How2 Postcards: Correspondence

Postcard is an edited and continuously up-dated section of brief comment received on work in recent issues of HOW2, as well as excerpts from letters circulating privately among writers/readers and with HOW2 editors/writers. Your postcards and excerpted letter exchanges on literary questions appropriate to this journal's focus are welcomed. Please send to Kathleen Fraser <kfraser@sfsu.edu>

10.29.01

from the editors/Kelsey St. Press

Open Submissions Announced for younger/less-established writers

The Kelsey Street Press announces a two-month period of open submissions--from November 1 to December 31, 2001. We are looking for unpublished book-length collections of poems or poetically-informed prose. We are especially interested in receiving submissions from younger or less established writers. Manuscripts will be selected in early 2002 and published in 2003.

We are interested in books with some cohesion in their overall composition and style whether it is a sense of narrative or consists of a set of interrelated series or parts. We appreciate writing that tells a story but not in the usual way, which subverts a particular kind of genre, has a sense of wit or irony, is honest but not naïve, but is also direct, surprising, vital and graceful. The press is especially interested in work in which the writing, the page and the form of the book are in dynamic relation.

Kelsey Street Press was founded in 1974 to publish experimental writing by women and has a history of publishing poets' collaborations with visual artists. Recent publications include Juice by Renee Gladman, Symbiosis by Barbara Guest and Laurie Reid, and Tales of Horror by Laura Mullen. Collaborations will not be accepted in this call for manuscripts.

For more information on the press, please view our website at:
http://www.kelseyst.com

Letters of submission & manuscripts should be sent to:
Kelsey St. Press
attn: Tanya Erzen/ Karla Nielsen
50 Northgate Ave
Berkeley, CA 94705

____________________

CONTINUING RESPONSE TO "FOR THE RESURRECTION OF WORDS"

10/28/01

from Toni Maraini/Rome

Sites for Afghan poetry and art

If you look at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7261/ you will
find a list of poets (but you cannot read them as they are not in English);
go to the bottom of the page and click 'related links', and you will find
two serious cultural magazines “Ariana” and “Lemar”.

In 1999, the Afghan Students Association at George Mason University, Fairfax, Va., presented an art show of works by thirty Afghanistan artists. From this show, an on-line exhibit was assembled with a selection of works by 14 of these artists--one woman, Asma Zaka--called “Cross Roads of Asia/ The Afghan Art Exhibition.” See Lemar-Aftaab / April-Sept. 1999 /Vol 1- Issues 8 & 9 . To find this work, go to www.asaweb.org Be careful in making a distinction between independent sites and propaganda ones.

I have seen that the ones that are honorable and serious all start by stating clearly that they condemn terrorism and participate to the sorrow of American people; you can go ahead in that case.

Buon lavoro

10/25/01

from Anne Dewey/ Madrid

Empathic Angles vary from Students Abroad

Dear How2 editors,

Thanks for talking about Sept. 11 and the postcard response. I will look and perhaps write with colleagues or students from here. We have had some really good--although tense--class discussions, one in particular in a class with Arab students who understood the rage that fuels bin Laden, Latin Americans who understand U.S. imperialism, European students from a variety of positions (especially articulate Yugoslavians and Bulgarians who were bombed by the U.S), newly arrived North American students who were away from home for the first time (Why do they hate us?), but already feeling distanced from their communities at home, who experience the trauma much more directly and therefore responded with more vulnerability, rage.

DeweyA@spmail.slu.edu

10/25/01

by Robin Andersen/Fordham, NYC

Finding Empathy in the TV Coverage of the World Trade Center Attack

The TV images of the World Trade Center burning were horribly familiar yet they stood without parallel. Black smoke billowed from both buildings and I thought I saw a free-falling body twist its way past the gaping hole in Tower One. Yet the studio voices that accompanied the images did not mention it. Had they not seen him or her? TV anchors, some calm, some excited, repeated that a plane had crashed into the North Tower, then hit the second one. It was live footage of real buildings burning in real time, but they stood silent, with no natural sound, at the surreal distance evoked by long camera shots. As I watched, another explosion tore through the second tower and flames silently consumed a lower portion of the building. The only frame or reference for such images is the fictional narratives of computer-generated action films in which cities are mutilated and destroyed. Independence Day, one such cartoon-like adventure, demolished New York and Washington, the very cities I now watched burning.

Our perceptions have been permanently framed by the sensibilities of those commanding fictions, and TV practitioners are certainly under the sway of the techno-hyper-real. It seemed as if we were living through Life the Movie. These events had already happened and this was some sort of spectacular sequel. Openly awed by the visual spectacle, “it was quite a sight,” one intoned. Some awareness, just below the level of waking, continued to nag at my reception of the pictures, aren’t there people in the buildings? The TV voices were not helping even as they recounted, over and over, the actual events. A pilot on a remote phone connection with Channel 4 had seen, “the plane screaming by at full power.” By the time he looked out his apartment window, about 4 or 5 seconds later, it had hit Tower One. As he spoke the buildings burned benignly against the sky of the clear September day. Though there was emotion in his voice, it was hard to bring actual human beings into this zone that was essentially fictional, uniquely visual, and usually without real consequences. After all, we didn’t mourn for the thousands who died in Independence Day. But didn’t I just see someone, an actual person’s body falling to the ground?

The people we did hear from were the ones already out of harm's way Eyewitnesses told how they had fled the building. A misguided sense of responsibility might have prevented reporters from attending to those still inside. Was it some desire to prevent mass hysteria? Later that night, when I finally got through to my friends in SoHo, I heard their sorrow at seeing dozens of people crowded at the windows on the floors with no exit routes. A man very near the top had waved a white cloth through a broken window for at least 45 minutes. He never got out. After 7 hours of watching television, I had not heard any such stories. Whatever the reasons, television did not see fit to allow us to grieve for the people left trapped in the building at the time it went down. We will never be able to have that collectively summoned moment of silence they all deserved.

There was much concern for the NewYork skyline. At Newark airport one journalist pointed a camera over the tails of a fleet of United jets to find empty sky, where this morning he told us, we would have seen the World Trade Center. Throughout the day TV openly lamented the loss of the buildings, yet the fact that people lay buried under the rubble was almost never mentioned. One police officer requesting anonymity estimated losses in the thousands. Whether the media decided for themselves, or simply followed official admonitions, the effect was the same. One journalist actually used the term “collateral damage” for those killed, diminishing the humanity of those lost.

A New Yorker covered in soot ran down the street. He came in and out of the frame, and as he did I could see his lips move but the sound was off. The studio voices were always laid over the images, they interpreted, explained, but never let me hear the people on the street. Some considered media worthy were brought into the studio or moved out of the direct action and interviewed, but only short snippets of what they said were aired. We were told that a storeowner was giving out water, but I did not see such meaningful moments. I wanted to be with my fellow New Yorkers, sharing their struggles for survival, and grieving for the ones lost. Instead, there was the endless repetition of the most dramatic images. In addition to The Towers Burning were images reminiscent of other movies including, Armageddon; clouds of dust and rubble billowing from between the buildings, pursuing people running away in the street. Repeating the picture over and over with no sound removed it from real experience and turned it into a fascination. By days end one of the newsmagazines had produced a slick sequence molded into familiar entertainments, “doctors and interns lined up like on a set of a disaster movie.

