FoodLove 7: “Acting As Though”
Acting As Though
By Rufina C. Garay
Acting as though I’m not disappointed in people or disgusted with a few makes me tired.
Acting as though disconnection could be made whole by Zooms and infrequent phone calls that have less and less meaning and more and more performance, makes the struggle of extroverting my daily stumbling block,
Because I need what little there is to get from the halo of it all.
Acting as though I don’t have rage over the egos of
gatekeepers held up with ivory hands
to win prizes for excellence
makes me exhausted,
even terrified
the way certain seers imagined—
knew what atomic bombs going off
would do when they struck inhabited land,
rupturing, then melting skin that wasn’t theirs—
didn’t look like them,
to protect something very important.
Acting as though it doesn’t bother me that people pat themselves on the back
for attending this training,
doing this good and recognized deed,
reading this or that book,
when they forget that relationships with real people
actually matter,
makes me realize that I have grown older.
I would hold each person, including myself more accountable, with or without hashtags.
I ask
how I can contribute in,
how can I collaborate from an authentic place?
I won’t give up until the real women of excellence show up or are given access to the stage.
I have to hold on to the identity I know, resting below the surface
of the blood boiling.
Wind invading wood phase produces imbalance, anger in the liver,
but not just anger.
Rage. Rage over a number of years.
Rage over a White woman talking to me through her misperceptions of my point of view while I wait patiently.
She is ready for everyone else to be wrong.
Rage over the righteousness she wears like a blazoned red cape. I gently explain that she has assumed something incorrectly.
She assumes everyone is always talking about oppression.
My first generation cousin who is of no blood relationship to me would tell this activist that she has made an “Ass-(out of)-u-(and) me.”
As if, my focus on hierarchies of access to foster empowerment was her idea.
She is blind to the entanglement of her ego in the work.
She isn’t ready to pass the mic to our dark sister,
or to pay her to lead.
She is comfortable as the voice, the leading “do-gooder.” But her challenge is simply to be better.
She is the younger version of the gatekeeper. These women of excellence know a lot. If you are from my parents’ country of origin, you will know what I mean by this.
As if, she had my lived experience.
Only the wind of tsunamis can imagine the destruction I could produce with my tongue.
I hold it.
I promise to breathe in his honor instead.
I see no stranger*, but the more you laud yourselves, the less I can feel the spirit of this great work, and the more I see the return of self-absorption.
That momentary pause for reflection in that original pivot slips away. The terror of
“I can’t breathe”
is yesterday’s news to you.
Couldn’t you hold on to it for one moment more
before saying goodbye?
Kiss that lover who melted every ice wall you put up
who soaked in your vulnerabilities as if they were shared, lived-in skin whose bruises and sores were not too much to handle, and who tended to those wounds with every gentle caress?
No. You are back to surviving in the literal wake of others not like you.
My elders dying on the streets from hate crimes are simply foreign to you, distanced by how you take refuge in focusing first on one thing. You abdicate your responsibilities to see and share from your seat of authority, from your place of privilege.
Yesterday, those hate crimes were your post-election, ineffective hashtags.
Then, you let him, the White terrorist whose face you’ve already seen multiple times, slaughter my sisters. He is your progeny.
It matters that I, as an Asian (as you call me), or rather,
as a Chinese-Filipino-Spanish American (as I know me), want to focus first on
the fundamental truth that
Black Lives Matter.
It matters that we model for others what it means to show up
and take a stand for each other,
how we do that with the different colors and
shades of skin we inhabit.
It matters too that my dark and sacred sister will know how to speak of my precious elders,
even if you cannot.
In grace, her blood boils too, and she will give space to it.
She knows the sorrow of my silent sisters, their sons, daughters, and children.
But you women of excellence, must you show up brightest at the table with the greenest adornments, gleaming gold now in the shroud of my sisters?
Must you be the arbiter of whose mind matters, whose hearts we care about, and whose spirits we crush? Why do you show up with so little appreciation for others?
Must all the people of color line up in a neat and orderly queue
so that you can handle it,
so you can process how to focus?
The earth in all her complexity does not tell the grass to stop growing in order for the apple, pear, plum, and quince trees to bear fruit.
There is a time and season for it all.
There is a time and season for us all to bear fruit.
Follow mother nature to know endless bounty,
remembrance and respect for every living being
and a resting place for that which is dead.
Having no place to put this dis-ease of discontent with humanity
where once I had such unbridled and deep love,
I can only offer it to the magnificence of water.
Pull it away from me in low tide,
wash me in imagined forgiveness
until rage runs shallow
leaving only jutting rocks and pebbles
until the emptiness becomes as real as the sun’s violet rays
reflecting its intensity at dusk at that perfect angle
where the blurred brightness below opens like a peaceful portal to the hidden beauty and danger of what could swallow us up.
*“see no stranger” is a concept from the Sikh Muslim tradition shared by activist and civil rights lawyer, Valarie Kaur, who advocates for revolutionary love.
© 2021 Rufina C. Garay, J.D. All Rights Reserved.
