elegy for a mouse
6.15.06
from North Country, NY:
Whenever I heard these
presentations on publishing, I realize that is not really why I am
doing this writing. It’s good to know the reality, but it’s also
somewhat discouraging, especially if you’re focused on what sells
units, as opposed to what your soul needs to transform yourself &
your life - & that faith in whatever will come. I am rooted in
emotional truth and community story & that’s what’s important to
me. I am soaking up ideas & thoughts & hints of other worlds
& it seems like every industry or "world" can be crazy &
dysfunctional, whether that be nonprofit 5013 land, academia or
publishing.
Today, from New Orleans:
We watched Hotel
Rwanda last night while S twisted her son’s hair. S told me that every
time she sees the scene where the white people get to leave the country
& leave the Rwandans to fend for themselves that she cries every
time. It’s like Katrina all over again, Iraq, Lebanon, every place in
the world that’s been fucked over. & the stories keep coming.
People swimming through the pitch dark of night, hearing cries &
screams from attics, from neighbors & strangers. Women getting
dragged from cars because there are too many men in the city & not
enough women. Fucked-up white volunteers who come down & assume
they know the community better than the local people & who can
control the distribution of resources. Fucked-up white sheriffs from
the surrounding neighborhoods who turned back survivors with bullets.
Having to sneak back into the city by concocting fake media passes when
volunteers are already there & "helping out." Everything is fucked
up — employment situation, health care, services, environment, schools.
But
life goes on here. The coffeehouse down the street is open. People are
still hanging out on the porches on the street that’s being gentrified
& saying hi to everyone who passes by. S & I hijacked her
partner’s big truck & drove it to Whole Foods — my 1st time
driving a large vehicle. It took awhile to figure out how to back up,
but we made it home safely to the pile of grants we are working on to
raise money for the women of color health clinic. Sometimes you need to
take a break from the statistics & head out, even if the sun went
down hours ago. We also needed to free a mouse that was caught in one
of the "humane" traps that I convinced S to use last night. I walked
across the road from Whole Foods, opened the little gate, but the mouse
stayed inside. I had to coax the mouse out of the trap and then it was
gone & free.
A mouse just got trapped on one of the glue
traps. S had just decided not to use them anymore because we convinced
her they were cruel when we heard the squeak from the trap. It takes
days for the mouse to die & it suffocates or starves, sometimes
biting off its hands & leg in panic from trying to get unstuck. 3
had got caught on the glue traps last week & her partner had run
them over with his truck because he didn’t want them to suffer. We had
a panic of indecision, trying to decide what to do. We couldn’t unstick
it from the glue, and it was going to die. Should I run over it with
the huge truck? Should we let it die by glue trap? Should we put it in
a Ziplock bag & let it run out of air? After much discussion, we
finally decided on Ziplock. We were both sad at the irreversibleness
and inevitability of the mouse’s death, even though it was still
struggling & trying to get free. Part of me hoped it would somehow
magically figure out a way to escape the death glue.