I didn’t want to be a detached observer, awed by the spectacle, entertained by cleaver references, calmed by the stories deemed appropriate by gatekeepers. I wanted to be a thinking, feeling citizen, part of a human community pulling together in a crisis. I wanted local reporters in the streets getting the story on the ground. By the next day, local news was doing just that, giving out help-line numbers, reporting on family members searching for loved-ones, and in general being good citizens.

This disaster has no frame of reference adequate for its expression and able to grasp its meanings. The fictional frames are just that, entertainments. We grasp for a way to express human dignity in the face of terrible loss. We do have storylines and image conventions for death, ones applied to people outside of our own communities. When the media air grizzly pictures of famine, disasters, death and war elsewhere, they are usually presented with little context, from a detached perspective: people crowded together, under attack, starving, suffering horrible indignities. These people are presented as the Other, through narratives of exclusion, as little more than sights for our fascination. Ethical battles have been fought, some won, some lost, about airing graphic depictions of human horror. Many have been deemed too ratings worthy to be shelved. We have no words, no media frames that can recognize the sadness of death as it happens, while preserving the dignity of those it is happening to. Media sensationalism often overcomes our feelings of empathy and compassion. Are these the reasons we could not acknowledge that the buildings were full of people?

The city is beginning to come to terms with the loss of life, as family members search for those still missing and unaccounted for. No doubt there are pictures and footage that we have not yet seen, of the horrible events that occurred on Tuesday. More footage of the people who jumped out of the buildings is starting to be aired. The audio track of screams and chaos are beginning to accompany the repeated disaster footage. Let us hope that these horrible sights don’t become the source of revenue, or ratings boosters when commercials make their way back on to our television screens. Hopefully we will now be more aware of the need for empathy and compassion when we tell stories of death, loss and destruction, not only for ourselves, but also for those who find themselves in front of our cameras in other parts of the world.

[Note: Robin Andersen teaches media studies at Fordham University and is the Director of the Peace and Justice Studies Program]

<andersen@fordham.edu>

A speaker from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan will be speaking at Mills College on Nov. 1 and also at Theatre Artaud in San Francisco on Nov. 4 (details to come for the Nov. 4 event).

This is a group which runs schools and clinics in refugee camps in Pakistan and also documents the conditions for women in Afghanistan.

An underground resistance of Afghan women risks torture and execution
to alert the world to the regime's atrocities. One freedom fighter tells
Salon her story. (originally posted 10/2/01)
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Janelle Brown
The film footage is wobbly and blurry but stunning: A soccer stadium in
Afghanistan is packed with people, but there is no match today. Instead,
a pickup truck drives into the stadium with three women, shrouded in
burqas, cowering in the back.

Armed men in turbans force a woman from the truck, and make her kneel at the penalty line on the field. Confused and unable to see, the woman tries to look behind just as a rifle is pointed against the back of her
head. With no fanfare whatsoever, she is shot dead. The shaky video
camera captures the cheering crowd as people rise to their feet, hoping
to get a better view of the corpse on the ground. The blue folds of the
burqa begin to stain red with blood.

This public execution is some of the most shocking film ever seen on
television; it is perhaps the best document that the West has of
atrocities committed by the Taliban. It is just one part of an
astonishing hour-long documentary called "Beneath the Veil," currently
in heavy rotation on CNN. Filmed by the half-Afghan British reporter
Saira Shah, who traveled undercover to Afghanistan last year, "Beneath
the Veil" neatly captures the horror of life under the Taliban--the
public executions for infractions as minor as prostitution or adultery,
the brutality of fundamentalist police, the slaughter of civilians
unlucky enough to live on the front line of the civil war with the
Northern Alliance.

In documenting life under the Taliban, Shah went into the homes of the
Afghan people and onto the battlefields, cleverly evading the
Department of Vice and Virtue, which would have thrown her in jail for
filming illegally (all unsanctioned filming is forbidden). She visited
territory occupied by the Northern Alliance, and visited a village where
the Taliban had brutally murdered dozens of civilians just weeks
earlier-- a local wedding photographer had filmed the scene as
villagers buried rotting bodies that had been scalped and mutilated.
There, Shah also interviewed three teenage girls whose mother had been
shot dead by the Taliban. They were so traumatized by the atrocities
that the Taliban subsequently inflicted upon them that two of them
would no longer speak.

But some of the most heartstopping footage in "Beneath the Veil,"
including film of the execution of the women in the soccer stadium, was
captured not by Shah but by an Afghan underground organization which
assisted her in her work. Indeed, Shah's documentary would not have
been possible were it not for the Revolutionary Association of the
Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), an underground organization whose members risk their lives every day in attempts to undermine the Taliban and publicize its brutality.

RAWA was originally founded in 1977 as an Afghan feminist group
focused on women's rights, but its mandate broadened when
fundamentalists rose to power. Determined to expose the frightening
abuses of the Taliban, women in the group began to hide video cameras
under their burqa and document the executions and public floggings
which take place every day under the Taliban. They also smuggle female
journalists like Shaila Shah and Eve Ensler, writer/director of "The
Vagina Monologues," into the country, in hopes of bringing attention
to their cause. In defiance of the Taliban's law forbidding education
for women, RAWA also runs clandestine home-based schools for girls; for
women, who are forbidden to work, RAWA teaches handicrafts and sells
them online. In the refugee camps in Pakistan, RAWA also provides
medical assistance, housing and education for impoverished and
terrified fugitives of Taliban rule.

RAWA, the most prominent Afghan-run organization to oppose the
Taliban, has become one of the fundamentalists' greatest enemies.
Perhaps the aspect of the group most infuriating to its opponents-- and
a surprising key to its effectiveness -- is that it consists entirely
of women, nearly 2,000 in Afghanistan and Pakistan, who use the cover
of their burqas and the seeming powerlessness of their status to
strategic advantage.

By traveling with RAWA, Shah got a first-hand view of what it's like
to be a woman living under the Taliban, and she was invited into RAWA's
secret schools and illegal meetings. She also got access to its library
of video footage -- which includes not just the film of the execution
of the women, but footage of the public hanging of three men in the same
soccer stadium. (The soccer stadium was funded by international aid
groups who wanted to raise the spirits of the Afghan people; instead,
the Taliban is using it only for executions. One Taliban official told
Shah that if the aid groups felt that the stadium should be used for
soccer, they should build the Taliban an extra stadium for
executions.) "Beneath the Veil" was filmed long before the attacks of
Sept. 11, and, according to RAWA members, the situation in Afghanistan
has since become more dire. Because the borders between Pakistan and
Afghanistan have closed, the Afghan people are now trapped in their own
country-- enduring the oppressive rule of the Taliban while waiting
for U.S. bombs to drop from the sky. RAWA, meanwhile, says it is running
out of money and can't afford to educate, feed and treat the millions
of refugees massed along the border. The Pakistani police, which are
sympathetic to the Taliban, regularly target RAWA members; and since
communication with Afghanistan has been cut off, the RAWA members in
Pakistan know little about what is happening to their members across the
border.

In a telephone interview from Islamabad, a 26-year-old member of RAWA, identified only as "Fatima," spoke about RAWA's work in Pakistan and Afghanistan, its position on war and the Northern Alliance, and its
"uncompromising attitude" toward fundamentalism. A seven-year veteran
of the group's dangerous brand of activism, Fatima is a member of the
RAWA political committee that has been trying to rally both Afghan women and the international media to its agenda.

