The New Earth


 
 
 
 
 Dedication
 This book is for the dreamers: the activists, academics, researchers, lawyers, journalists, artists, and ordinary civilians around the world who work every day, against the world’s cynicism, against seemingly impossible odds, for a just, free, and peaceful future for Palestine and Israel.
 
 
 Epigraphs
 When the storm dispersed them, the present was shouting at the past: “It’s your fault.” And the past was transforming its crime into a law. As for the future, it was a neutral observer.
 Mahmoud Darwish
 The postscript, being rebellious, has taken by storm the place of the prologue. Everyone knows that postscripts go at the end of letters and not at the beginning of books, but here, in the mountains of southeastern Mexico, we have a “new kind” of discipline, that is, that everyone does what they want. The dead, for example, never stay still.
 Subcomandante Marcos
 Who shall have rest and who shall never be still,
 Who shall be serene and who torn apart,
 Who shall be at ease and who afflicted.
 Unetanah Tokef
 
 
 Contents
 Cover
 Title Page
 Dedication
 Epigraphs
 /1
 The Upper West Side Book of The Dead
 The Apthorp
 Woods Hole
 The Vastness of the World
 Feeling Time
 The Weather
 The Question of Happiness
 The Question of Melodrama
 The Future
 The New Earth
 A Sort of Homecoming
 /1a
 Symposium on Jorge Luis Borges, “A New Refutation of Time”
 /1b
 And This Is the Oppressor’s Language
 The Return
 Good Morning, Buddhas (Sandy in a Moment of Silence)
 An Appeal (Or, an Attempt at an Intervention)
 Scenes from a Marriage (Sandy and Naomi in New York 1981–2001)
 Men, Feelings
 The Hammock
 The Book of Naomi
 Discourse on Loss
 Palestine: On the Poverty of Metaphor
 Wyatt
 The Book of Antecedents
 An Act of Sheer Manipulation
 Jerusalem
 Arrivals
 America Is Dead
 /2
 The World
 Arrivals
 Timeline of the Wilcox and Downs Families
 Acknowledgments
 About the Author
 Also by Jess Row
 Copyright
 About the Publisher
 
 
 /1
 
 
 The Upper West Side Book of The Dead
 Recovered from: Drafts Folder (Unsent Message)
 From: “Bering Wilcox” <[email protected]>
 Last saved: March 12, 2003 at 9:13:44 PM EST
 To: “Patrick Hakuin Wilcox” <[email protected]>
 Subject: The Upper West Side Book of the Dead
 Wadi Aboud, March 12
 When the journey of my life has reached its end,
 and since no relatives go with me from this world,
 not even Great-Aunt Estie, who survived the Shoah,
 two husbands, one in semiprecious stones,
 one in schmattes—who always patted the couch
 and said, “sit next to me, you make me feel younger,”
 while she told the filthiest jokes—
 when the journey of my life has reached its end,
 in other words, may the peaceful and wrathful buddhas
 send out the power of their compassion
 and clear away the darkness of ignorance.
 When parted from beloved friends, wandering alone—
 as if I got up out of my sleeping bag, in Palestine,
 and decided to walk home, as if there were
 no barricades, no barbed wire, no blast walls,
 and return to my childhood bedroom, on 79th
 and Broadway—and when the terrors of the bardo appear
 on that journey, the worst things I’ve ever done,
 may the peaceful and wrathful ones, who know
 all my secrets, sweeten my tongue with halvah,
 chocolate-covered if possible, shoplifted
 from the Zabar’s checkout counter.
 When I suffer through the power of my karma,
 heaped up in this strange place, birthplace
 I never chose, from the grand precipices of CPW,
 the Dakota, the El Dorado, the stately brownstones,
 that Nora Ephron domesticated New York,
 lox-and-herring-and-Sunday-Times New York,
 to the projects, the mamas smoking in pink
 velour outside the McDonald’s on 91st and Columbus,
 smacking their kids, barking no me diga,
 may the peaceful and wrathful buddhas remove
 my impacted feelings like a bad molar
 and give me new eyes, fresh eyes, to
 forgive everyone their hypocrisies.
 When I see my future parents in union,
 may I see the peaceful and wrathful buddhas
 with their consorts, with power to choose
 my birthplace, for the good of others, may I do
 more than just laugh and say, “well, it couldn’t
 get much worse”—because first I have to turn
 and forgive them, my current parents, yes you,
 Mommy, and remember you made me a birthday cake
 once, from scratch, green frosting—
 We ate it together at the dining table,
 and then the lock turned and Trick rushed in,
 cake!—dug his finger in, no hesitation—
 And Daddy standing there, shrugging,
 in the hallway: Easy, tiger. There’s still
 the dent in the plaster from where
 the Pyrex hit the wall. It’s not easy,
 throwing a full baking dish across a
 prewar dining room. If Trick hadn’t ducked
 he might not have his front teeth now.
 We sat there eating frosting off the wall,
 frosting mixed with paint chips, eating
 the building, as you two screamed in the kitchen.
 When it was clear no one was making dinner,
 Winter emptied her piggy bank,
 and we went downstairs to La Caridad,
 twelve, ten, and nine, ordered black bean chicken
 and rice and beans to share three ways.
 My point is: remember the cake, too. Sweeten
 my tongue with that cake. When I am truly
 lost, peaceful and wrathful buddhas, remind
 me I am forgivable, they are forgivable,
 none of us are only one thing, we have past
 and future selves. You could say: I came here
 to know Israel and Palestine, two implacable
 parents at war (Yoron told me, the first
 day of nonviolence training, you look like
 someone who’s used to arguing) only to realize
 the abject stupidity of this rhetoric of bodies.
 Terrorism of postures, terrorism of the present.
 I came here to learn what peace actually means.
 It means implacable patience. It means having
 a better memory than those around you.
 But most of all: sweeten your tongue.
 When Heba saw me leave yesterday morning with
 my Day-Glo vest and International Monitor helmet
 she brought me a last cup of tea,
 I taste it