that chi kung can turn heaven and earth.
Revolution. Forest moves, leaves and insects,
weather, dirt, and water blow and flow.
The kung fu movers enter and emerge
in and out of the camouflage of trees.
A person stands out, tall against
the sky, like a shining angel, then shrinks
into a human bug flickering in the landscape.
The martial artists make animal moves, get
animal powers. Cup hands downward,
like paws, up on hind legs—rabbit,
bear, monkey. Arms and legs fly—
white crane, invented by woman.
Make 108 moves
108 times, keep
existence going, cause life and the good
to come into being. The 360
meridians of the world stream with the 12
meridians of my body. I swirl,
galaxies swirl. Rocks alive, mountains
alive. Soul through and through rocks,
mountains, ranges and ranges of mountains.
Bright Smile of Spontaneous Joy. Lift
the sides of your obstinate mouth, and start joy.
Joy courses through the body, all
the happy bodies. “Come come come,”
beckons a monk. “Lai, la. Lai, la.
Come see a monk in ecstasy.
We have a monk in ecstasy.”
The cell has no windows and no lights
but you can still see. A tall man
is standing tilted, curving to one side.
Round. His body seems to make a round.
Head back and uplifted. You can’t
see if his eyes are open or shut. So,
this is the way it looks from the outside.
A perfection. The witnesses make silent applause,
alleluia hands, jubilation hands.
“Lai, la. Lai, la.”
Now to the hillside with a willow stream
that’s a graveyard. This stone like a door
marks the grave of Fa Mook Lan,
Woman Warrior. Over Wittman’s shoulder,
I can read each word of her name.
“She killed herself,” says the monk.
“She hung herself.” No. No.
Why? I can’t believe it. Why?
“The emperor heard: The mighty general was a woman
in disguise, a brave and beautiful woman who’d gone
to war as a man. He sent for her to be a wife.
She refused, and he placed her under house arrest.
She killed herself at home.” No. No.
She can’t be the Fa Mook Lan who’s
the woman warrior I told about, we all
tell about. Many women named for her.
And the monk’s speech, a rare dialect issuing
from the habit of silence, hard to understand.
She couldn’t have killed herself. She couldn’t
have found life after war, life
as a woman, useless to live. How to go on
without her? Wittman has to find a way.
And I have to find my own way.
VIET NAM VILLAGE
Go on, alone. I have no
sense of direction. Left, right, east,
west arbitrary to my instincts. Mother
taught me, Memorize: Face the black rocking
chair, place your arms on its arms;
the scissors, the pencil you hold in this hand
this side of the rocking chair. I’ve been
lost, taking a walk with our toddling son
into nature. Sun upon and between the shaking
leaves forms images of rivers and houses and people
coming to the rescue. I shouted and screamed for rescue.
Our boy said, “We can eat the flies.”
I’ve been lost, taking a solitary walk
in my own neighborhood, where the streets curve
around, and I circle and circle. Earll drove
around until he found me. I walked very,
very mindfully into the Grand Canyon,
down the Great Unknown, lost sight
of any person, and did not get lost,
and walked back up to the top. I followed
a deer, who did not run away from me,
and I did not get lost. Maps of China
were made for me by Columbus and Kafka.
The most beautiful thing that Columbus had ever seen
was the land, “gardens,” wholly bright green.
He walked among the trees, which grew 5 kinds
of leaves and fruit branching from one trunk.
The greatest wonder in the new world, he said, was
he was bringing bread from island to island.
Kafka heard from an unknown boatman
that a great wall will be built to box in
the Center, which is itself a series of box mazes,
all contained within the endless outside
wall. Villages, cities, each further maze.
The ruler of the Center has a message for us;
he whispers it into the messenger’s ear, has it
whispered back, nods, then dies.
To get to us, the way goes from innermost
courts, up mountains of staircases
and stiles over walls, down stairs
and more stairs to an outer palace, onward
to the next outer palace, the next, more
courts, more stairs, more mazy
palaces. Years and years go by.
And I am traveling the other way, inward
to the Center. Must not tire, must
not grow old and want to die.
After years and miles of travel and worry,
keeping west, keeping south, I come
to a home-like village in Viet Nam.
All the land from the Yangtze River
to Quang Tri had been Nam Viet / Nan Yue.
The Hung / Hong Bang kings ruled
for 2,621 years.
I was on a boat in the Pearl River delta
(my mother in a boat going the other way,
hiding under a pile of oranges, escaping
from the Japanese, catching the big ship
to meet my father in America), and next
thing I knew, I was in the Red River delta.