A. I'm from Kabul. I started to work with RAWA when I was 19 years old.
There has been war in our country for more than 23 years; my generation
was born with war, we've experienced just crimes, just blackness, just
sorrow in our country. We never saw happiness or democracy. I lived in
shock, because every day there were tragic stories in my neighborhood
around me.

When I was young I decided to do something about this. A lot of young
girls commit suicide because they are helpless and hopeless. But some,
like me, choose the way of struggle. We accept that we want to serve
our people -- that this is the best way to bring justice to our country.
When I was 20 years old, I left Afghanistan; my job for RAWA was to
come here to Pakistan and work in the refugee camps. I had to cross the
border often and go back into Afghanistan to organize women for
demonstrations; and to bring RAWA's publications into Afghanistan. We
would go secretly and without documents -- no one asks you for them
because you are a woman. I wear the burqa then, because this is the
only visa required for women to enter Afghanistan. When I
cross the border, no one can know that I am in RAWA.

A.We all use different names all the time, because we have a lot of
security problems. Our leader Meena and her bodyguards were
assassinated in Pakistan in 987 by the Islamic fundamentalists and the
KGB. Our members are always attacked and injured -- we receive death
threats by e-mail and letters and telephone, telling us to stop what we
are doing or they will kill us. So we are working clandestinely in
Afghanistan, and in Pakistan we are half-secret.

A. I was flogged three times in the streets, for stupid reasons. They
will flog women that don't have the veil on, or aren't with their male
relative, or are talking to a male shopkeeper, or are out on the
streets during the evening. There are always people sobbing in the
streets because they are being beaten. This is normal.

In Pakistan in1999, I was injured at a RAWA demonstration. Pakistan
is one of the countries that officially recognizes the Taliban
government; so when we take our anti-Taliban slogans into the streets,
they try to stop us. During the demonstration, we were fighting -- we
wanted to go in front of the United Nations building; but the Pakistani
police wanted to stop us. During the fighting, they beat me and broke
my hand.

A. We teach hundreds of women and children in the underground schools in Afghanistan. For children, we teach mathematics, physics, chemistry,
Persian, science, social studies and the history of Afghanistan; also,
the geography of the world. For women, we just teach them two main
subjects -- mathematics and Persian. When our women go to the shops,
they don't know how to pay the shopkeeper and get change, because they
haven't had an education.

We also bring in video cameras to expose the crimes of the Taliban.
It's risky work. We filmed the execution of the women that you saw in
"Beneath the Veil." Also, we've filmed hangings in Kabul and several
other cities, taken pictures of Afghans who have had their hands cut
off for stealing, or their necks cut. There are photos on our Web site.

We make a hole in the burqa and film through it. That's why the
quality of our films is very bad; it's very difficult. No one has ever
been caught doing it; but execution is the only punishment if you get
caught, especially if the Taliban knew we were RAWA.

A. We have schools for girls in the fugitive camps; but in some we have
problems because of the influence of the fundamentalists. We have
handicraft projects for women; we run chicken farms, a jam-making
business and carpet weaving projects. We also have mobile medical teams
that go in to the camps one or two days a week to give free medicine. We
had a hospital called Malalai, but it closed because of our financial
problems; one of our very urgent projects is to reopen it.

A. We are so sorry for the victims of this terrorist attack. We want to
shower them with deep solidarity. We can understand their sorrow because we also suffered this terrorism for more than 23 years. We were already victims of this tragedy.

On the other hand, unfortunately, we warned the United States
government about this many, many times; as well as the other countries
that are supporting and creating the fundamentalist parties. They helped
create these terrorists during the Cold War; they supported Osama bin
Laden [during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan]. Fundamentalism is
equal to terrorism; it's equal to crime. We said, this germ won't just
be in Afghanistan, it will spread out all over the world.

Today we can see this with our own eyes. We warned them but they never listened to our cry, to our voice.

A. Thousands of families are escaping from Afghanistan, leaving everything behind because they are afraid of war. Thousands of others that are living in Afghanistan don't have the possibility to immigrate here; and now, even the borders are closed. That means that our people have to burn in the flame of war and all the doors are closed.

In fugitive camps it's really hard to work, especially hard because
millions of fugitives have just arrived. They are in shock, and have
nothing but themselves and the clothes on their back. I met a family
yesterday that wanted help from RAWA, they cried and said they walked
through the mountains because the border was closed. Their child fell
down the mountain and died, but they couldn't stop because they had to
escape.

Our people escape from Afghanistan because of the fear of killing and
rape and torture, but they will die in the refugee camps because of lack
of food, jobs and healthcare. Even here the situation is not good. We
are in a crisis in the camps; thousands have contacted us for help and
we don't know how to help them. At every moment they want their children to be in our orphanages or our schools; they want a house, medicine --they need everything, and we have no money.

A. We are condemning an attack of the U.S. on Afghanistan, because it
won't be the Taliban but our people who will be the victims. The United
States should decry these terrorist groups in Afghanistan; but not
through an attack. Maybe through commando attacks, though. We do want
the United Nations to be more active -- their rule is very important in
this moment.

We also want to convey a message to the American people that there's a
difference between the people of Afghanistan and the criminal government of Afghanistan. There is a river of blood between them.

A. We condemn the cooperation of the United States with the Northern
Alliance. This is another nightmare for our people -- the Northern
Alliance are the second Taliban.

The Northern Alliance are hypocrites: They say they are for democracy
and human rights, but we can't forget the black experience we had with
them. Seventy-year-old grandmothers were raped during their rule,
thousands of girls were raped, thousands were killed and tortured. They
are the first government that started this tragedy in Afghanistan.

A. We are ready to support the former king. It doesn't mean that the king
is a very ideal person for us. But in comparison to the fundamentalist
parties, we prefer him. The only condition we have for the king is that
he must not cooperate with the Northern Alliance.

A. We are in a very bad financial condition. We need anything we can get
-- for our mobile team, for medicine, for our schools. Maybe $1 is
nothing for them, but for us it means a lot. To run our struggle with
empty hands is impossible for us.

(To donate to RAWA, visit the RAWA's Web site, <www:Rawa.com> The Afghan Women's Mission, or The Feminist Majority.)

I miss Afghanistan very much, it's my country. I love my city and my
country a lot. I am a fugitive here. Whenever there is peace in Afghanistan we will never go to another country -- we will go back to rebuild Afghanistan and experience good days, I hope.

Call for a non-violent response in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center, USA.

We wish to express our shock and extend our deep sympathy to the relatives and friends of the victims of the brutal attacks in the United States. It is hard for us to see the suffering, even from across the seas, even as trauma counselors ourselves. And we cry for the people of many nations, ethnicities, and religions who died. The people of Kosova have put up posters of sympathy with the people of the United States, and we have held vigils of solidarity with the victims from around the world.

We have lived through war. We have been greatly helped in our recovery, by the United States representatives, who talked against revenge and promoted reconciliation as essential to achieve a future with true peace and democracy.

We know what it is like to be attacked, to grieve and to feel anger. Every day we attend to the physical and emotional pains of the women in our communities who continue to suffer from the violence of war. We listen to the stories and work together with women to find ways to productively channel negative emotions. Women in Kosova, still suffering from the symptoms of severe trauma, know what military responses do to innocent people and how long-lasting the consequences are.

