I Love a Broad Margin to My Life - Maxine Hong Kingston [5]
The children are quiet. How do their parents
explain war to them? “War.” A growl sound.
And the good—capitalistic?—of standing in
the street doing nothing? “People are fighting …”
But a “fight” connotes fairness, even-sidedness,
equal powers. “… And we’re being quiet, thinking
of them, and holding them in our hearts, safe.
We’re setting an example of not-fighting.
The honking cars are making good noise;
they’re honking Peace, Peace.”
Wednesday,
birthday eve, I tried re-reading
Don Quixote. (My writings are being translated
into Castellano and Catalan. La Dona Guerrera.)
The mad and sorry knight is only 50.
Delusions gone, illusions gone, he dies.
Books killed him. Cervantes worked on
Don Quijote de la Mancha while in jail.
For 5 years, he was given solitude,
and paper, ink, and pens, and time. In Chinese
jails, each prisoner is given the 4
valuable things, writes his or her life,
and is rehabilitated. I’ve been in jail too, but
so much going on, so many
people to socialize with, not a jot
of writing done. The charge against me:
DEMO IN A RESTRICTED ZONE—
WHITE HOUSE SIDEWALK. The U.S.
is turning Chinese, barricading
the White House, Forbidden City, Great Wall
along borders.
Now, it’s my birthday.
October 27. And Sylvia Plath’s.
And Dylan Thomas’s. Once on this date,
I was in Swansea, inside the poet’s
writing shed, a staged mess, bottles
and cups on table and floor. A postcard
of Einstein sticking out his tongue.
I like Thoreau’s house better, neat and tidy.
I walked out on Three Cliffs Bay.
Whole shells—cockles, mussels, clams,
golden clams, and snails, and oysters, jewels—
bestrew the endless wet land.
I cannot see to the last of it, not a lip of sea.
No surf. “We be surfers in Swansea.”
I’ve never seen tide go out so far.
“The furthest tide in the world.” I followed the gleam
of jewels—I was walking on sea bottom—
and walked out and out and out, like the tide
to the Celtic Sea. Until I remembered: the tide
will come back in, in a rush,
and run me down, and drown me. By the time
I see and hear incoming surf,
it will be too late. I ran
back for the seawall, so far away,
and made it, and did not die on that birthday.
Not ready to give myself up.
I have fears on my birthdays. Scared.
I am afraid, and need to write.
Keep this day. Save this moment.
Save each scrap of moment; write it down.
Save this moment. And this one. And this.
But I can’t go on noting every drip and drop.
I want poetry as it came to my young self
humming and rushing, no patience for
the chapter book.
I’m standing on top of a hill;
I can see everywhichway—
the long way that I came, and the few
places I have yet to go. Treat
my whole life as formally a day.
I used to be able, in hours, to relive,
to refeel my life from its baby beginnings
all the way to the present. 3 times
I slipped into lives before this one.
I have been a man in China, and a woman
in China, and a woman in the Wild West.
(My college roommate called; she’d met
Earll and me in Atlantis, but I don’t
remember that.) I’ve been married
to Earll for 3 lifetimes, counting
this one. From time to time, we lose each other,
but can’t divorce until we get it right.
Love, that is. Get love right. Get
marriage right. Earll won’t believe
in reincarnation, and makes fun of it.
The Dalai Lama in How to Expand Love
says to try “the possibility that past
and future rebirth over a continuum
of lives may take place.” We have forever.
Find me, love me, again.
I find you, I love you, again.
I’ve tried but could not see
my next life. All was immense black
space, no stars. After a while,
no more trying to progress, I returned—
was returned—to an ordinary scene that happened
yesterday, and every sunny day: Earll and I
are having a glass of wine with supper—bruschetta
from our own tomatoes and basil—under the trellis
of bougainvillea, periwinkly clematis,
and roses. Shadows and sunlight are moving at Indian
summer’s pace. The Big Fire burned
the grove of Monterey pines. We planted
purple rain birches, Australian