This Connection of Everyone with Lungs Read Online Free PDF

Pacific.
    There is no uninhabited tropical island anywhere.
    We live, after all, on the gathering isle.
    Oh this disrupted center with all its occupied forces.
    Oh the thirty Navy and Coast Guard warships docked on the shore of this island.
    Oh the eighteen nuclear submarines docked on the shore of this island.
    Oh the five destroyers docked on the shore of this island.
    Oh the two frigates docked on the shore of this island.
    Oh this on the map, off the map feeling.
     
    March 16, 2003
     
    In the last few days I have watched mynas gathering materials for their nests.
    Yesterday I saw one pick up and carry off a big clump of dried grass.
    And then I saw another struggling with a big piece of napkin at the side of the road.
    Such optimism, beloveds, such optimism.
    We went to the beach yesterday not in optimism but in avoidance and spoke about the birds around us and their constant singing of small songs, some of them ugly to us and some of them beautiful.
    We were just talking because we could.
    Because we could spend this time together in the sun and we knew that was something that mattered but as we spoke of birdsong we also spoke of Bush’s summit Sunday with the leaders of Britain, Spain, and Portugal in the Azores, and the prediction that there was a less than 1 percent chance of avoiding war.
    When we spoke of birds and their bowers and their habits of nest we also spoke of the Israeli military bulldozer that ran over Rachel Corrie, the mysterious flu that appeared in Hong Kong and had spread by morning to other parts of Asia, Elizabeth Smart’s return, and Zoran Djindjic’s death.
    We reclined as we spoke, we reclined and the sand that coated our arms and legs is known for a softness that is distinctive in the islands and the waves were a gentle one to three feet and a soft breeze blew through the ironwoods and we were surrounded by ditches, streams, and wetland areas, which serve as a habitat for endangered waterbird species.
    There are other sorts of beauty on this globe, but this sort of beauty is fully realized here.
    This sort of beauty cannot get any more beautiful, any more detailed, any more rich or perfect.
    But the beach on which we reclined is occupied by the US military so every word we said was shaped by other words, every moment of beauty occupied.
    We watched the planes fly overhead from the nearby airbase as we spoke of birds and their bowers and their habits of nest and we were also speaking of rolling start and shock and awe and two hundred and twenty-five thousand American forces and another ninety thousand on the way and twenty-five thousand British forces and one thousand Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps combat and support aircraft in the area.
    And because the planes flew overhead when we spoke of the cries of birds our every word was an awkward squawk that meant also AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, UH-60 Black Hawk troop helicopter, M2A3 Bradley fighting vehicle, M1A1 Abrams main battle tank, F/A-16 Hornet fighter/bomber, AV-8B Harrier fighter jet, AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopter and that soon would mean other things also, the names of things still arriving, the B-2 stealth bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base, the B-52 bombers that are now in Britain.
     
    March 17, 2003
     
    We slept soundly during the night, beloveds, and when I woke yous were wrapped around me and I thought it was this that had let me dream of windows and doors opening and light entering, a relief from my recent dreams that have been so full of occupations.
    But we wake up and all we hear in the birds’ songs is war.
    When the birds sing outside our window they sing of the end of negotiations with the UN, of the Dow soaring on confidence of a short war, of how rebel forces in the Central African Republic have dissolved parliament and suspended the constitution, of the resumption of the trading in oil futures in London after protestors broke into the building and fights broke out on the trading pit.
    They sing of how