Day 28 𖦹 GRIEF / LOVE

An episode about what happened yesterday. Listen to most recent episode first if you haven't already.

The poems are Think of Others by Mahmoud Darwish, Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Is Not Breaking by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, and One Heart by Li-Young Lee. Sabelle Guido played a bit of guitar and Rili played their usual electric violin goodness.

Until tomorrow.

Transcript

unknown 0:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Day twenty-eight.

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Bake it up and spot a hole.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

Thirty days of free tea in Mary Hernandez Park.

unknown 0:19

Hi.

SPEAKER_03 0:20

We're open.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

We're open.

SPEAKER_03 0:22

It's a slow day. We're taking our time today.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

How are you feeling?

SPEAKER_03 0:33

Well, I guess yesterday felt like uh practicing love on a stranger. Yeah, how about you?

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Not exactly sure how to put words to it.

SPEAKER_03 1:05

Yet I mean I think it's part of just like the being American. It feels like we don't have the language, we don't have the social norms and like how to react to something like that, and it just makes anything feel really like sharp.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

And I think there's like so much of that, like in in poetry.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

I'm gonna read some poetry. This poem is called Think of Others by Mammu Darwish.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Ready for action.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

As you prepare your breakfast, think of others. Do not forget the pigeons' food. As you conduct your wars, think of others. Do not forget those who seek peace. As you pay your water bill, think of others. Those who are nursed by clouds. As you return home to your home, do not forget the people of candles. As you sleep and count the stars, think of others. Those who have nowhere to sleep. As you liberate yourself in a metaphor, think of others. Those who have lost the right to speak. As you think of others far away, think of yourself. Say, if only I were a candle in the dark.

SPEAKER_03 2:44

I want to just be a caring neighbor in the first place. And so yesterday it wasn't exactly clear like what the tea stand could do other than hold space for people who were witnessing it and like collectively kind of process what was happening. We all witnessed it together. And sometimes that's enough just to not be alone in and holding all of that. And today people have been following up and checking in on each other. And like that, I don't know, that that that wouldn't happen. Like if you saw something on the street and you brought it up to your friends, like they probably would forget by the next day because it wasn't weighing on their conscience the same way that it is yours.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

This is called Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Is Not Breaking by Rosemary Watola Tromer. On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star would weigh six billion tons. Six billion tons equals the collective weight of every animal on Earth, including the insects, times three. Six billion tons sounds impossible until I consider how it is to swallow grief. Just a teaspoon and one might as well have consumed a neutron star. How dense it is. How it carries inside it the memory of collapse. How difficult it is to move then. How impossible to believe that anything could lift that weight. One is the sheer miracle that we are here together on a planet surrounded by dying stars. One is that we cannot see what anyone else has swallowed.

SPEAKER_03 4:47

We used to just have this kind of baseline camaraderie and connection with our neighbors that's been taken from us and paved over. And so to feel that, like, I don't necessarily know this person, I don't even know when I met them, but like we are together right now and we are observing this and witnessing this together, it just it completely changes the way that you process it and relate to it.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

This poem is called One Heart by Lee Young Lee. Look at the birds, even flying is born. They're right above us, you know? So if you're ever unsure where to look, look out. Out of nothing. The first sky is inside you, open. At either end of the day, the work of wings was always freedom fastening. One heart to every falling thing.

SPEAKER_03 5:49

I feel like this can sound inappropriate maybe, but um. like a bug or like some creature, I've been saying a mantra before I do it of uh beautiful one for your death, my words. It's a very, very small and brief thing to say, thing to do. But it also is an act of love, it's an act of acknowledgement that this life is also worthy and sacred, and death is going to be a part of that, and when you must inflict that, or you must witness it, doing it with grace and respect and love, even on the smallest of scales. We kill in our culture in a lot of ways that have become socially acceptable and people don't really think about it. And this little mantra to me is a response to that. It's easy to just ignore it and walk by it and treat it with the same kind of indifference as the police and and whoever else was just passing on by. But that itself is the opposite of love. I don't know. It's just it's hard to make sense of all that.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

You kind of like have to accept the grief like in every day. It can feel like relentless and it like forces you to like build a life for those new things, but I think that's why it's so connected to love. Love is also like relentless, and I think it demands more from us.

SPEAKER_02 9:09

Um time is it?

SPEAKER_03 9:17

Six o seven. Six oh seven.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

The tea stand is closed. Day twenty-eight. Day twenty-eight. Two more days! Tomorrow.

SPEAKER_03 9:29

Tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

Tell me.

SPEAKER_03 9:30

I'm back.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Miles is back.

SPEAKER_03 9:33

It's my final, my final solo takeover.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

How are you feeling about serving the tea tomorrow?

SPEAKER_03 9:42

Oh man. I'm gonna cry. I can't believe it's the last day of me serving the tea. It's gonna be a good day.