Therefore we understand the urge for revenge is strong. And we know that it must not be given in to. We know that a violent response can only bring more violence. It does not bring justice. Instead it kills more innocent victims and gives birth to new holy avengers. It begins a new cycle and perpetuates more hate, more insecurity, more fear and ultimately more death amongst civilians.

We urge in the strongest possible terms for the United States and its allies, to temper their anger and to refrain from the folly of a sweeping military solution‚. Terrorists are not nations. And nations must not act like terrorists.

We do not wish to have you see your young men go to war and lose their lives, like thousands of our sons, fathers, and husbands did. We are horrified that there is talk of attacking and putting at risk millions of people’s lives because of the acts of a few. We do not wish to have war on a country or countries full of innocent adults and children, who already suffer at the hands of their leaders and whom themselves have committed no crimes. We know that bombs are not smart, we know they kill women, children, and old people and we know only too well, that it is mainly the women who bear the task of rebuilding societies torn apart by war. This is our work at present and it is very hard work. We do not wish to see countries' economies devastated, and its people made poorer for generations to come. We do not wish to see Americans attacked, killed or made afraid in the United States because of their religious or ethnic identities. We wish for all nations to be proud and to build a society and a politics that respects individuals and groups, and promotes diversity.

American politicians and decision makers, grieve for your dead, and find ways to protect the living! But we ask you not to put us and your citizens at more risk. What you are threatening to unleash is making us afraid for the world. Do not endanger the people of Asia, the Middle East, and northern Africa. War will surely imperil us all and future generations also. Please remember your past and learn from ours, and work to leave a legacy of justice and peaceful construction, not of revenge, destruction and war.

It is four weeks since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Like most of us since these attacks, I have been more aware of being alive as a gift. I have reached out to loved ones to tell them I love them. And like most of us, I am scared and wish I didn’t feel so helpless. Because as I write, the U.S. has started bombing Afghanistan. The bombing does not make me feel safe. It makes me feel unsafe.

One of the radio commentators remarked on the day the bombing started, apropos of the origins of war, that the Vikings didn’t have a word for the meaningless escalation of violence that comprises the plot of the greatest Icelandic saga, Brennu Njalsaga. Njal’s Saga is the story of a wise man with an unwise family. What starts out as a small retaliatory exchange between two households escalates, despite Njal’s best peacekeeping efforts, until two whole clans are involved in the rivalry. At last Njal and all his household are burned alive by their enemies. When the plot is reduced to its broad outlines, the horror of the violence of killing so many people is writ large (one of the themes of this saga). When we reduce the September 11th attacks to the nineteen young Muslim fundamentalists--the sect is so sexist we need not denote their sex--who highjacked four passenger airline jets and killed over 6000 people in one hour, these terrorist acts seem to us clearly mad. Crazy mad. The actions of lunatics. From our perspective.

Angry mad, from their perspective. Why do they hate us? Americans asked after the attack. “How do people reach this level of anger, hatred and frustration?” asks Professor of Conflict Studies John Paul Lederach. To call them lunatics misses a crucial point: By my experience, explanations that they are brainwashed by a perverted leader who holds some kind of magical power over them is an escapist simplification and will inevitably lead us to very wrong-headed responses. Anger of this sort, what we could call generational, identity-based anger, is constructed over time through a combination of historical events, a deep sense of threat to identity, and direct experience of sustained exclusion.

From the terrorists’ perspective, they are a David heroically fighting the bully-giant Goliath, who is spreading Western imperialism. If we do as they expect, which is to use our power against a weak people or nation, we can expect without a doubt that they will engage in the future in ever-escalating cycles of revenge and violence.

The Vikings in fact did have a word for the senseless feuding that drives the plot of Njal’s Saga, which is the word used to rationalize the violence by the characters. It is the same word as motivated the terrorists on September 11th, the same word as is motivating U.S. and British retaliation. It is a word for an heroic concept, a warrior’s code. That word is honor, along with the component parts of the ancient heroic code: pride and shame, loyalty and betrayal. One of the men interviewed on the radio the day we started the bombing was a veteran of the Gulf War. When asked if he’d go back to war if drafted, he said, “Of course. It’s the warrior’s code, to rip the living heart out of the enemy’s chest. I’m a warrior.”

Honor requires us to retaliate, or the enemy will think he can get away with murder. But honor, too, will require the other side to avenge such retaliation because we “deserved” the punishing “justice”they dealt us. At the dawning of the twenty-first century, we discover that we understand the saga‘s world of the blood feud and violent retaliation because, to our shock and horror, we are suddenly living it. However much we refuse to hear them, from the Muslim extremist perspective, the U.S. has been made “to pay” for past grievances to the Muslim world, for which we had never shown remorse. Now, we are making Afghanistan “pay” for harboring terrorists. But Afghanistan did not attack the U.S. So, the U.S. will eventually be made to “pay” for its harming Afghanistan. How far and how long will this exchange of violence go?

We desperately need another model for what is deemed an honorable response. That model also lies in Njal’s Saga as well, in Njal himself. The saga was written after Iceland had converted in 1000 A.D. to Christianity. Thus, although its action takes place before the conversion, its theme is influenced by gentler Christian tenets. Njal is a pagan precursor of what I will call “radical Christianity” (to distinguish it from the bigotry of most versions of fundamentalist Christianity, much like the terrorists’ Islamic fundamentalism must be distinguished from the gentler Muslim faith). Njal counsels tolerance and negotiates nonviolent alternative responses to violence. He wheels and deals for peace. Although the violence of his pagan family eventually takes him down with them, he represents an alternative that redefines the heroic code of honor. We need that alternative now. What are the possibilities?

For a start, we could redefine “honor” as being able to hear both sides, both perspectives, not just our own. We could view violence itself as dishonorable, and every “holy war”--both sides have bandied this phrase about--as sacrilege. Certainly when we are the target, we call violence “barbaric”and “heinous.” Why is it justified when we perpetrate it ourselves? We could consider our own possible responses in terms other than violence. And to those who say we will look weak to the world if we negotiate, we could answer: We need another definition of strength. Strength is the courage to wait and to make a considered response. Strength is not throwing our military weight around. Strength is seeking insistently--and, why not? aggressively--negotiated, diplomatic solutions.

We need to honor the memories of our own victims by listening to their families. Many of the families of the September 11th dead are not calling for retaliation, but for peacemaking. Touched so deeply and irrevocably by this tragedy, these families understood more immediately than any of us that no violence will return their loved ones to life, no retaliatory strike could suffice to comfort them in their grief. They say again and again that their dead would not wish other innocent people to die for their deaths. In escalating the violence, we risk making the deaths of over 6000 civilians truly meaningless, for we will have failed to understand the lesson in their deaths: that how we feel now is how civilians in Baghdad felt when we bombed them, how civilians in Serbia felt, how civilians in Japan felt.

Is it not dishonorable that we were indifferent to the pain we caused? We need to redefine honor as caring about the consequences of our actions in the world, and as not hypocritically mouthing the rhetoric of democracy when we take geopolitical action. Not only should we care, because we can identify with grief felt around the world. We must care--not as a rule of law, but as Barbara Kingsolver puts it, as one of “a hundred ways to be a good citizen, . . . to look finally at the things we don’t want to see.”

On September 11th our world changed. We Americans learned that we weren’t safe in our own country--whether we are warriors or peacemakers, whites or people of color, men or women, gays or straights, legal or illegal residents. All of us will suffer for the policies of the few in power. But it doesn’t have to be that way. This tragedy has produced a huge awakening. We as a people have the opportunity now to change as well. Instead of confirming the terrorists’ portrait of the U.S. as a bullying superpower, we might still yet react unexpectedly, for example by beginning to address real grievances in the region.

