Across the line--Epilogue

Epilogue: We make bold statements and God laughs. Remember the place called Babel? "5 The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” (Genesis 11: 5-7) I would be lying if I denied the dips of desolation I've experienced since my action. The confusion of the dispersed from Babel corresponds to my own intermittent post-partum funkiness.

I find sympathy with those who disengaged after the French Resistance. It seemed to many of the resistance that the vigor and preciousness of life, having been forced from the ivory tower into the precarious realm of politics, could not so easily be maintained once stability returned to the world. They sunk into a malaise and deplored the banal with declarations like: Watermelon will taste fine or foul depending on whether one's taste has accomodated salt. To put it indirectly in Between Past and Futre, the philosopher of the Holocaust Hannah Arendt cites a tale of Kafka in which the narrator has been asked to umpire two in a fight. The invitation itself was prompted by the narrator's experience struggling between the two adversaries; while one mauled him from behind, the other pummeled him in his face. She took it as an allegory for the dyspepsia of the retired resistance, a condition good for allowing reflection, yet one cursed too by what she calls the 'banality of evil'. Between past and future, when goodness withdraws, evil surges forth to conceal present meaning. In short, they despised their new position as authorities. They resented being sought after to bestow meaning on a time punctured by immorality, that is, while speaking from another time. Meanwhile disintegration itself was rapidly becoming convex per the inflation of dispirited postmoderns.

For a short while this week I disengaged and fasted from the computer for three days just imagining a future of confinement in solidarity with David Omandi and Fr. Louie. As an experiment of the truism that language is your politics, I lifted myself from the pages of Arendt to pen the following. It concludes with my irritation of being labeled a human rights activist...though I could not yet positively proclaim my hope.

Querido Kairos,

He pedido el gran favor de John si se pudiera teclar y publicar este breve reflexion con ustedes hermanas y hermanos.

Primero a Dios pido perdon por haber escrito mis pensamiento en Espanol Castillano, idioma de los oprimadores. Preferiera escribir en mi lenguaje aboriginal de corazon, la Nahuat. Sin embargo, supongo que de esta manera se puede tener mayor acceso a la significa en que la muchadumbre se comunica.

A favor de los circunstancias en que me situan, me puse a reflexionar de manera discursiva para dar luz a los motivos con los cuales cruze la linea.

Doy gracias por tener esta oportunidad, puesto que ya incarcelaron dos por la misma sentencia seis meses bajo la convicion que sobrepasaron illegalmente en la reservacion militar Ft. Benning. Aunque hizo la misma accion, aqui estoy en Chicago. Tenia la intencion hace meses pagar la multa si me arrestararon para que podria reunir con mi familia durante la Navidad. Fue una concession al hech de mi falta de experiencia encarcelada, y ademas ya fue una practica rutina que los presos de consciente se entregaron bajo su propia reconocimiento a la juez por el juicio, equal si se dijeron una conviccion, entonces de la misma manera se entregaron a la dicha carcel escogida por los manos estatales entretiempos cada quien de ellos hacia equal que yo--se puso meditativo--o se dio luz a su testimonio con charlas itinerantes a levantar la consciencia del pueblo dormido.

Bueno, por mi parte, me encuentro en medio de dos toros. Como una pesadumbre veo que me visto de color roja y los toros ya son furiosos. Un toro se llama el pasado; el otro, el futuro.

El pasado viene velozmente rapido avanzando, mientras tanto otro toro se ha ocurrido que toda la culpa de sus tormentores viene de la criatura de color roja. El uno no se ve el otro, ambos dos comparten la misma ferocidad para extinuir lo que sea roja.

Perdoname por la metafor extendida a las circunstancias (en que me situo desde que cruze la linea y en las cuales me pongan a vigilar existentialmente con anticipacion al juicio el rapido aproximando cinco de enero). Es que yo no soy un torero. No tengo entrenamiento para dar combate a los dos toros terribles. No log digo para evadir la responsibilidad! de ninguna manera! Niego que habia que uno se entrena por tal accion.

Nunca quiero dar la impression de que uno se debe preparar de tal manera a professionalizarse en el nombre del activismo social. Por eso, rehuso el titulo que ya me han puesto, "activista para los derechos humanos", aunque es cierto que renuncio todos los violaciones de derechos humanos...thankfully God laughed at the vain attempt of Babel.

At the WRCW we are a hen house pecking at each other to get done our newsletter. I wonder about vanity and my own inability to let go when the nearness to excellence still cannot suffice. My emptiness and longing for God stops my ears from hearing the goodness of the song already in performance.Blowing in the Wind Today. With the Church:

Lord, make us turn to you; let us see your face and we shall be saved.
Once again, O LORD of hosts,
look down from heaven, and see;
Take care of this vine,
and protect what your right hand has planted.

Ps. 80

See across the line-- "preface" and "intention forming"