She went unnoticed, unimportant, just another face to greet and forget. Politely enough she smiled, laughed a bit, joked a bit then faded quickly.
In the freezing cold of a February winter on the mountain’s edge overlooking the valley, the sun came out and shined from her face. She forced a double take from me.
The snow melted away as if July had suddenly sprung a leak before it was supposed to and stole the frigid air right from our lungs.
I stood there and looked at her and she at me. Our eyes blinked like newborns at the sudden bright light that ignited in between us like a bonfire.
As the snow drifted on the winds that tickled the pine needles down from the branches to land on the pristine white, we became believers in faith and one another.
We picked up our brooms, our mops and our feather dusters and buckled into mundane work while we wove our foundation with light and shadowed ghost stories.
Our hands took away the dirt that accumulated on surfaces long ignored, like she’d been, like I was. The intricate loom swish-clack-swished our lives together into a southwestern design.
The colors were rusted sand, Ponderosa pine, snow white, gravel gray, sunset pink, sunrise yellow, and broken sky blue. We wrapped within each stitch making it our fortress.
When the work of the night was completed, the cleaning utensils put back where they belonged, we remained. We stayed bonding our bindings with tomorrows that have yet finished their tasks.
The ribbons that bound me to you with generous abandon, tied up in knots of “I want you and need you” have unraveled into muddied rainbows
puddled on the ground I can no longer cherish them because they serve no purpose when my heart looked forward instead of tick-tocking back into the mess we created together with scissors flashing through the complicated maze we’d woven together then destroyed with guilty hearts & shameless blame of who was actually at fault for our conjoined festivities.
NOW is when courage gets strapped on like armor with the buckle of character and the belt of strength. With the grieving already completed nothing left to lose but the chains of slavery perpetuated by the blind by choice monarchs of an antiquated sense of royal entitlement I will heed the trumpets of battle calling me to arms I will join those who require justice, balance, My sisters and brothers united.
NOW is when the shadows should be fearful for the Light is coming, I carry it. Until the last breath is drawn from my lungs with a battle cry as fierce as fire I will hold my torch aloft without discrimination but with mercy unknown to those ignorant of truth. Know that the moon is my shield, the sun is my guide The clouds themselves won’t allow dark to hide. With my sisters and brothers I will unite.
NOW is when the warrior voices of those who survive, covered in battle wounds, scars, and bruises, raise up their outrage against the injustices. Swinging axes of love and beauty against the darkness Slashing red ribbons into pretty bows to enhance life Encouraging the young to speak violently words of compassion, kindness, and dreams Reminding everyone of the language of their soul United with my sisters and brothers, I fight.
NOW is when we band together under the warrior’s banner that reads “COME UNITY” with the sword of truth gleaming glittery with freedom released into the air from the cage where it stagnated under the weight of oppression where it strangled under the lies of darkness where it remained every hopeful of rebirth Only we can be the midwives of this bloody mess Only we can set the cries of the newborn into the world with a swat on the buttocks of bad behaviors apathy, disinterest, rejection, bigotry, anger Only we can swaddle our neighbors and communities in the dawning of a new age with baby steps of joy.
My brothers and sisters hear my please!
Come, oh come, oh come to me!
NOW is the time to refuse division of our spirits. NOW is the time for progressing our peace through love. NOW is the gift we’re given to make a difference, you and me and the faceless stranger. NOW is the time to be present in changing our future one loving gesture at a time. NOW we can recognize one another openly know that it is not just your burden, but OURS. NOW we can pull up our shirtsleeves, honor our hearts, our minds, our hands together. NOW we can continue the work of our ancestral souls that are bound to our blood as we are bound to one another.
If a white man had not done it, there would be no attention to it. It was fine and dandy when it was just “those” people. It wasn’t an issue either when it was with “those” people, weed and the old west gunslingers with AK-47’s. Eminem said, he wasn’t wrong, that it wasn’t a problem until it hit middle America in reference to the epidemic of drugs, but add in a tiny addition that includes fashion trends, particularly I’m referring to sagging.
Although I do not personally wear it and I’m not fond of how it looks, that’s a petty thing to pass a law against like they did in the backwards one horse town of Pikeville, TN. What a waste of time, taxpayer’s dollars, and a reversion to the 1950’s ideals of what “those” people are allowed to wear, be, do, and where “those” people are allowed to roam (but not after dark).
This is not difficult. If you’re going to get all outraged and up at arms, why not try being upset that your neighbor is without food? Or a job? Or comfort? Why not be upset about abuse, rape, people with drug addiction, homelessness? What? Oh. Those don’t affect you directly, so we can ignore that. Besides, “those” people need to be kept in their place, bless their hearts. Nobody taught them manners or propriety because we all know that’s our job as the good KKKrischins we are.
Walk down the street nearly anywhere and suddenly the biggest problem you have is someone’s clothing? Not the Veteran on the sidewalk with a cardboard sign that dives for cover any time a car backfires? Not the woman with her children huddled next to her on a park bench where they clearly live? Not the neighbor who sits alone without company because nobody visits?
What in HELL is wrong with you? Pull that plank from your eye. Use your eyes to see a problem. Use your mind to find the solution. Use your hands in the name of your God to improve the world. I’m not claiming to be perfect. I’m not claiming to be better than anyone else. I want that clear. I’m not throwing any stones. I’m holding up a mirror.
