The snakes will have to be torched. Scales, venom and all. There will be no donating the fangs to science. We will not wear them round our necks like drilled victories. We will cover our mouths with the necks of our shirts when the smoke rises. Try to breathe a little less.
“Come home, to end and start.” Year of the flame. Year of the little bruised blue being born and growing–growing feet a back and wings, growing cracking nerve ends that outstretch to none. A burial would not be enough. The dirt can’t cover it–the dirt is an ingredient; there isn’t time to sift. Arms stand in a doorway carrying a knot of things to the throat, skin against the shade of bent letters and brief triggers. What does gone mean? A wind you thought about, shattered through with walking. There’s a time to be ready.
What is late if just right? Another year won’t come without the parting. No rotting net promising to catch, no womb to woo you back. I’ll burn the snakes, the roots, the tubers, my fingerprinted backspaces. I’ll burn the stacks and box fillers, the rusted boats filled with paper. The clicks, the twigs–the twine that binds them. Spit dries. Burn it all.
Have you ever felt the ground start to tilt, a signal of a moodiness coming? If it is to be compared to anything, then compare it to a storm approaching–the kind you can watch roll right in and blow through trees one at a time. A marching line of rustle and bending, a choreographed movement of prayer and submission–it’s a fight between eerie and beautiful. I compare it to that, some approaching blues or sadness.
So I’ve been a little “off” this week, a loneliness I haven’t had the energy nor desire to fight. It’s okay. I enjoy feeling, you know. Which is the irony of dealing with chronic pain and depression–life is learning a dance between relishing and loathing this thing I crave called feeling. Today was the day that all preparation of approaching sadness came to use, as I crashed and crashed hard. I’ve shuffled a worngroove from bed to couch to bed to couch to bed again. I drifted off again and again and felt damn well delirious at one point, bouncing from dream to dream as if I was simply looking through a stack of photographs. All of them were sadness. When awake I sat there with them weighing on my body, a sort of sagging in the heart. This feels like the most of it–the storm has wandered offto the left and I’m coming up like out of water.
A necessary day, but a wasted one nonetheless. I’m ready for so many things. I’m ready for a new week and a better mood(less lonely, more focus), more writing–lately that’s all I want to do(I want to sink my life into a pot of ink–want to be the feather end dipping in, the words coming out in beats of three and dripping wet. If not writing, then what? Then nothing). I’m ready for more melting, the slow dip and climbing tease of temperature, more soon-coming spring. Finished revolving around the release, as letting go is not a stagnant stage(and I cannot be slowly opening a palm forever). It’s time to forward. Shake feathers dry. Be light.
Access to Life is a collaboration between the Global Fund and Magnum Photos–eight photographers shoot 30 people in 9 different countries before & after antiretroviral treatment for AIDS.
Massaman Keïta, 31 and Fatoumata Camara, 20 (Farmers)
Read more about their story here
Igor Tereshenko, 24 (construction worker), St. Petersburg, Russia
Like many among the “lost generation” of young Russians cast adrift into an insecure future after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Igor, former construction worker, was a heroin addict. He knew he had been infected by a dirty needle, but wasn’t sure when, and found out that he was HIV-positive in 2003, while in prison serving a three-year term for stabbing one of two men who had attacked his wife on the street. (In a sad postscript, his wife was murdered the day before Igor was released from prison.) Igor remained healthy for years after his diagnosis but contracted pneumonia in early 2007. Then, in the summer of 2007, he became paralyzed from the waist down after injecting heroin. At the St. Petersburg Municipal AIDS Center, doctors told him he had suffered a spinal injury of some sort (Igor claimed the ambulance team had beaten him up). The condition forced him to lie motionless, leading to the development of massive bed sores. In fact, doctors discovered he was suffering from a cancerous tumor. Igor’s parents were both strongly supportive. His mother became a cleaner at the hospital, which enabled her to sleep in his room at night and provide constant care.
Igor has begun antiretroviral therapy four months before his death on March 18, 2008, from cancer. Although he had made excellent progress with relatively high CD4 count (his immune system had strengthened) and an undetectable viral load, his doctors decided to discontinue his ARV treatment when they realized that he would soon die from his inoperable spinal tumor.
View more photos from the collection and read individual stories here. Select individual countries to watch a narrated photo essay for every location. Extremely powerful stuff.
What does it feel like to be a woman on the street in a cultural environment that does nothing to discourage men from heckling, following, touching or disparaging women in public spaces?
Filmmaker Maggie Hadleigh-West believes that the streets are a War Zone for women. Armed with only a video-camera, she both demonstrates this experience and, by turning and confronting her abusers, reclaims space that was stolen from her.
War Zone is an excellent discussion starter for both men and women. It gives voice and expression to a disturbing daily aspect of being a woman in this society. It also gives men a direct personal feeling for what harassing behavior looks and feels like to a woman. Young men who may think such behavior is cool or funny will be forced to rethink their assumptions.
War Zone is a classroom, documentary edition of Maggie Hadleigh-West’s first film by the same title. Her film has been screened and applauded at scores of festivals in the U.S. and abroad. She has appeared to discuss the film on the Today Show, CBS News, 20/20, BBC, NPR, CNN, and Eye to Eye with Connie Chung.
