from the - one more thing that makes me like you -. [or why 4th of july is kind of a queasy holiday for me] dept.

photo by shirin neshat

so i told you how i really hate the 4th...not in some mindless, reactivist sort of way...but as a thinking, feeling being...it's odious to me the way the day dissolves into what is essentially [not universally, but often enough] a bunch of americans getting rip-roaring drunk all day and then spending the evening playing with explosives. it's hard for me, because i think of what it means...the sacrifices that have been made for everything i possess...and the sacrifices that are made - daily - all over the world in countries that are unraveling in tyranny or servitude to what boils down to be [in my opinion] an economic war.

and you said..."they have to live with these horrid noises daily, while fearing they may fall victim. the fear. all the time. ugh".

and that's precisely it! that's what makes me sick...and i know it sounds terribly idealistic [an oxymoron, i feel, but i'm aware that i'm perpetually hopeful] to think that my small steps...like riding my bike 20 miles. instead of thoughtlessly getting behind the wheel and wasting resources like oil that people are dying over every. single. day. can make some difference in this off-spinning world. but that's what i think...

i think nationalism can be such a dangerously heady brew without any real substance...and at times, i look around and fear this post 9/11 world gets drunk on it, but what i think as a group of people we should only take esteem in is each act of compassion we can foster toward our fellow human beings.

i was talking today with a fellow co-worker who had emigrated here a long time ago from iran...and like one my favorite artists: shirin neshat...i could sense in her a feeling of still being alien...of not knowing exactly where she belongs. "there are so many beautiful things on that side of the world she said...and they have been poisoned...poisoned by years of the horror of war and one corrupt government after the other [often set up, or supported by u.s. administrations]...and people over here don't have any idea of what goes on in the world...even though there is access to a computer, or books...and all information anywhere you look, and it's hard for me because people judge me for my race, for my religion...and i want to say...what do you even know of my religion? so many things...and it's hard for me to say [as she put her head in her hands]...how do i find the words?...it just seems, so many here are...spoiled.

and i shared with her these words, i had just stumbled on before she came to sit with me, and even as we sat in silence as she read it, the words turned over and over in my mind "pray it is universally applicable" and so, i do:

Prayer in my Boot

For the wind no one expected

For the boy who does not know the answer

For the graceful handle I found in a field
attached to nothing
pray it is universally applicable

For our tracks which disappear
the moment we leave them

For the face peering through the cafe window
as we sip our soup

For cheerful American classrooms sparkling
with crisp colored alphabets
happy cat posters
the cage of the guinea pig
the dog with division flying out of his tail
and the classrooms of our cousins
on the other side of the earth
how solemn they are
how gray or green or plain
how there is nothing dangling
nothing striped or polka-dotted or cheery
no self-portraits or visions of cupids
and in these rooms the students raise their hands
and learn the stories of the world

For library books in alphabetical order
and family businesses that failed
and the house with the boarded windows
and the gap in the middle of a sentence
and the envelope we keep mailing ourselves

For every hopeful morning given and given
and every future rough edge
and every afternoon
turning over in its sleep

- naomi shihab nye
from "19 Varieties of Gazelle"