Saturday, May 23, 2020

Language in a time of corona

Dancer from Kettle's Yard
 was listening to a podcast where Krista Tippet interviewed Ocean Vuong. Vuong's answers were incredibly perspicacious, but one conversation struck me in particular given this moment.

-----------------------------------

Vuong: We often tell our students, “The future’s in your hands.” But I think the future is actually in your mouth.

[laughter]

Vuong: You have to articulate the world you want to live in first. […] we have strong, good sciences, good schools; very advanced weaponry, for sure — but I think we’re still very primitive in the way we use language and speak, particularly in how we celebrate ourselves. “You’re killing it.”

Tippett: You’re so acute about the violence of the American lexicon …

Vuong: We have to ask. I’m not saying it’s wrong, per se; I use it, too, being a product of this country. But one has to wonder, what is it about a culture that can only value itself through the lexicon of death? I grew up in New England, and I heard boys talk about pleasure as conquest. “I bagged her. She’s in the bag. I owned it. I owned that place. I knocked it out of the park. I went in there, guns blazing. Go knock ‘em dead. Drop dead gorgeous. Slay — I slayed them. I slew them.” What happens to our imagination when we can only celebrate ourselves through our very vanishing?

Tippett: I mean, even you, as a poet, have said people will say to you, “You’re killing it.”

Vuong: What does it do to the brain? We know language matters. […] And so I think, what happens if we alter our language? Where would our future be? Where will we grow towards if we start to think differently about how the world is?

(Full interview and transcript available here)

-----------------------------------

Already, there is a conversation around the language we use regarding the virus, such as the difference between saying physical distancing instead of social distancing. I've personally been observing the range of words used for the measures put in place by governments to reduce the spread of the virus - lockdown, shelter in place, circuit-breaker. (I think shelter-in-place sounds the most beautiful, reminding me of Pslam 91. But I mostly been using lockdown because that is what is feels like and what most of the world understands. No one intuitively undertands circuit-breaker.) But something more troubling I've noticed is how the language used around the virus is laced with the lexicon of war or violence.

'frontliners'

'zoombombing'

'we will beat this virus'

Politicians, especially, use the language of violence. Boris Johnson stated that: 'This enemy can be deadly, but it is also beatable.' Donald Trump, Emanuel Macron, Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping have all referred to their response to the virus as fighting a 'war'.

South Asian University Senior Assistant Professor Prabhash Ranjan suggests that war metaphors are being used to galvanise people, to explain the gravity of the situation, to raise support for the governments measures and to create a sense of unity. He goes on to list the ways in which government could use such language for their own benefit, for instance to heighten surveillance and other authoritarian actions, create a cult of personality, or as a convenient excuse for mistakes. Yet his own article employs military diction: 'marshal resources and galvanise people fighting the pandemic'.

--------------------------

When I get voice messages from Naomi and Anais, often they begin with word of safety and love. 'Dear', 'my love', 'sweet', 'dearest'. I feel safe, cocooned in my earphones and their words of trust and confidence. Wrapped in their words, I am in a bubble and filled with peace. Again, I think of that passage in John and the disciples in the locked room. 'Peace be with you,' Jesus says, 'Do not be afraid.'

These words cannot, and should not, give a false sense of security. We do need a healthy respect of the virus, and we do need to respond with compassion and love for other people (wearing a mask outside, I've come to think, is a wordless way for me to tell someone I care about you, an intention I've found is best accompanied by a eye-crinkle smile above the line of your mask.) But these words can remind us that while this virus has taken away a lot and changed so much, there is a gentle strength in being able to love and communicate love and peace while we walk through this. Instead of a people 'besieged by an enemy', we can begin to sow the words of love and safety that will birth a more considerate world.

There are words of safety and there are words of fear - how comforting, when Jacinda Ardern said that you could see people in your 'bubble'. That image of a glistening sphere, source of childhood delight, is powerful. There is so much fear at the moment - people take pains to walk on the other side of the pavement to avoid other people, shelves empty, WhatsApp messages about the latest news and fake news fly from phone to phone. We could use more words of safety.