P.S. Although I’m using the term “those” people, I do not wish to have this taken out of the context it is intended. This is meant as a mirror towards people who think skin color is something to use a divider between who can and who can’t do something.
It is my hypothesis that we’ve forgotten our communities. We’ve forgotten, as a whole, that we’re in this together because the lines of division have been drawn between liberal and conservative, African American and White, White and Hispanic, old and young, healthy and sick, poor and rich. We’re told we have no common ground and that it’s every wo/man for themselves. With rare community exception this appears to be the “norm.”
We’ve forgotten our addresses as places to be charitable. We depend on the faceless churches to do what we do not want to do which is know our neighbor and lift them up with loving hands as we know in our hearts is right. We deny it because it’s easier to look away than to look poverty in the eye. We see the problem but rarely solve it because surely someone must be doing something about that already, right? You know, those faceless people that occasionally get a shout out by “DoSomething.org” or “Upworthy” or “Because I said So”.
We don’t have to be human, we just have to do what we’re told. We shouldn’t look at those homeless, starving, unhealthy people because they’re the problem. They’re lazy. They’re alcoholics and addicts. They’re people who deserve what they get because if they’d only tried a little harder, got a better education, given up the booze they would make it in this world. They wouldn’t be littering our streets with their hollow eyes, freezing hands and feet, or spitting blood onto the concrete covered in our garbage they took sustenance from for dinner.
But my further hypothesis of why we commonly look away from instead of towards a solution is that many of us know we’re but a paycheck or two away from the very same fate. Seeing our futures reflected back at us from the eyes of a hungry child is not something we wish to see in our own families. Seeing a homeless Veteran sitting on the sidewalk with a cardboard sign is not how we want to believe we treat our soldiers. Seeing a woman angry at her dire circumstance allows us the right to look away so we don’t have to see what we may become should the fates not smile on us anymore.
I have been working in my own community to establish a garden where the people I live next door to and across the street from can work elbow to elbow with me to create sustainable food for our families despite circumstance. It is my belief that if we work together we can make a difference in our lives. But sadly, there is little hope here. Without a torch to light the way, without strong voices calling them out to join the fray, we will remain in the darkness of poverty, starvation, homelessness, and the stigmas that are attached to those solvable issues.
FOSTER: “Y’all just get my compassion thing a throbbin’ but you forgot the one thing that drives EVERYTHING in America, MoNeY! God love you for your innocence but if already rich old white men can’t get richer it ain’t gonna fly.” • CHAPIN: “Need way more people like u around” • ERRETT: “You should write a book Mare… Excellent writer” • BAKER:
Lilo & Stitch – This is My Family. • MARTELL: “CHAPIN, the thing is, we’re all these people. We just need to do the right thing. You’d not let your own child starve, why someone else’s offspring. We all bleed red. We’re all one.
FOSTER, you can’t eat money, you can’t house someone in coins.” • FOSTER: “Oh I couldn’t agree more, I’m just saying the prevailing feeling amongst the right wing is “I don’t care about a bunch of brown kids” “lazy old vet should get a job” “I got mine, why should I care about you” it is a shame money becomes an issue when the subject is basic human dignity but to so many it is.” • MARTELL: “There are 535 members of Congress. There are 317 million Americans. Allowing this to continue is an abomination to humanity. We the People of the United States, not who has the most money. If we stood united and refused to allow people to destroy our unity and humanity, we, ALL of us, could make the changes necessary without violence, without anger, without hatred, but with love. Love won’t feed a child, that’s fact, but the hands that make that food with love can.” • FOSTER: “From your mouth to God’s ears my good friend. I am not cynical just resigned to the level of cruelty that about half the people in this country are capable of. You can find them every Sunday morning in pews across the country, right next to the ones who would wish things were different.” • MARTELL: “Wishing doesn’t solve anything. Waiting for someone else to do it doesn’t solve anything. Claiming good heart while your neighbor loses everything in foreclosure because of family illness or loss of employment doesn’t solve anything. It’s only when we use our hands with love towards one another that we’ll be following any common sense. If it happens to one of us, it can happen to all of us. We need unity back in our community. Without it, we’re no better than those 535 members of Congress, or the VA that allows our soldiers to go without care, or the family services that allows children to go hungry or the department of immigration who destroys innocence because of an imaginary line drawn on paper. This should outrage us. This should piss us off. This should be addressed by We The People because I don’t want to wear the label of executioner of humans. It’s morally wrong. P.s. I don’t care which religion you follow or don’t follow. This has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with love.” • LOONEY: “Read this entire conversation, I couldn’t say anything better. I’m proud of the spiritual aspect and the integrity that you’ve grown into, my daughter. A wholeheartedly agree that the loss of community is a symptom that plagues us. Families no longer live in the same house or even in the same town/city. Therefore the so called breakdown of the family -IMHO-has as much to do with geography as much as lack of commitment to many things.”
Life is a patchwork of moments — laughter, solitude, everyday joys, and quiet aches. Through scribbled stories, I explore travels both far and inward, from sunrise over unfamiliar streets to the comfort of home. This is life as I see it, captured in ink and memory. Stick around; let's wander together.
Mare Martell 
