I surround myself with people who lift me up. Who make me think and inspire me to love bigger and better by their own shining examples. Even to love myself. Some of those I "surround myself" with are women Ive never met but know by heart, who write books that touch me in my core, who write books that feel like love letters written just for me. Eve Ensler is one such soul. I have been sitting on this for a few weeks, I read and reread this passage. I have renewed the book it is written in just so I can read this particular passage, already worn thin from my reading and my tears falling on the page, smeared by my finger to mark my spot as I read aloud to the women I share it with over the phone and in person. I need to return it to the library so someone else can be lit on fire. So now I share it with all of you... (by Eve Ensler) "What does it mean to have a second wind, a second life? It means screaming fire when there is fire. The second wind is not about having or getting or buying or acquisition. It is about giving everything up, giving more than you thought you owned, giving double what you are taking. What is coming is not like anything we have ever known before. Your dying, my dying is necessary and irrelevant and inevitable. Do not be afraid, no, death will not be our end. Indifference will be, disassociation will be, collateral damage, polar ice caps melting, endless hunger, mass rapes, grotesque wealth. The change will come from those who know they do not exist separately but as part of the river. If you want to overcome your sickness, reach out to someone who is sick. If you want to forget your hunger, feed your friend. You worry about germs and stockpile your herbs, but they will not save you, nor will a fancy house or a gated village. The only salvation is kindness. The only way out is care. The second wind will come from the ground, from the Earth. It will rise like a dust storm. It will suddenly appear from the corners and barrios, the favelas and the invisible places where most of the world lives. Because the streets are alive, and the women who carry two hundred pound sacks are alive and they dance. The second wind will be brought by the girls. By the girls. By the girls. It is in them and of them. This wind will take everything away. And those of you who can live without will survive. Those of you who can be naked, without a bank account, a known future, or even a place to call home. Those of you who can live without and find your meaning here, here, wherever here is. Knowing the only destination is change. The only port is where we are going. The second wind may take what you think you need or want the most, and what you lost and how you lost it will determine if you survive. I have lost my organs and at times my mind. I know it is a race now between the people who are helping themselves to the Earth, to the loot, and the rest of us. I despise charity. It gives crumbs to a few and silences the others. Either we go all the way now or there is no more way. Who will step off the wheel? Who will join the women who have lived in the forests, in the projects, in the loud and cramped cities, who carry sacks of pain on their backs and hungry babies on their breasts, who are not counted, but whose strength and whose work hold up the world? Who will stand with them and trust that they have always known the way? The world burns in my veins, I dare you to stop counting and start acting. To STOP PLEASING and start defying. I dare you to trust what you know. The second wind is beyond data. It is past pain. It is found in the bloodstream and cells of the women and men who purged the poison of their perpetrators."
Posted on: Sat, 07 Sep 2013 18:28:06 +0000
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