NOW

The tomorrow that is today:: a, the, portal opens and we are granted a twenty four hours out side of time. Leap day four years ago, do you remember how the hours burst open as ripe fruits, juice down our wrists, for we on the edge of possibility and a world still promised, the light close, near. A purple lamp and red writhing, was that the day all the same as when we were in palace, watching the spider plants grow legs, a raccoon tail coat on the couchcherry lipstick Snowcrunch and how different it all was then, now.

Now when I write this as it is currently the promised day the day eternal the day here and now that comes but once every thousand four sixty it all wiring and possibility, potentials and tearings, as we lilt towards the tide,s edge

What is to be done with this architecture of time? Architecture as a verb, some thing Renee Gladman says… how are we building , decorating, adorning this precious time..the other slip of paper, of course, that this doesn,t allow us to fully escape the squeeze of racial capitalism / colonialism / globalization, a day not given to us back as time of ours…and still, to find some way to mark it, I wonder,,
Tomorrow,today I will

container, basket

The gateless gate, images the same over and again, crushed grass beneath footsteps before, or red clay in the shape of the soles of my shoes, a groove made from the In the parking lot, sugarcane and squash as long as your arm. Size of a car tire, if car tires were shaped like deepsea sponge. And There is a kennedy running for president.
the act of creating the passage of time, that which is now transmuting into that which is then, What is too precious to share with any one, what is too precious to share with everyone, what am I noticing or not noticing and the understanding later of that which is not noticed is scarier than what is noticed, within it an infinite expanse of the buried and unknown. Coffins
Moving slowly, leg extended, drawing a semi circle with the toe of my shoe. If not some thing to bump into in the dark then perhaps I will find the edge. Every garage the cool concrete and sweet gasoline

Open heart and closed heart. The place I worked at hasn’t sent me my w-2 yet, I have to go on the computer to find it, and I think about the act, action, of ‘doing’ my “taxes,” the reconciliation between what has already been taken and that which is ‘owed’ to the conveyer belt that feeds the war machine.

Tension between, of, counteropposed opposing, that which is apart from another but together still, fixed in relationship, dialectics, the spheres spinning different velocities, directions, the word dialectical makes for the word directional, things as they exist in the world and in the mind. Bridge over no where, only here, the air is thin, we are close to the star, or possibly thick with smoke. the violence of nonviolence.
I am thinking about the self immolations of Aaron Bushnell in the capital this week and the unidentified soul in Atlanta in December. Unbearable
In the heart of the imperial core,
I am thinking about the before of self immolation, the long before, ancient reaches of martyrdom,, and I am thinking about the short before, five since twenty-twenty in the united states, around thirty since 1965, numbers made small by global scale, hundreds, thousands in India, Tunisia, Tibet,, Iran.. technology of resistance,
And I am thinking about what a friend of mine told me in the sun, that Etel Adnan says there is no such thing as mass death, only one person dying over and over, and how the paraphrase is better almost than the quote itself, which I later asked the computer, where she says There are not millions of deaths. It happens millions of times that someone dies.

We, here, to witness / what are the different shapes, shadows of witness / ‘streamed,’ of liquid, a continuous flow in a particular direction, a transmission of data or information over the internet

And in thinking of the technology of resistance technologies my mind turns to technologies of grief, so many grief technologies are rituals, and I think of what Penelope Rosemont writes about rituals, which is that they rob us of the future by chaining us to the past, and I am spun round, a man on the street with one of those cameras with the accordion folds, another in hand, velvet nowhere to be found, the eye pointed to the trunk of a tree that could have been sycamore had I seen the color of the bark beneath the paint, red and black…

Chosen in the face of having no choice, though the word chosen, the concept of choice is difficult, the phrase floated into my mind and I’ve placed it between us,, because it raises a question most urgent that presses upon me, us:: what are we to do besides all that we can? When all that we can isn,t enough to make it stop?
I a collector of debts in the dream now, the feeling of distance from self between world, too far into the dream, but impossible to turn away from the reality that kisses my eyes when I awaken each morning to the panes of light, the horrible grinding maw with a kindly face, the heavy curtain of grief drawn between us and the world, between us and ourselves,

***
Works uncited

Alcaro, Riccardo. “Bouazizi’s Inextinguishable Fire,” Re-Thinking Western Policies in Light of the Arab Uprising, Instituto Affari Internazionali (2012).

Ryan, Cheyney. “The One Who Burns Herself for Peace,” Hypatia 9:2, Feminism and Peace (Spring 1994) 21-39.

Patler, Nicholas. “Norman’s Triumph: The Transcendent Language of Self Immolation,” Quaker History 104:2 (Fall 2015) 18-39.

Verini, James. “A Terrible Act of Reason: When Did Self-Immolation Become the Paramount Form of Protest?” The New Yorker (16 May 2012): https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/a-terrible-act-of-reason-when-did-self-immolation-become-the-paramount-form-of-protest.