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KINDLING: WRITINGS ON THE BODY
FROM THE DEDICATION
There are hundreds of people I could thank, the multitudes who donated money to pay for my attendant care, the attendants who provide that care every day, the team of healers in whom I have the most faith, the friends and family who have provided moral and material support, and I do. I thank them all, with heartfelt gratitude, but here on this page, for this book, I am holding space for the others, the co-sick, the companions of my day to day struggle who lie in their own beds while I lie in mine, sending each other messages, when we have the energy, that bear a special kind of knowing witness to one another. Illness, in spite of the crowds of service providers that surround us, is a solitary state, but thanks to the connecting power of the internet, we throw these messages in bottles into the common sea, fish them out on the tides of pre-dawn pain and afternoon exhaustion, hold each other's stories, cradle them, touch them again and again, these pebbles of experience made silken by the terrible pounding of sickness and poverty, isolation and despair, and a cruel and corrupt profit-driven medical system. Suffering doesn't improve people. It isn't good for us. It isn't intended to inspire. But in the course of it, sometimes the inessential is hacked away, and we become these shining touchstones for each other. So this is for you, mis comadres y compadres. Our stories matter. Our stories ease suffering. Our stories save lives.
Mountain Moving Day
Body Map by Aurora Levins Morales
"Mountain Moving Day" is a long essay that was originally presented as part of a panel on disability at the Gloria Anzaldúa conference held annually in San Antonio, Texas. Here's a short excerpt.
" There are days when I pretend I have no body, not to enter the windstorm of physical, spiritual, emotional and political pain that waits there. Sometimes clarity is intolerable. If I write about our bodies I will be writing about the “chemical revolution” that began by retooling leftover weapons into peacetime product, and has saturated our environment with 100,000 new molecules, which, in a reckless euphoria of avarice, we were all blithely assured would bring better living to all. If I write about our bodies I am writing about the land and what has been done to it.
What our bodies require in order to thrive, is what the world requires. If there is a map to get there, it can be found in the atlas of our skin and bone and blood, in the tracks of neurotransmitters and antibodies. When I write about cancer and exhaustion and irritable bowels in the context of the treeless slopes of my homeland, of market driven famine, of xenoestrogens and the possible extinction of bees, I am tracing that map with my fingertips, walking into the heart of the storm that shakes my body and occupies the world. As the rising temperature of the planet births bigger and more violent hurricanes from the tepid seas, I am watching the needle of my anger swing across its arc, locating meridians, looking for the magnetic pulse points of change. When I can hold the truth of my flesh as one protesting voice in a multitude, a witness and opponent to what greed has wrought, awareness becomes bearable, and I rejoice in the clarity that illness has given me."
" There are days when I pretend I have no body, not to enter the windstorm of physical, spiritual, emotional and political pain that waits there. Sometimes clarity is intolerable. If I write about our bodies I will be writing about the “chemical revolution” that began by retooling leftover weapons into peacetime product, and has saturated our environment with 100,000 new molecules, which, in a reckless euphoria of avarice, we were all blithely assured would bring better living to all. If I write about our bodies I am writing about the land and what has been done to it.
What our bodies require in order to thrive, is what the world requires. If there is a map to get there, it can be found in the atlas of our skin and bone and blood, in the tracks of neurotransmitters and antibodies. When I write about cancer and exhaustion and irritable bowels in the context of the treeless slopes of my homeland, of market driven famine, of xenoestrogens and the possible extinction of bees, I am tracing that map with my fingertips, walking into the heart of the storm that shakes my body and occupies the world. As the rising temperature of the planet births bigger and more violent hurricanes from the tepid seas, I am watching the needle of my anger swing across its arc, locating meridians, looking for the magnetic pulse points of change. When I can hold the truth of my flesh as one protesting voice in a multitude, a witness and opponent to what greed has wrought, awareness becomes bearable, and I rejoice in the clarity that illness has given me."
Bombazo!
Bombazo! by Aurora Levins Morales
"Bombazo!" came about when a group of Puerto Rican women in the Bay Area held a conference on women in bomba music. I wanted to support their efforts by sharing some of the turbulent history of bomba, and its relationship to dark-skinned women's sexuality and its suppression by the state. You can read it here.