I am going to make God's eyes in public this week:
it is warming up to above freezing!
Hand can be free of mittens---at least for a little while---and Ms Chocolate sent me 'instant heat" hand warmer packs, that you put in your mittens or boots!
Friends from other places have checked in on me, and that is THE BEST. In hard times, just being asked, "How are you doing?" is a huge gift.
I try to remember that, to extend it myself.
And I have reason to.
Two people I know, mostly online, are living with cancer. One case appears very hopeful for long-term management.
The other, I just found out, is a friend who last week moved to hospice care.
Anyway... former blogger "Darwi" (the name is from Dune) emailed me yesterday, asking how I'm doing.
Darwi lived through the Bosnian war as a teenager and is now a trauma therapist in the US.
This is the letter I wrote in response.
If you've been reading my blog, you'll know a lot of this, but I am posting it as a reflection my of recent thoughts.
LETTER TO DARWI:
My dear longtime friend 😍!
You are soooo kind to check in on me, here in Minneapolis--thank you so much!
It really helps to have people outside of here drop in and say hello!
I am doing okay, but it is really WEIRD here, as you can imagine!
It felt entirely surreal at first--I tell people,
It feels like being in a slow-motion civil war in a science-fiction movie.
"Is this really happening?"
After about 9 weeks since the first ICE raid,
I can accept that it is, and have settled into some rhythm.
Going through the George Floyd murder here was practice, in some ways---certainly civilians here jumped right into organizing and resisting, based partly on that experience.
And for me--(as you and I talked about at that time)--
I gathered some psychological/theological tools that help me now.
Probably the biggest most useful tool was
getting my own role in perspective:
I am not, cannot be, do not even want to be the Hero of the Resistance.
"I am not the savior."
(Neither is anyone else:
'heroes' can be intensely ego-driven, and I avoid them.)
Along with that goes the wisdom to PACE myself...
Or to try to.
For the first couple weeks, I was doing something almost every day--protests or photography or sign-making---and I was blogging about the situation every day-- sharing links, writing my observations-- and sending my write-ups to a few other people (old family friend, for instance) who don't see my blog and had asked for updates.
And then I hit a wall.
I reached "peak peevishness" and was snapping at people--friends and coworkers, and I knew I needed to STOP.
I think writing about it every day was actually driving the worry and horror deeper into me...
Don't they say that sometimes talking about a traumatic event right away can make it worse?
I'm sure it depends, but I'd started to feel that way...
Dreading sitting down to write up my report...
So I said I was taking a break on my blog--this was only last Thursday,
and since then I have focused only on ONE thing--making yarn God's eyes.
And listening to audio books that are interesting and/or hopeful.
Last week I listened to Becky Chambers' The Galaxy and the Ground Within (2021).
I bet you know Chambers's sci-fi?
She is "hope core/ hope-punk"--she imagines GOOD things happening--
like sentient species getting along!
I think her book was more like imaginative sociology than strong narrative fiction (unlike the excellent story of Murderbot)---but I like that a lot.
Sort of like Star Trek imagining, "How many ways could a biological species eat or reproduce?")
Below: three of my God's eyes:
the eye on the left is the colors of the Greek/Turkish "evil eye' protective amulet.
The city had closed off this tiny park (a corner of the block, like a large lawn) during Covid
because people had been living there and doing "business" (sex and drugs).
That always made me mad because the city didn't give the people anywhere to go, so the "business" just moved down the block into a parking lot.
Anyway, for a long time that fence has been a symbol to me of the ugliness of stupidity and futility. The neighborhood is dirt and run down, and now worse.
So I started to hang little things on the chain links, and then came up with this project of making God's eyes out of donated yarn (free or cheap and sticks I pick up outside).
You know them? They--"ojos de dio"-- come from the indigenous Huichol people of Mexico. The Huichol held onto their traditional religion, so though they are made on crossed sticks, and are meant to be spiritual protection (eyes between worlds?),
they were not originally Christian at all.
The eyes entered Anglo US culture in the 1970s, when folk art got big. Kids of my generation made them at summer camp and stuff.
So in September I did a big push to make 125, some with friends, and hung them all around the fence.
The idea was people could take them, and over the past 5 months people have taken them slowly and steadily-- and I am able to make enough to keep refilling the fence. so it is always decorated with these bright objects.
To me, they are a happy, jaunty defiance of despair.
I don't know exactly what Andric meant here, from the end of your email (translated out of Bosnian, by Google translate)
but this actually feels like the God's eyes (and, we, us, ourselves) to me---
"tiny parts of a mosaic whose shape, meaning, or size I cannot even guess".
"We are not carried by the wind like leaves, and this bitter happiness of flying is not a meaning or purpose in itself. We are not atoms of dust that tirelessly rise over the roads in summer, but tiny parts of a mosaic whose shape, meaning, or size I cannot even guess, but in which, here I have found my place and stand reverently, as in a temple..."And so that project was already in place when ICE occupied my city, and I decided it was a good and fitting thing to continue.
-Ivo Andric
The eyes are hopeful.
They bring beauty into an ugly situation.
They show care---they say "I see you".
Making them is calming and meditative... helos me stay centered...
And sometimes it's collective--I invite people to come craft with me at my apartment every Sunday.
NOT a big "movement"--I don't want to coordinate it at that level--it's just a few pals.
But that's enough.
I've wanted to make them outdoors but it's been waaaaay too cold---below zero!
This week it's finally warming up enough to take off mittens,
so on Thursday (forecast to be a balmy 38ºF above zero!)
I am going to make them in public.
Probably at the memorial site to Alex Pretti. He was murdered a couple blocks from where I lived for 17 years, so I know the spot intimately...
Now I live a couple miles away.
YOU KNOW, better than most how that is...
And Renee Good was murdered near my workplace and George Floyd Square, so once again, this is my home turf. And there's a memorial there, but smaller because it's in the middle of a residential block, while Alex died on a street of restaurants, across from a donut shop... Insane. Anyway there are places for people to hang out and warm up.
I might also go make them at the Whipple Federal Building, where there is a constant protest.
That scares me, because it's where they hold people so it's like a military installation.
But I will go and see how it feels...
Protestors warn you to take masks and eye goggles... In case there's teargas, etc.
So I think I'll start with the friendlier space of Alex's memorial, and see how that goes...
I love the God's eyes because while they may seem small and useless, they are actually a path into and through a weird landscape out of a fairy tale, or a sci-fi dystopia?
Whichever.
So they are a good thing for me.
Thank you again, my friend!
Please write and tell me how you are doing, if you have time/energy.
Simply reaching out and saying "how are you doing?" is HUGE.
Thank you.
Live long and prosper!
Love, Fresca