The same pearlescent water, changing colors
with the tropical sun, the same red dirt,
and gray dirt and black dirt. Same
as the San Joaquin delta, back home. The farmers
grow rice; they treasure the water
buffalos, name them names like Great Joy.
The people look same-same Chinese.
“The like of the same I feel,
the like of the same in others.…”
But an utterly foreign language chimes out
of their mouths. (Flashback to the first day of
American school: Other children! But
I can’t speak with them. I wanted to say,
“You smell like milk. Your skin
looks like chocolate ice cream. And yours
like strawberry-and-vanilla ice cream.”
And I wanted to ask, “How do you
feel being you?”) I arrived
at the hamlet on a holiday. The hot
breeze, hot even beside the hurrying
river, blew and flew flags, long
banners, tassels, long ribbons. Lots
of red. Not just political red. Red
for health, for beauty, for good luck. Clang
clang clang clang! Bang! Bang!
Ho-o-nk! Qwoooo! Bum! Bum! The musicians
played freestyle no-pattern
free-for-all any old way. Broke
patterns. Broke time. And firecrackers
went off every which way.
Firecrackers like bombs and
artillery fire,
and rocket fire. They aren’t afraid,
the bangs setting off P.T.S.D.
No more P.T.S.D. P.T.S.D. over.
War over. War won. They won every war.
The American War, and before that, war
with the French, and before that, the Japanese,
and before that, the Chinese. They
invited me into a tent open
on one side, sat me at the picnic
table, and served me joong. Just like
back home. Untie the string—what
message are these lines and knots telling me
if I could but read? Unwrap the ti
leaves—ti sacred in every country
where it grows. Eat the rice and mung beans,
the pork, and the whole sun of egg yolk.
I partake of joong with the once-enemy.
Does joong mean to them what it means to me?
They are eating peace food with their
twice-enemy, an American, a Chinese.
Chinese invented joong to feed
the dragons in the river where Chu Ping, the peace
martyr, drowned himself. Clang clang!
Kang! Boom boom boom! Kang!
Bum bum! Kang kang! Qwoooo!
C’mon c’mon c’mon! I was rushed
out of the tent into a rushing crowd.
Everyone—all of the hamlet, and other hamlets—
out of the rolling ocean the crowd—around
corners and bends stream more crowd—
hurrying, hurrying somewhere wonderful. Above
heads, lifted and carried on chairs,
thrones, moved a parade of idols. Who
were they? Gods? Heroes? Ancestors?
They had big wide-open eyes, as if
they could see all things and all
people, see far to where we’re going.
I could not recognize the figures by a sign,
no antler bumps on head, no
red face, no blue face,
no long ears, no mudra
of hands, no multiple hands, no
multiple heads. They looked like regular
people dressed up in silk and gold
raiment, and crowns. The crowd slowed, so
tight were we. We fitted ourselves breast to
back, sides to sides, no elbow poking, no
stepping on toes or heels. Over our heads,
the roomy sky was benign blue; the clouds
were long and wispy. The crowd up ahead
moved faster, drawing, pulling my part
of crowd after them, faster, faster. I’m
a short person. All I can see are backs.
Where are the friends I had joong with? I can’t see
the idols anymore either. I look
at the sky trying but unable to project my point
of view to see the whole crowd, and the country it’s
moving through, whether there’s a destination,
and to find the people I know. I could lift
my feet, leave the ground, and the close-fitting
crowd would carry me. I don’t have to watch
or decide where I’m going. I stayed in step,
running on tiptoes. The ground was dirt
and trodden grass. The dirt was damp, damper,
wet. We were beside the river. We were
following the snaking path of the long river.
Song Hong, River Red, the Red River,
which goes from the Yunan River in China
to the Gulf of Tonkin. The river is full
of dragons, the river is a dragon.
Viet Nam is a dragon rampant;
she has a large head, many mouths,
and a long spine that flares into fantails.
And I’m a dragon, and my mother a dragon. I
and all these people are drops of dragon within
the big dragon body. We are blood.
We are performing dragon. Every so often,
Chinese have to mass together,
become a mashing moshing crowd. In
the United States, lonely, you can join the people
in Chinatown shopping for their daily greens,
and get your fix of Chinese crowd.
But those crowds move in both directions,
pass one another coming and going.
This mass I’m embedded in
feels like a Japanese or Korean demo,
like an advancing army. Breaching worry (worry is
the default working of my natural mind), I feel:
elation. Crowd joy. Happiness-in-people.