We might yet throw ourselves into supporting sustainable peace between Israel and Palestine, and stop now the bombing of Afghanistan, thereby being as good as our word and proving to the Afghan people in our actions that we are not making war against them. In this way, we might begin to defuse the reason that young Arab men give their own lives to kill American civilians. Lederach writes “I believe that monumental times like these create conditions for monumental change. . . . Let us choose democracy and reconciliation over revenge and destruction.” If we have not ruined already this monumental chance for change by meeting violence with violence, that old model of honorable blood vengeance, the terrible deaths we have suffered will not have been in vain.

As Ghandi said, “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.” Mary Oliver’s question in her poem “The Summer Day”never seemed so urgently timely: “Tell me, what do you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?”

[as sent in from Elizabeth Treadwell Jackson, via Susan Landers, from original posting on the EPC list]

SISTERS ARISE & VOCALIZE!
by Anne Waldman

Language has been on the feminist political agenda for years. It can't
just go away meekly now. It is agonizingly evident as of September 11 that
there has been a paucity of women's voices from the political arena (the
world over) as well as in the arena of high public culture and discourse.
Something is missing. Hello?

One observes the endless parade of Presidents, Mullahs, generals, prime
ministers, Cabinet members, diplomats, politicians of all kinds, pundits,
experts, etcetera flash across the screen and surface in the daily massive
missives of newsprint. But so few women. The talking head female folk on
TV are a relief. Susan Sontag and Maureen Dowd are a relief but there has got to be more female leadership and articulation and input into the public discourse and decision-making apparatus. More mainstream illumination from the hidden dakinis and durgas! & more Amy Goodmans! Some alternative/corrective resource to power of VOICE. How things are expressed, stated, conveyed whether it be condolence, dissent, opinion--whatever the form or genre--needs attention. US nation-wide surveys showed a marked difference of opinion when it comes to issues of "war" "education" "literacy" (& we are, I hope, grateful that Laura Bush cares about books). We need more THINKING by women aired and expressed on urgent issues. It is not good for the psyche that we are so deprived.

SISTERS - SPEAK OUT YOURSELVES & DEMAND MORE DISCUSSION OF THE CURRENT STATE OF THE WORLD AND THE WAR ON TERRORISM NOW. INSIST THAT YOUR FEMALE ELECTED LEADERS GET MORE VOICE & INK!

A feminist critique of language calls into question our assumptions about
who is speaking. And for whom? And to what purpose? Who is the language representing and what kind of ideology? Whose interest? How does language attempt to manipulate us? We've had in the not so distant past genteel tyrannies of custom and practice. It was a crime under slavery for African Americans to read and write. Remember when a woman couldn't vote? When saying a liturgy or public oratory by women was forbidden? A certain ilk of males have had a monopoly on NAMING WHAT COUNTS AS REALITY. This seems more and more insane in a universe with infinite possibilities. It doesn't need to be this way. Of course we understand that gender is a social construct and that the possibilities of "difference" are endless and all beings who are not just representing the dominant male constructs are also welcome here!

RECLAIM NAMING. CHECK OUT WHAT LEADERS ARE SAYING AS WE ENTER INTO ANOTHER WARRING PATRIARCHAL GOD MENTALITY. DECONSTRUCT OLD GRAMMARS, METAPHORS, IMPERIALIST IMPERATIVES! POETS: STAY ON THE CASE!

We know that the privileged and powerful have had a vested interest in
shaping the world through language. Tailoring the world to suit their ends, constructing a world in which they are the central "players". Structures, categories, meanings have been shaped by the dominant white man.

Capitalism thrives on a political discourse that marginalizes alternative thinking and people who can be exploited without "voice". Our modern state emerged from the ashes of the feudal state and was built on a class and patriarchal model, Political representation began as the right of property-owning MEN. Now the capitalist state addresses itself to a generalized citizen/consumer--presumably classless, sexless, a hip citizen of the increasingly troubling world. It's not working! Look at the mess we are in. Also to protect this "version" of reality the
capital-driven state constructs its weapons of mass destruction with impunity and threatens the very planet we dwell on by its greed for wealth and power. We also see so many women suffering (unable to drive, get an education, bare their faces in public, etc.) under other (in some cases less subtle) regimes that are also constructing their weaponry and so on...The victims of strife and war are also women.

10/10/01

[Sent in by Cynthia Hogue]

The Challenge of Terror: A Traveling Essay
by John Paul Lederach

So here I am, a week late arriving home, stuck between Colombia,
Guatemala and Harrisonburg when our world changed. The images flash even
in my sleep. The heart of America ripped. Though natural, the cry for
revenge and the call for the unleashing of the first war of this century, prolonged or not, seems more connected to social and psychological processes of finding a way to release deep emotional anguish, a sense of powerlessness, and our collective loss than it does as a plan of action seeking to redress the injustice, promote change and prevent it from ever happening again.

I am stuck from airport to airport as I write this, the reality of a
global system that has suspended even the most basic trust. My Duracell
batteries and finger nail clippers were taken from me today and it gave
me pause for thought. I had a lot of pauses in the last few days. Life
has not been the same. I share these thoughts as an initial reaction
recognizing that it is always easy to take pot-shots at our leaders from
the sidelines, and to have the insights they are missing when we are not
in the middle of very difficult decisions. On the other hand, having
worked for nearly 20 years as a mediator and proponent of nonviolent
change in situations around the globe where cycles of deep violence seem
hell-bent on perpetuating themselves, and having interacted with people
and movements who at the core of their identity find ways of justifying
their part in the cycle, I feel responsible to try to bring ideas to the
search for solutions. With this in mind I should like to pen several
observations about what I have learned from my experiences and what they
might suggest about the current situation. I believe this starts by
naming several key challenges and then asking what is the nature of a
creative response that takes these seriously in the pursuit of genuine,
durable, and peaceful change.

SOME LESSONS ABOUT THE NATURE OF OUR CHALLENGE

1. Always seek to understand the root of the anger - The first and
most important question to pose ourselves is relatively simple though
not easy to answer: How do people reach this level of anger, hatred and
frustration? By my experience explanations that they are brainwashed by
a perverted leader who holds some kind of magical power over them is an
escapist simplification and will inevitably lead us to very wrong-headed
responses. Anger of this sort, what we could call generational,
identity-based anger, is constructed over time through a combination of
historical events, a deep sense of threat to identify, and direct
experiences of sustained exclusion.

This is very important to understand, because, as I will say again and again, our response to the immediate events have everything to do with whether we reinforce and provide the soil, seeds, and nutrients for future cycles of revenge and violence. Or whether it changes. We should be careful to pursue one and
only one thing as the strategic guidepost of our response:
Avoid doing what they expect. What they expect from us is the lashing
out of the giant against the weak, the many against the few. This will
reinforce their capacity to perpetrate the myth they carefully seek to
sustain: That they are under threat, fighting an irrational and mad
system that has never taken them seriously and wishes to destroy them
and their people. What we need to destroy is their myth not their people.

2. Always seek to understand the nature of the organization - Over
the years of working to promote durable peace in situations of deep,
sustained violence I have discovered one consistent purpose about the
nature of movements and organizations who use violence: Sustain thyself.
This is done through a number of approaches, but generally it is through
decentralization of power and structure, secrecy, autonomy of action
through units, and refusal to pursue the conflict on the terms of the
strength and capacities of the enemy.

