Dont Let Me Be Lonely Or over breakfast by Claudia Rankine Lyrics
Or over breakfast the New York Times is barely visible beneath the boxes of cereal, juice, and milk, but because I have been waiting for this day without realizing I was waiting. I see the story at first glance: President Mbeki has decided antiretrovirals will be made available to the five million South Africans infected by the HIV virus.
My body relaxes. My shoulders fall back. I had not known that my distress at Mbeki's previous position against distribution of the drugs had physically lodged itself like a virus within me.
Before Mbeki, thirty-nine drug companies filed suit in order to prevent South Africa's manufacture of generic AIDS drugs. Possible trade sanctions were threatened. Then President Clinton did an about-face and the lawsuit was dismissed. But like an absurdist dream, Mbeki stood between the now available drugs and dying.
It is not possible to communicate how useless, how much like a skin-sack of uselessness I felt. I am better than thou art now: I am a fool, the fool said, thou art nothing. Is she dead? Is he dead? Yes, they are dead. One observes, one recognizes without being recognized. One opens the paper. One turns on the television. Nothing changes. My distress grows into nothing. Thou art nothing.
Such distress moved in with muscle and bone. Its entrance by necessity slowly translated my already grief into a tremendously exhausted hope. The translation occurred unconsciously, perhaps occurred simply because I am alive. The translation occurs as a form of life. Then life, which seems so full of waiting, awakes suddenly into a life of hope.
Life is a form of hope?
If you are hopeful.
Maybe hope is the same as breath – part of what it means to be human and alive.
Or maybe hopeing is the same as waiting. It can be futile.
Waiting for what?
For a life to begin.
I am here.
And I am still lonely.
Then all life is a form of waiting, but it is the waiting of loneliness. One waits to recognize the other, to see the other as one sees the self. Levinas writes, “The subject who speaks is situated in relation to the other. This privilege of the other ceases to be incomprehensible once we admit that the first fact of existence is neither being in itself nor being for itself but being for the other, in other words, that human existence is a creature. By offering a word, the subject putting himself forward lays himself open and, in a sense, prays.”
My body relaxes. My shoulders fall back. I had not known that my distress at Mbeki's previous position against distribution of the drugs had physically lodged itself like a virus within me.
Before Mbeki, thirty-nine drug companies filed suit in order to prevent South Africa's manufacture of generic AIDS drugs. Possible trade sanctions were threatened. Then President Clinton did an about-face and the lawsuit was dismissed. But like an absurdist dream, Mbeki stood between the now available drugs and dying.
It is not possible to communicate how useless, how much like a skin-sack of uselessness I felt. I am better than thou art now: I am a fool, the fool said, thou art nothing. Is she dead? Is he dead? Yes, they are dead. One observes, one recognizes without being recognized. One opens the paper. One turns on the television. Nothing changes. My distress grows into nothing. Thou art nothing.
Such distress moved in with muscle and bone. Its entrance by necessity slowly translated my already grief into a tremendously exhausted hope. The translation occurred unconsciously, perhaps occurred simply because I am alive. The translation occurs as a form of life. Then life, which seems so full of waiting, awakes suddenly into a life of hope.
Life is a form of hope?
If you are hopeful.
Maybe hope is the same as breath – part of what it means to be human and alive.
Or maybe hopeing is the same as waiting. It can be futile.
Waiting for what?
For a life to begin.
I am here.
And I am still lonely.
Then all life is a form of waiting, but it is the waiting of loneliness. One waits to recognize the other, to see the other as one sees the self. Levinas writes, “The subject who speaks is situated in relation to the other. This privilege of the other ceases to be incomprehensible once we admit that the first fact of existence is neither being in itself nor being for itself but being for the other, in other words, that human existence is a creature. By offering a word, the subject putting himself forward lays himself open and, in a sense, prays.”