This morning the vulture watched us for hours from the top of the parking garage — into the big glass windows our sad fabric cubes open onto. Becky said he was somehow comforting — regal, alive, sleek emblem what we didn’t know turning his slow head against the lot of still cars and the faster, moving cars pouring down I-10. What’s the difference between a buzzard and a vulture? vulture (n.)late 14c., from Anglo-French vultur, Old French voultour, from Latin vultur, earlier voltur, perhaps related to vellere “to pluck, to tear.” Figurative sense is recorded from 1580s. buzzard (n.) c.1300, from Old French buisart “buzzard, harrier, inferior hawk,” from buson, buison, from Latin buteonem (nominative buteo) a kind of hawk, perhaps with -art suffix for one that carries on some action or possesses some quality, with derogatory connotation (see -ard).
This morning the first article I read was whispered to an interpreter and lawyer and smuggled out, because that person who smuggled it out could live, because that person could leave. Guantanamo. The hunger strike. 11 years. Strapped to a chair and force fed through a tube. Forced catheterized. Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel says “When I was at home in Yemen, in 2000, a childhood friend told me that in Afghanistan I could do better than the $50 a month I earned in a factory, and support my family.” There’s something I understand in that — the need to survive. How one tries to make a life ones own life.
Some days I worry about the long commute I have to make, even though it’s not that bad. I leave in the dark. The body absorbs the tension of traffic, oil — esp. women’s bodies, says another article. “We were pitched forward into the future.” writes Lauren Dixon on facebook. She’s talking about running, the bomb in Boston. “It changes how we run, the steps we take, the miles we cover, because we know that at our most liberated, those steps can still be stolen from us and those we care about….It is the only thing I’ve ever, ever had where I’ve been completely free.” She’s writing after the bomb collides into the body of the Boston runners / and presumably the audience of bystanders cheering on loved ones. What does safety mean? To be safe. To make one safe. Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel. To be Americanized.To be free.
When we lived in the Rio Grande Valley, one of the first soldiers captured and killed on March 23, 2003 in Nasiriyah in the Invasion of Iraq was from Alton. Edgar Hernandez, “a clumsy guy with an infectious sense of humor who enjoyed jogging and playing basketball with his friends” from Alton — population 12, 341. But when the president came on T.V. to offer condolences, he said Hernandez was from Mission, Tx, which is the closest, bigger town. Misprision. Which I always thought was fittingly sad. Misplaced target. Misplaced town. Misplaced safety. 21st century and your horrible fall out.
We were pitched forward into the future. The last time I saw Lauren Dixon, I was walking out from my thesis defense. I saw her on the top floor of the parking garage and she had a great haircut. I went to my oral defense the day after Max’s dad — before Max was even ever the tiniest idea yet — had emergency surgery. Don’t ask, but I went in a blur. Big blue sky — sunlight in my eyes. When I got back to the hospital, the nurse — who wasn’t that great — had inserted the feeding tube wrong, so that Max’s dad’s eye was swollen and beginning to turn purple. Still. Compliant. Not resisting. That’s how fragile the face is — how easy to fuck up. Or save.
Safetly. Safety. Safety. Other things I wanted to say. How also today 30 were killed in a wedding party in Afghanistan when a U.S. bomb fell upon them as they were celebrating. How sometimes it’s just too much. How you could be hit at any moment in the name of some form of freedom — just trying to be free “…because we know that at our most liberated, those steps can still be stolen from us and those we care about.”
When I pick up Max from daycare, he wants to run into the big field that runs downhill from the daycare’s house to the frontage road. He wants to pick the white, pointed, nearly dental wild onion flowers. And the dandelions (from the french, tooth of the lion: dente-de-lion). Because he’s only 2, sometimes he doesn’t pick low enough. He grabs just a handful of the petals this time and says “a bug ate this one.” In our neighborhood there are 4 types of trees growing in empty lots one can eat from: loquat, fig, pomegranate, pecan. I don’t know why, but I tell Max we could plant a tree here and then whoever needed to could be free to come walk up and eat as much as they wanted. I mean outside. Big blue sky. Sun in our eyes.