One of the most intriguing metaphors I have heard used in the
last few days is that this enemy of the United States will be found in
their holes, smoked out, and when they run and are visible, destroyed.
This may well work for groundhogs, trench and maybe even guerilla
warfare, but it is not a useful metaphor for this situation. And neither
is the image that we will need to destroy the village to save it, by
which the population that gives refuge to our enemies is guilty by
association and therefore a legitimate target. In both instances the
metaphor that guides our action misleads us because it is not connected
to the reality. In more specific terms, this is not a struggle to be
conceived of in geographic terms, in terms of physical spaces and
places, that if located can be destroyed, thereby ridding us of the
problem. Quite frankly our biggest and most visible weapon systems are
mostly useless.

We need a new metaphor, and though I generally do not like
medical metaphors to describe conflict, the image of a virus comes to
mind because of its ability to enter unperceived, flow with a system,
and harm it from within. This is the genius of people like Osama Ben
Laden. He understood the power of a free and open system, and has used
it to his benefit. The enemy is not located in a territory. It has
entered our system. And you do not fight this kind of enemy by shooting
at it. You respond by strengthening the capacity of the system to
prevent the virus and strengthen its immunity. It is an ironic fact that
our greatest threat is not in Afghanistan, but in our own backyard. We
surely are not going to bomb Travelocity, Hertz Rental Car, or an
Airline training school in Florida. We must change metaphors and move
beyond the reaction that we can duke it out with the bad guy, or we run
the very serious risk of creating the environment that sustains and
reproduces the virus we >wish to prevent.

3. Always remember that realities are constructed -
Conflict is, among other things, the process of building and sustaining
very different perceptions and interpretations of reality. This means
that we have at the same time multiple realities defined as such by
those in conflict. In the aftermath of such horrific and unmerited
violence that we have just experienced this may sound esoteric. But we
must remember that this fundamental process is how we end up referring
to people as fanatics, madmen, and irrational. In the process of
name-calling we lose the critical capacity to understand that from
within the ways they construct their views, it is not mad lunacy or
fanaticism. All things fall together and make sense. When this is
connected to a long string of actual experiences wherein their views of
the facts are reinforced (for example, years of superpower struggle that
used or excluded them, encroaching Western values of what is considered
immoral by their religious interpretation, or the construction of an
enemy-image who is overwhelmingly powerful and uses that power in
bombing campaigns and always appears to win) then it is not a difficult
process to construct a rational world view of heroic struggle against
evil. Just as we do it, so do they. Listen to the words we use to
justify our actions and responses.

And then listen to words they use. The way to break such a
process is not through a frame of reference of who will win or who is
stronger. In fact the inverse is true. Whoever loses, whether tactical
battles or the "war" itself, finds intrinsic in the loss the seeds that
give birth to the justification for renewed battle. The way to break
such a cycle of justified violence is to step outside of it. This starts
with understanding that TV sound bites about madmen and evil are not
good sources of policy. The most significant impact that we could make
on their ability to sustain their view of us as evil is to change their
perception of who we are by choosing to strategically respond in
unexpected ways. This will take enormous courage and courageous
leadership capable of envisioning a horizon of change.

4. Always understand the capacity for recruitment-The
greatest power that terror has is the ability to regenerate itself. What
we most need to understand about the nature of this conflict and the
change process toward a more peaceful world is how recruitment into
these activities happens. In all my experiences in deep-rooted conflict
what stands out most are the ways in which political leaders wishing to
end the violence believed they could achieve it by overpowering and
getting rid of the perpetrator of the violence. That may have been the
lesson of multiple centuries that preceded us. But it is not the lesson
from that past 30 years. The lesson is simple. When people feel a deep
sense of threat, exclusion and generational experiences of direct
violence, their greatest effort is placed on survival. Time and again in
these movements, there has been an extraordinary capacity for the
regeneration of chosen myths and renewed struggle.

One aspect of current U.S. leadership that coherently matches
with the lessons of the past 30 years of protracted conflict settings is
the statement that this will be a long struggle. What is missed is that
the emphasis should be placed on removing the channels, justifications,
and sources that attract and sustain recruitment into the activities.
What I find extraordinary about the recent events is that none of the
perpetrators was much older than 40 and many were half that age.

This is the reality we face: Recruitment happens on a sustained
basis. It will not stop with the use of military force, in fact, open
warfare will create the soils in which it is fed and grows. Military
action to destroy terror, particularly as it affects significant and
already vulnerable civilian populations will be like hitting a fully
mature dandelion with a golf club. We will participate in making sure
the myth of why we are evil is sustained and we will assure yet another
generation of recruits.

5. Recognize complexity, but always understand the power of
simplicity - Finally, we must understand the principle of simplicity. I
talk a lot with my students about the need to look carefully at
complexity, which is equally true (and which in the earlier points I
start to explore). However, the key in our current situation that we
have failed to fully comprehend is simplicity. From the standpoint of
the perpetrators, the effectiveness of their actions was in finding
simple ways to use the system to undo it. I believe our greatest task is
to find equally creative and simple tools on the other side.

Suggestions

In keeping with the last point, let me try to be simple. I
believe three things are possible to do and will have a much greater
impact on these challenges than seeking accountability through revenge.

1. Energetically pursue a sustainable peace process to the
Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Do it now. The United States has much it
can do to support and make this process work. It can bring the weight of
persuasion, the weight of nudging people on all sides to move toward
mutual recognition and stopping the recent and devastating pattern of
violent escalation, and the weight of including and balancing the
process to address historic fears and basic needs of those involved. If
we would bring the same energy to building an international coalition
for peace in this conflict that we have pursued in building
international coalitions for war, particularly in the Middle East, if we
lent significant financial, moral, and balanced support to all sides
that we gave to the Irish conflict in earlier years, I believe the
moment is right and the stage is set to take a new and qualitative step
forward.

Sound like an odd diversion to our current situation of terror?

I believe the opposite is true. This type of action is precisely
the kind of thing needed to create whole new views of who we are and
what we stand for as a nation. Rather than fighting terror with force,
we enter their system and take away one of their most coveted elements:
The soils of generational conflict perceived as injustice used to
perpetrate hatred and recruitment. I believe that monumental times like
these create conditions for monumental change. This approach would
solidify our relationships with a broad array of Middle Easterners and
Central Asians, allies and enemies alike, and would be a blow to the
rank and file of terror. The biggest blow we can serve terror is to make
it irrelevant. The worst thing we could do is to feed it
unintentionally by making it and its leaders the center stage of what we
do. Let's choose democracy and reconciliation over revenge and
destruction. Let's do exactly what they do not expect, and show them it
can work.

2. Invest financially in development, education, and a broad
social agenda in the countries surrounding Afghanistan rather than
attempting to destroy the Taliban in a search for Ben Laden. The single
greatest pressure that could ever be put on Ben Laden is to remove the
source of his justifications and alliances. Countries like Pakistan,
Tajikistan, and yes, Iran and Syria should be put on the radar of the
West and the United States with a question of strategic importance: How
can we help you meet the fundamental needs of your people? The strategic
approach to changing the nature of how terror of the kind we have
witnessed this week reproduces itself lies in the quality of
relationships we develop with whole regions, peoples, and worldviews. If
we strengthen the web of those relationships, we weaken and eventually
eliminate the soil where terror is born. A vigorous investment, taking
advantage of the current opening given the horror of this week shared by
even those who we traditionally claimed as state enemies, is immediately
available, possible and pregnant with historic possibilities. Let's do
the unexpected. Let's create a new set of strategic alliances never
before thought possible.

