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II.
a.
My friend’s baby has a shelf at the bottom of the bookshelf. His parents fill it with books so he can pull them out to look at them. He tends to pull out his books in the morning, when his mom and dad are brewing coffee. This affords them time to sip it, to sit, to taste a new kind of calm they are experiencing now for the first time as parents; a shared hum of mild activity amongst three. Yesterday, I swam with my friend from Prague in a pond that I didn’t know existed so close to the house I grew up in. As it turns out, her grandparents and my grandparents bought homes in this area within the same decade. We wondered if they ever crossed paths. It’s likely that they did. I imagine our grandparents nodding to one another at the local grocery store. Or, running into one another on a sidewalk while holding their wiggling children. Maybe they gave each other that knowing smile of shared experience that makes the receiver feel significantly lighter than they did moments before. All these summers, all these years, my friend was swimming in this pond, floating as we were floating yesterday, and I was just eight minutes away, down the dirt road and to the left. It took flying to Prague in 2011 to meet her. Flying back home in 2024 to serendipitously meet her again.
b.
As June ends, summer begins. We are still watching genocides, and (un)learning our part(s). We can’t possibly grasp it. And yet we are the witnesses, the people who must, every day, reach for the possibility of a different kind of present; reach for a possibility within our limitations; seek to move with the limitation the way art does, the way dance does, the way a stream does when it has no where else to go.
6 月が終わると夏が始まるんだ。私たちはまだ大量虐殺を目の当たりにし、自分たちの役割を学んだり学んだりしている。私たちにはそれを理解することは到底できません。それでも私たちは目撃者であり、毎日、異なる種類の現在の可能性を求め、自分たちの限界の中で可能性を求め、芸術のように、ダンスのように、他に行くところがない川の流れのように、私たちは移動する。流れは常に道を見つけるから。
I took this video in early November 2023 at a vigil outside of Tokyo Station. It shows tender hands reaching so a sign can be read, so two languages can be carried; hands and arms offer to protect the candles from the wind. This is how love moves from something within us to something outside of us, it moves into external movements, becomes visual and physical: becomes a small dance with other people.
このビデオは、2023年11月初旬に東京駅前の集会で撮影したものです。優しい手で看板を動かして読めるようにし、2つの言語を伝えている様子が映っています。風からろうそくを守るために手や腕を差し出しているのがわかる。愛はこのようにして私たちの内側にあるものから外側にあるものへと移り、外側の動きへと移り、視覚的かつ物理的なものになり、他の人々との小さなダンスになる。
c.
There is a dog and he curls up in my mom’s lap even though he is too big for it. There is thunder and intermittent rain. I am asked if I know what I am doing, and I know that I do not even though I do. My dad hands me a measuring tape so we can measure the pallet that will go under the stacks of firewood. It fits in the palm of my hand. The tape bends awkwardly if pulled in more than one direction. I remember being afraid that the side of it would cut my skin when I was a child. Entire lengths of swimming pools fit inside my pocket when the tape is done being tape.
d.
I dove into the lake. It was too deep of a dive. I didn’t think so…I thought I knew how to manage shallow spaces. Calculate. Imagine. Jump. Hands first. Head follows. The bottom was like an unforgiving drum. Un-flexing, In my head. Crunching, On my face. At the bottom I found my homework from seventh grade, my taxes, my mistakes; I find my report cards, my audition tapes, all my desperate letters; there’s a girl with a loud voice and a man with ears for no one but his idol. The gods were there too, waving their violins so they could meet my shoulder and chin; play this, play without an end. Many people cried out, stop, the curtains shook themselves free of the color red, of dust, and we all watched as if seeing for the first time how dust settles on those without a conscience—a different kind of deal; the algae covers their faces because their faces don’t exist, the martyrs conduct, the clouds dissolve strings because there are no strings, only rocks. When I resurfaced I just wanted everything to be fine, fine the way the water is fine, smooth, cool, and warm. Forgiving. But there was a lot of blood.
e.
transcribing my friends ( in recent conversation )
i. has let go of the broken shells of old anxiety, is the color of strength—supple and ready, knows the feeling of being with the person she loves most, knows what it is to watch him interact with their child
ii. flies across the world with a different idea than before, shaves her hair before it will fall, knows she is in charge of her love, knows that she is it, shares her magic, let’s her friends hold it
iii. hugs me on the pathway by the bay and squeezes my shoulders for the first time in thirteen years, says how the body is different after birth, takes a ballet class as the day ends, says the mind moves faster than her toes
iv. smiles before knowing it, the action changes her face—her whole body—makes her float, untouchable and glowing, the same glow she’s always had, I wonder if she knows it
v. walks into the coffee shop and we both light up, her eyes are blue and bright as she says with satisfaction, “you are the same”
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Read Yasmin’s story, titled : Through the storm