I am reliving peace demonstrations.
In San Francisco, we were a peace dragon
with 100,000 pairs of feet
walking up and down the city hills. From rooftops
and balconies rained rice as at weddings,
and water on the summer’s day, and rose petals,
and red and motley confetti. In Washington, D.C.,
on International Women’s Day, 2003, our peace
dragoness was a mile long, winding our way
to the White House. 1,000,000 people
marched in Rome. And thousands of Shiite
and Sunni Muslims together in Baghdad.
“O Democracy, I will make inseparable
cities with their arms about each other’s necks.”
For the first time in history, the area in front
of the White House fence was banned to demonstrators.
The U.S. Park Police stopped us
at Pennsylvania Avenue. So, we sat in.
We sat ourselves down upon the historic
ground. “Our House, our street.”
The Rangers are friendly and will converse, used
to being helpful to tourists. We have a permit;
didn’t you get a copy? You promised,
we could parade in front of the White House.
“Our House, our street.” The permit’s
for only 25 people. Okay,
so let’s count off 25.
1 2 3 4 5 …
I was ninth, 9 my lucky number.
I said my number and stepped between the Rangers.
Running at us, whooping, cheering came
a pink-clad crowd—the tail of the dragon!
They had gotten through the police line
at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
We rushed to meet them. Hugging, holding
one another, happy, we completed the ring
around our House. “… A troop gathers around me.
Some walk by my side and some behind, and some
embrace my arms or neck … thicker they come,
a great crowd, and I in the middle.”
The encirclement lasted for moments, then the crowd
cooperated with the police, who asked them
and ordered them off the street. They retreated
to the borders of Lafayette Park. There they
stayed, keeping an eye on the 25 of us
who stood at the curb of the White House sidewalk.
In the middle of the park, drummers—Native Americans—
drummed banging day and night; the President
won’t sleep til he calls off Shock and Awe.
Wave to the drummers, dance to the drumming. Sing,
and dance to our own singing, ululation,
and “Give peace a chance …” Wave
to the peace marchers, wave to the police, wave
to the children of Iraq. Everyone I saw was nonviolent.
The man with the bullhorn and the blowups of abortions
disappeared. Counterdemonstrators disappeared.
Everywhere I looked was peace. Each woman
cared for the women around her, and love grew.
Love, and love returning, love and returning
love, love reverberating, love magnifying.
I felt love
palpable and saw love
manifest—it’s pink. Air and light turned
dawn-pink. The color I imagine Yin.
The color of aired blood, the pink mist
at explosions. I was desperate for miracle,
perhaps the reason I could open my arms wide
and gather up great big pink
balls of Peace, and hurl them east toward Iraq,
and turn and hurl them at the White House.
I’m not the only one. Other women
also threw pink balls of Peace
to the Iraqi children, to protect them,
and at the White House. “Catch, George.”
“Catch, Laura.” The many kinds of police
kept arriving—first, the Law Enforcement
Park Rangers, who I think are Federal Police;
then came the Metropolitan Police, which included
mounted police and motorcycle cops,
then SWAT teams / TAC squads. Easy
to practice nonviolence with the friendly
Park Rangers. “How about giving me your Code Pink
button, for my wife?” We petted and talked
to the horses. But the SWAT / TACs—one-way
glass over faces, everyone in the same
robot stance, a rank of robots, weapons—
any women? can’t tell—impervious to us.
The officer shouting and giving us
orders was a D.C. cop. “Get off
the street. Arrests will begin in twenty minutes.”
Twenty minutes and more passed. He announced
again and again, “Arrests in twenty minutes.”
They didn’t really want to arrest us;
they hoped we would go away. We were
having a standoff. Without discussion,
we 25 women all together,
took slow steps backward through
the yellow tape. We waved our arms and pink
scarves and ribbons, waving goodbye
to our supporters, who stood witness on the 3
far sides of the park, waving goodbye
to the police; we are getting off the street.
We walked backward, broke the yellow tape,
up onto the curb, into the “restricted
zone (White House sidewalk).”
Slowly, imperceptibly moving so as not to provoke
violent arrest. Singing, “Salaam, peace,
shalom.” We reached the White House fence.
Two grandmothers ago, our ancestresses
chained themselve to this black iron fence.
I held its bars in my hands, laid my face
against the barricade, and felt tears rise.
The other women were crying too, and cheering,
and dancing. Now the police saw, we had
unambiguously broken a law. Time
to start the arrests. All the police came
to attention, the Rangers blocking the left side
of the steet, the TAC squad the right, and the city