Friday, May 15, 2020

Gate A-4



Gate A-4
Naomi Shihab Nye - 1952

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning
my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement:
"If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please
come to the gate immediately."

Well—one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just
like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. "Help,"
said the flight agent. "Talk to her. What is her problem? We
told her the flight was going to be late and she did this."

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly.
"Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-
se-wee?" The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly
used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled
entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the
next day. I said, "No, we're fine, you'll get there, just later, who is
picking you up? Let's call him."

We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would
stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next to
her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just
for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while
in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I
thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know
and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee,
answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool
cookies—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and
nuts—from her bag—and was offering them to all the women at the gate.
To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the
lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same powdered
sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

And then the airline broke out free apple juice from huge coolers and two
little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they
were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend—
by now we were holding hands—had a potted plant poking out of her bag,
some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradi-
tion. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This
is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that
gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—seemed apprehensive about
any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.

This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

Meditations on John 20:19-22



On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

I have been deeply blessed by a series of four meditations on the nomad podcast website - the last one being this meditation on the Power of a Greeting. Anna Robinson goes through an imaginative exercise in which you close your eyes and imagine yourself as a person living just after Jesus died. Like the disciples (maybe you are one of them), you are in a locked room, and Jesus comes back - no knocking, just there.

'Hello,' he says.

I touch his arm - the soft fuzz of hair on his wrist and the veins beneath. The life. His face - he's real. There's a pain in my throat and I'm frowning and blinking and then I'm crying because I really missed you. 

'Will you stay with me?' I ask.

'No,' he says.

'Can I stay with you?' I ask.

'Yes,' he says, and smiles. 'Always.'

Hope in a time of Corona


On the day the circuit breaker was extended, I was calling Naomi before I knew. I lay on my parents' bed on my stomach, glad of the break from work to listen to her in her garden while I watched the fan spin and wondered about fate. I told her the Prime Minister was about the speak, she wished me well and we said good bye.

I called Jacob that evening while on a walk, wearing a mask that I felt was holding my face - my whole body - together. It didn't do a very good job. Crying in a mask is damp, suffocating, snotty and pathetic. 

'I feel like I can't be in past because it is so different from now. I can't be in the present because I really dislike the present. And I can't be in the future because I don't know what it will look like any more.'

'Jacob, where can I go?'

------------------------------------------

I found things particularly hard when the lockdown was extended because I had plans. Every year, at the beginning of the year, I make predictions. I like to say they are my hopes and fears for the year, with a bit more magic. 

This all started with Alex, and we sat one new years day making predictions which we then folded up and put into an old ferrero rocher box with some sweets and glitter, and buried in the woods near her house. She's gone back now and then, but has never found that box again despite one focused session of intense digging. I can't remember exactly what I predicted then - something about liking tea and having an argument with Jacob I think. 

This year, I predicted Jacob would grow a beard, and it happened.

This year, I predicted that Jacob would propose on a Sunday in May.

------------------------------------------

Last week, I read that Wuhan had seen more cases. I read that the PPE delivered to the UK was useless. I read that people were dying, and people are dying. 

'How do I hope when I can't see what it looks like? When I don't know what to hope for?' I asked Jacob, sitting on the floor in the windowless back room.

------------------------------------------

This week, I went on a walk and listened to a podcast about Hope in a time of disappointment. Hope, it explained, is different to prediction. Prediction, or planning, is magical thinking. It is creating scenarios which can can see happening - scenarios with likelihood and benefit for you - in which you place your hope. But hope, real hope, is more about trusting something (or someone) that won't fade or change or be overturned by government rules. I can hope in Jesus - his promises to never leave nor forsake, his victory over death, his loving kindness (always). 

Maybe that looks like, instead of predicting that Jacob would propose on a Sunday in May, I trust that Jacob loves me and therefore hope that he will express his love to me in the best way for us. Maybe that looks like, instead of predicting that the world will come out of its lockdown and find a vaccine by July, that God will use this time to show his love and mercy and to deepen that precious knowledge of our need for him. I still pray for a vaccine, and for healing, and to see the people I love again. Prayer negates prediction since its very premise is one of helplessness. But I hope in Jesus, in his resurrection and his life - the life he gives to all who believe in him.