LETTER TO ALAN STOREY IN CAPETOWN, FROM THE OPEN NOTEBOOK IN YAKIMA

LETTER TO ALAN STOREY IN CAPETOWN, FROM THE OPEN NOTEBOOK

IN YAKIMA,  FULL OF YOUR WORDS OF LIBERATING FIRE,

WHILE TINY LEAVES OPEN FROM SMALL TREES, REMEMBERING

OUR DAY ON THE MOUNTAIN BEFORE THE MOUNTAIN, WITNESSES

TO SUNSHINE, WIND AND BIG CLOUDS MOVING FAST

Walking the garden yesterday, your voice emerging from notebooks,

and that trial in Pretoria. Blake teaches us innocence's opposite—

not guilt but experience. Doesn’t my own guilt double up

every time I plead innocent? Doesn’t your slow walk demand

we leave innocence behind? I plead guilty to all.

Finding myself with Babylonians brings me to my knees. 

Blake suggests our experience re-connects us
to ascendant innocence. What you give us, coming into our village,

pure duende from Lorca—a power, not a work,

a struggle, not a thought: the singer saying—

On days I sing with duende, no one can touch me.

Ann said later, I’ve never been more comfortable,

being uncomfortable. We were cut, and bled, not cleansed.

Americans like closure, healing resembling coverup,

lies with ambition. Behind the grand SUV

at the light with grandkids buckled in the back,

this message in block letters on the rear window:

YOU’RE AN AMERICAN, YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO BE ANGRY.

No context needed. Sometimes context scrambles itself.

You write me on Civil Rights Day in South Africa,

21 March 2014, inviting us to remember the Sharpeville Massacre,

courageous ones who burnt pass books in 1960.

We’ve come a long way since then.

21 March 1960. Jo’burg police open fire

on gathered crowd at Sharpeville Station,

69 unarmed people dead, 180 injured.

Under reviled pass laws, Africans

required to carry books to be produced on request.

Racist laws enforcing segregation, the massacre,

a turning point in the struggle.

Day consecrated at the end of apartheid.

On that day, 1960, I’m 14 years old,

North Dakota refugee in Seattle, lost in a city school

with more students than the corner of the State I come from.

Tie these dates together: I come home from Viet Nam

in 1968 the year you were born. My question to all:

Where were you in 1968? I worked med evac

from the ground during Tet, the year you were born.

Evac hospital with full beds for all sides.

I had no enemies but myself.

You’re here just in time. 

My wife took me back for our anniversary four years ago.

I swam in the Gulf of Tonkin, and we walked

streets of Hanoi as lovers on Sunday.

God is in the house. Karen and her four daughters.

The crisis of how you met. Turning dark, rich soil

into this harvest in Yakima. In Chinese,

the ideograph for crisis, two parallel lines,

one line indicating danger, opportunity in the other.

Karen finds an empty chair next to you,

gives you a piece of her mind.

Your listening picks up the phone.

And that day we had on skis. Manna and Mercy.

Snow holding. You confusing the two Washingtons.

Dan Erlander showing up in D.C. greeting you.

Thanks for teaching me about my book. The snow holds

and we ski into a backcountry lodge in the Goat Rocks.

Eat sandwiches and warm our hands.

We talk Chile and El Salvador.

Allende, Pinochet, The Chicago Boys.

Jon Sobrino and Ellacuria, Sobrino asking,

Where is God? Answering, I don’t know,

but he’s not in the Empire. You on Milton Friedman:

Economic plans ready to be installed in unsuspecting

nations after the shock has been administered

by the empire. Pastors trained to go to meetings

and raise money, your words, I don’t raise money.

This living in two worlds. Joy eclipsing suffering.

Becoming hyphenated people.

Let me wrap this up in your words. Grace for me, too.

When Gospel writers put it down, they know Jesus as divine event.

When you have the whole event,

when you have the whole Nelson Mandela,

You know it’s divine.

Jim

21 March—21 April 2014

P.S. Alan. This letter, a month in the works.

I could have had it to you sooner, but didn’t want the time to end.