hundred square feet about a quarter mile from the shore on land that is seven hundred square miles and five thousand miles from the nearest land mass.
Despite our isolation, there is no escape from the news of how many days are left in the Iraq inspections.
The news poll for today was should we invade Iraq now or should we wait until the inspections are complete and we tried to laugh together at this question but our laughter was uneasy and we just decided to turn off the television that arrives to us from those other time zones.
Beloveds, we do not know how to live our lives with any agency outside of our bed.
It makes me angry that how we live in our bed—full of connected loving and full of isolated sleep and dreaming also—has no relevance to the rest of the world.
How can the power of our combination of intimacy and isolation have so little power outside the space of our bed?
Beloveds, the shuttle is set to return home and out the window of the shuttle one can see the earth.
“How massive the earth is; how minute the atmosphere,” one of the astronauts notes.
Beloveds, what do we do but keep breathing as best we can this minute atmosphere?
December 3, 2002
Beloveds, I’ve said it before, our bed is a few square feet, our apartment is six hundred square feet, our city is eighty-two square miles, and we live on land that is seven hundred square miles.
We walk less than a mile to the sixty-four billion square miles of the Pacific.
Beloveds, today the UN commission searched all the square feet of Hussein’s office in a show of power.
When I speak of feet I speak of attacks conceived in Afghanistan, planned in Germany, funded through Dubai, executed in America, using Saudis.
I speak of the frozen assets of Osama bin Laden and the demand from Turkey for a second UN resolution before the US moves in on Iraq.
I speak of Ahmed Zakayev being set free and Malaysia warning Australia that any preemptive strike against them even in the name of preventing terrorism would be an act of war.
Beloveds, I keep trying to speak of loving but all I speak about is acts of war and acts of war and acts of war.
I mean to speak of beds and bowers and all I speak of is Barghouti’s call for a change of leadership and the strike in Venezuela against Chavez and the sixty-six ships on the fleet of shame.
I speak of the sixteen million people from Mali and Burkina Faso who are in the Ivory Coast and their morning possibility of peace that disappears by evening.
I speak of the eighty evacuated from Touba.
I speak of the ninety-five-year-old woman who was shot by Israeli troops while driving her car from Palestine into Israel.
I speak of the six-hundred-year-old Spanish Haggadah now in Sarajevo.
I speak of Burundi and the Forces for the Defense of Democracy.
I speak of the US wanting to ban the antidote to nerve gas on the Oil-Food plan with Iraq.
I speak of the release of Saaduddin Ibrahim and his twenty-seven employees.
I do not say more than movement when I speak. I speak of movements larger than our short walk to the beach and our immersion in the sixty-four billion square miles of cool saltwater once we get there.
Beloveds, we say we do not want to move anymore. We want to see ourselves as located and bound even if not local, located and bound to someone else’s land, and there by chance even as we do not see ourselves as part of the land.
This is all we want today.
Yet the world swirls around us.
The ocean levels rise and the beach gets smaller.
We say our bed is part of everyone else’s bed even as our bed is denied to others by an elaborate system of fences and passport-checking booths.
We wake up in the night with just each others and admit that even while we believe that we want to believe that we all live in one bed of the earth’s atmosphere, our bed is just our bed and no one else’s and we can’t figure out how to stop it from being that way.
December 4, 2002
Embedded deep in our
Despite our isolation, there is no escape from the news of how many days are left in the Iraq inspections.
The news poll for today was should we invade Iraq now or should we wait until the inspections are complete and we tried to laugh together at this question but our laughter was uneasy and we just decided to turn off the television that arrives to us from those other time zones.
Beloveds, we do not know how to live our lives with any agency outside of our bed.
It makes me angry that how we live in our bed—full of connected loving and full of isolated sleep and dreaming also—has no relevance to the rest of the world.
How can the power of our combination of intimacy and isolation have so little power outside the space of our bed?
Beloveds, the shuttle is set to return home and out the window of the shuttle one can see the earth.
“How massive the earth is; how minute the atmosphere,” one of the astronauts notes.
Beloveds, what do we do but keep breathing as best we can this minute atmosphere?
December 3, 2002
Beloveds, I’ve said it before, our bed is a few square feet, our apartment is six hundred square feet, our city is eighty-two square miles, and we live on land that is seven hundred square miles.
We walk less than a mile to the sixty-four billion square miles of the Pacific.
Beloveds, today the UN commission searched all the square feet of Hussein’s office in a show of power.
When I speak of feet I speak of attacks conceived in Afghanistan, planned in Germany, funded through Dubai, executed in America, using Saudis.
I speak of the frozen assets of Osama bin Laden and the demand from Turkey for a second UN resolution before the US moves in on Iraq.
I speak of Ahmed Zakayev being set free and Malaysia warning Australia that any preemptive strike against them even in the name of preventing terrorism would be an act of war.
Beloveds, I keep trying to speak of loving but all I speak about is acts of war and acts of war and acts of war.
I mean to speak of beds and bowers and all I speak of is Barghouti’s call for a change of leadership and the strike in Venezuela against Chavez and the sixty-six ships on the fleet of shame.
I speak of the sixteen million people from Mali and Burkina Faso who are in the Ivory Coast and their morning possibility of peace that disappears by evening.
I speak of the eighty evacuated from Touba.
I speak of the ninety-five-year-old woman who was shot by Israeli troops while driving her car from Palestine into Israel.
I speak of the six-hundred-year-old Spanish Haggadah now in Sarajevo.
I speak of Burundi and the Forces for the Defense of Democracy.
I speak of the US wanting to ban the antidote to nerve gas on the Oil-Food plan with Iraq.
I speak of the release of Saaduddin Ibrahim and his twenty-seven employees.
I do not say more than movement when I speak. I speak of movements larger than our short walk to the beach and our immersion in the sixty-four billion square miles of cool saltwater once we get there.
Beloveds, we say we do not want to move anymore. We want to see ourselves as located and bound even if not local, located and bound to someone else’s land, and there by chance even as we do not see ourselves as part of the land.
This is all we want today.
Yet the world swirls around us.
The ocean levels rise and the beach gets smaller.
We say our bed is part of everyone else’s bed even as our bed is denied to others by an elaborate system of fences and passport-checking booths.
We wake up in the night with just each others and admit that even while we believe that we want to believe that we all live in one bed of the earth’s atmosphere, our bed is just our bed and no one else’s and we can’t figure out how to stop it from being that way.
December 4, 2002
Embedded deep in our
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