the pressure behind it is growing and I’m afraid it might just explode and turn me into a no-longer-strong woman. I am a strong woman, and even though I am surrounded by other strong women (and strong men), and together we are made strong, I am a woman strongly afraid. Afraid of losing the precarious balance I am temporarily maintaining between touching the ground and reaching for the sky and afraid of abandoning one struggle in favor of another.
This work, this struggle, is hard no matter who it may benefit. I have my own struggle, my own injustices and inequalities to live every single day. I don't make a big deal out of being a lesbian because I’m used to it. I’ve made the choice to not be actively engaged in the outside struggle for gay/lesbian rights, even though I live the invisible struggle every single day. But now there's another struggle that my eyes have been opened to and that I feel innately connected to. The struggle of the poor, the struggle of the Jamaicans, is real to me now in a way that it never was before, but it's not my difference and it seems disconnected from my struggle here in Louisville. There's more out there in the world that is important and necessary. How do I reconcile the difference I live and the injustice thrust upon me as a lesbian in America with the difference I have witnessed and the injustice that my so-called “people” have thrust upon someone else for centuries? Do I choose to be selfish and focus on my own difference while neglecting the difference of others? Or do I choose to ignore my own struggle in order to focus on the struggle of the poor? Can I do both?
Keep writing in the dark:
A record of the night, or
Words that pulled you from depths of unknowing,
Words that flew through your mind, strange birds
Crying their urgency with human voices,
Or opened
As flowers of a tree that blooms
Only once in a lifetime:
Words that may have the power
To make the sun rise again.
-- from “Writing in the Dark” by Denise Levertov
I find myself writing in the dark-even though it is currently 6:30 pm in the middle of the summer and nowhere near nightfall-and I am writing without a safety net and without a security blanket. I have been pulled from the depths of unknowing and now I am staring this struggle in the eyes. I will not back down, I will not forget, and I will not shut up. I’m not entirely sure where the hell I’m going or what the hell I’m going to do when I get there, but no person and no thing can make Jamaica disappear for me. Sometimes I wish I could close my eyes to all of this and return to my isolated snow globe, but I know that would mean giving up all the beauty that comes with so much heartache. No amount of comfortable familiarity can ever be worth leaving behind the beauty of the raw humanity and the hopeful struggle of the Jamaican people. I am in awe of their strength, their reality, their resilience, and their struggle.
My hope is that someday we-a collective we that has no single face, but is made up of those who have embraced this struggle despite the loneliness and heartache it often brings with it-will be able to make the sun rise again. Someday, we will no longer write in the dark. Someday, we will all be strong together. Someday, we will truly see every face of every person as he or she actually exists. Someday, we will no longer struggle. Someday, we will be able to touch the ground and reach for the sky without feeling torn in half. Someday, we will find a place in this world where love is really all we need because the struggle is over.