3. Pursue a quiet diplomatic but dynamic and vital support of
he Arab League to begin an internal exploration of how to address the
root causes of discontent in numerous regions. This should be coupled
with energetic ecumenical engagement, not just of key symbolic leaders,
but of a practical and direct exploration of how to create a web of
ethics for a new millennium that builds from the heart and soul of all
traditions but that creates a capacity for each to engage the roots of
violence that are found within their own traditions. Our challenge, as I
see it, is not that of convincing others that our way of life, our
religion, or our structure of governance is better or closer to Truth
and human dignity. It is to be honest about the sources of violence in
our own house and invite others to do the same. Our global challenge is
how to generate and sustain genuine engagement that encourages people
from within their traditions to seek that, which assures the
preciousness and respect for life that every religion sees as an
inherent right and gift from the Divine, and how to build organized
political and social life that is responsive to fundamental human needs.
Such a web cannot be created except through genuine and sustained
dialogue and the building of authentic relationships, at religious and
political spheres of interaction, and at all levels of society. Why not
do the unexpected and show that life-giving ethics are rooted in the
core of all peoples by engaging a strategy of genuine dialogue and
relationship? Such a web of ethics, political and religious, will have
an impact on the roots of terror far greater in the generation of our
children's children than any amount of military action can possibly
muster. The current situation poses an unprecedented opportunity for
this to happen, more so than we have seen at any time before in our
global community.

A Call for the Unexpected

Let me conclude with simple ideas. To face the reality of well
organized, decentralized, self-perpetuating sources of terror, we need
to think differently about the challenges. If indeed this is a new war
it will not be won with a traditional military plan. The key does not
lie in finding and destroying territories, camps, and certainly not the
civilian populations that supposedly house them. Paradoxically that will
only feed the phenomenon and assure that it lives into a new generation.
The key is to think about how a small virus in a system affects the
whole and how to improve the immunity of the system. We should take
extreme care not to provide the movements we deplore with gratuitous
fuel for self-regeneration. Let us not fulfill their prophecy by
providing them with martyrs and justifications. The power of their
action is the simplicity with which they pursue the fight with global
power. They have understood the power of the powerless. They have
understood that melding and meshing with the enemy creates a base from
within. They have not faced down the enemy with a bigger stick. They did
the more powerful thing: They changed the game. They entered our lives,
our homes and turned our own tools into our demise.

We will not win this struggle for justice, peace and human dignity
with the traditional weapons of war. We need to change the game again.

Let us take up the practical challenges of this reality perhaps
best described in the Cure of Troy, an epic poem by Seamus Heaney, to
loosen the grip of the cycles of terror. Let us give birth to the
unexpected.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a farther shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.

John Paul Lederach
September 16, 2001
JPBus@aol.com

BIO: John Paul Lederach is Professor of Conflict Studies and Founding
Director of the Conflict Transformation Program and the Institute for
Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Virginia. Widely known for his pioneering work on conflict transformation, Lederach is involved in conciliation work in Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Somalia, the Philippines, Northern Ireland, and the Basque Country, among others. He has helped design and conduct training programs in 25 countries across five continents. His most recent books are: Reconciliation (Herald Press, 1999), Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (USIP, 1997), and Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation Across Cultures (Syracuse University Press 1995).
__________________

FOR THE RESURRECTION OF WORDS
an on-going conversation emerging from the events of September 11, 2001

Note: The email exchange, below, came out of an immediate and urgent need to respond to recent terrorist events in the U.S. As members of the How2 Editorial Advisory Board began, spontaneously, to share their thoughts with each other, it seemed clear that this sudden blow to our human psyche had swiftly become the CENTRAL condition around which all thought/feeling was flowing in us--privately and communally--and that in order to make the How2 "postcard" email exchange relevant to our readers--to even imagine anyone wishing to use it, at this moment--we would need to keep it deeply connected to issues we are all worried about & thinking over within "the continuous present" of writing. This may include the location of suppressed questions that are not necessarily coming up in pre-defined and socially-pressured public discourses (classrooms, bars, dinner tables, TV or radio shows--to/in which we are witness &/or participant).

Excerpts from these initial communiques have been put together, below, as both witness and invitation to our readers to participate in this exchange of questions and perspectives. One can imagine, for example, postcards from readers who are teaching, describing useful written projects (with sharing of selected results)-- ways of finding & making of written language acts for overwhelming states of fear, grief, confusion or political scepticism.

.... I am terrified, numb, & aghast at my lack of language at this time. I want to explore that feeling of lack. I feel deep rage about the discourse that is bombarding us -- the military machine of cowboy rhetoric, the "dead or alive" bravado, the ubiquitous image of the flag -- despair that I have no discourse to oppose to it. No symbol to wear or hang from the windows, one that would express grief & solidarity w/o yoking those to a jingoistic & hysterical patriotism. I am enraged that an Islamic friend has stopped wearing her head scarf for fear of her safety. That a colleague tells me that all his dark-skinned, dark-haired students have shaved their beards & cut their hair -- for safety. That the Morrocan family that runs 2 restaurants in our neighborhood has the biggest & most plenteous flags at their establishments -- for safety. I am enraged at the absence of a counter-symbol.

I am grief-stricken to hear the stories of a student who was trampled by the fleeing crowds, who walked in bare feet all the way home to Queens, volunteered to take blood donations for several days with no sleep or respite, & was then yelled at in the subway for being "middle-eastern looking." Of another who works fielding phone calls from the families of those missing & could not control her sobbing. In a classroom. In that place. In that place of words. I am appalled by their tears, I am exhausted, I am appalled by my presence before them, I am speechless.

I am stricken anew this morning with the news that one of my students died in the attack. She worked at a financial firm. I am appalled that she was at work while I was at home. That for the last four years she was slowly earning her BA in one evening course at a time. That this evening I must tell her classmates

I am in NYC too. The city where I was born. I was on 7th Ave. and Greenwich Street when one of the buildings collapsed and there was only the sound of thousands of us in the street gasping as it tumbled. Our own human sound louder than the structure's rumble.

....On Thursday night, I went to the opening of a friend's art show. It was the opening of her first major solo show and had been in the works for over a year. Many of us attended just to see each other. I arrived at the space in far west Chelsea (which can look like a war zone on the best of days) to see my friends wearing surgical masks in the absolutely toxic smoke.

But it was important to see my friend's paintings. To see the attempt. Something good and full of intention. Later in the week I was talking to this same painter friend and she expressed disappointment that her show had gone ahead as very few people have attended since that night and it is her first big show. Then she began crying, saying, "why should I worry about something so stupid?"

That is what it has been like for me here. Feeling the fear (evacuated twice from locations which were threatened after Tuesday), feeling shocked, ashamed, exhausted, heartsick (walking past thousands of flyers with pictures of the "lost" lining 11th Street all the way to St. Vincent's hospital) and then ricocheting to concerns about the trivial and banal. Why can't I get below 14th Street to the apartment where I am staying and get clean underwear? Why is this bank line taking so long? Why did the woman put so much milk in my coffee when I asked for "just a little?"

....My friend David just phoned to see if I was going to a peace march tomorrow in Union Square. I said, "Yes." He asked if I was bringing a sign but I have no sign to bring. Nothing clever to say. Not one thing. I am so sad. People in the street are sad and quiet here. No music blaring out of bodegas, no excited conversation, not even many children yelling and playing.

....I feel really sad. And to offer my deepest condolences to any of you who have been touched personally in this tragedy.

.... I was struck by the fact that both Elizabeth Frost and Jo Ann Wasserman wrote about their difficulty to define, to express, to find adequate words and symbols, which now lie broken and useless.

I think we should try to find those words and symbols again (where? in the past? in ourselves? in other cultures? should we create brand new ones?). Not logos, trademarks, labels, slogans, badges, banners, allegories of death...

...but, rather, metaphors, words to cope with reality, attempts to understand and resist interpretations--EVEN theories ("theory" being the 'bad' word few want to hear in times of crises). But lack of theory is bad theory, and we--the world--can't afford such a lack now.

...I�m trying to express how these recent disasters have changed our relation to language. Think of definitions given in the past few days: terrorist attack, permanent global war, Holy War... (none of them seems proper)... and how everyone is trying to cope with this void of language, working out responses that generate from internal (psychological, but also physiological), external, socio-cultural variations. Now those responses are floating and opaque; sometime later they'll harden into definitions (the making of History). I think that's a good reason for us to be watchful and keep on writing.

And 'as life goes on' I can't avoid thinking about the dozens of petitions I have signed for years in defense of Afghan women, to expose their inhuman condition: I wonder where those petitions landed, what we are to do for the forgotten words.

....Let's keep on writing about what is going on (inside, outside: is there a difference?)...striving to find words to express it, to give a shape to these fragmentations.

In response to Renata Morresi, I agree that theory must move forward and is critical to our sorting out process as we receive so much incorrect and non critical information from the agents of mass media in the States. We certainly need sensitive and revolutionary thinking right now. One thing that I was struck with while attending the peace march last night was the insistent use (on the part of the demonstrators) of dualistic language�"Bush wants war, New York wants peace!" or "justice: yes, war: no!"

My friend and I tried to start a round of "we feel scared" and "dignity for humanity" (doesn't scan well, I know) to no avail. If theory and critical discourse could help us to move outside of binary thinking (or defining) as that which we are against, rather than for, it would be transformative. What I want is to be defined as FOR something, not always against. Even in listening to the chant, "Peace not war," I wondered, "what does peace mean right now?" The way things were on September 10th in New York City as thousands of people woke up living on the street? The way things were in Macedonia last year? On the Gaza Strip today? In the Sudan? In Pakistan?

Last Tuesday night I felt like there was no place to go and feel "safe" for the night. It is a strange feeling for me but I know many around the world and in the States experience that all the time. A thought flashed through my mind�I wished it was New Year's Day so that I could attend the big, 24 hour marathon poetry reading which takes place at The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in New York City every year. I wanted to be there partly to be around friends but also to be in a space of hearing poems, nonstop. I have been thinking about the place poetry has in a situation like this one. How the mysterious nature of that language might also be part of a response.

Yesterday I heard that On October 3rd there will be a group reading by about 50 poets (many of whom are also critical writers) at St. Mark's. The idea is to respond to recent events here. I don't know what people will read or say but I am eager to find out. If anyone will be in NYC and wants specific info., I would be happy to e-mail it out.

....I have been thinking about the strength of words and the strength of a symbol like the flag--there may be little or no appropriate words at this time but there have been plenty of flags. Flags have long been a potent symbol of solidarity and mourning. I think back to how Cathy Freeman carried the Aboriginal flag in both Olympic games, symbolically reminding all in Australia and the rest of the world of her history and Aboriginal Australians' continuing presence. Her gesture was far more effective than any sentence she might have spoken. And it seems to me, that for many Americans, the American flag has had a similar function at this point of time. I'm not suggesting here that a minority Australian proudly showing her 'colour/s' to the world (while her country's government still fails to acknowledge or say 'sorry' for past injustices) is the same as an average American showing the flag in his/her own yard. But that the flag is an outward sign or gesture of solidary, gesturing in the American case a sympathy towards those most affected by the events of 9/11.

At the same time, I also find it dissettling. I am now constantly reminded that I am an "alien" in the United States, that as a sign of solidarity, it excludes me. I've noticed too that many have begun wearing ribbons in the colours of the flag in the same way as there were AIDS ribbons, and apparently, Gulf war ribbons. As a symbol, I think the ribbon, like the flag, focuses on it being an "American" tragedy, that it elides the many non-Americans who died in the World Trade Center collapses and the suffering of their families. I realize that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were targets precisely because they were American icons, but in reinforcing it as simply an American tragedy, the use of the flag or its colours as a symbol merely encourages the objectives of such terrorism--to heighten national and cultural divisions.

I think new approaches to combatting terrorism must go beyond, as Jo Ann suggests, a simple dialectic of peace vs. war, to some global coalition of the "civilized" against an unknown other. More importantly, to actually rethink what the very basis of being civilized might mean or perhaps even more, what it might mean to be human today.

Lastly, I just wanted to say how much I appreciated Renata's timely email about modernist writers working through issues of politics and aesthetics in the face of fascism. A different, though related set of issues, certainly arises in relation to terrorism. Both, I think, are different again than the questions arising in the face of a slow, sanctioned genocide such as occurred with the Holocaust, arguably also happening in other parts of the world today.

I am still confused, and yet feel that I should finally somehow contribute to our exchange about the terrible events of 2 weeks ago, even if I am relatively far away in Germany, and have no one close in New York. Although my original speechlessness has given way (had to give way) to efforts to talk with my kids, my family, my friends, and colleagues, I am feeling a complete inability to balance and to connect emotional and rational responses in an acceptable way. I cannot manage this balancing act between (the expression of) complete devastation, sadness, compassion, and helplessness on the one hand, and an analysis of the political, historical, social, and religious context on the other. But I am sure that it is this balancing act that is most urgently needed.

It is needed because the one without the other does not hold, or rather is extremely one-sided if not dangerous. In Germany, at present, next to the hands on anti-terrorist, measure-taking approach (be assured of U.S.anti-terrorist military support + more police: cameras, security checks, screening etc.), the emotional discourse (in words, gestures, actions, and symbols--all very material), is the officially sanctioned one...as long as it is "for the U.S. not against them." Hence my daughter and her classmates talked for hours in class about the events per se, without any background information on Afghanistan, Bin Laden, and/or the Middle East, but when a fellow student raised one question about U.S. policy in the region, he was reprimanded and, for the rest of the lesson, overlooked by the teacher who threatened to bring him before the headmaster.

That two-thirds of the former East German citizens--who have experienced their share of offical binary interpretations of history and current events--are strongly opposed to a war (on Afghanistan or any other "villain state") is mostly interpreted as the expression of an insufficiantly developed sense of democracy and/or latent anti-Americanism.

Yesterday the culture section of my local newspaper opened with a one page article on "The Cowardly Thinking," claiming that German "artists and intellectuals flee into anti-American prejudices." What the diverse intellectuals quoted there (in bits and pieces, completely out of context) have done is: to put the events--in Washington, New York and the Pittsburgh area--into a wider context of US policy plus voicing the same fears of race hatred, vicious patriotism, and militant jingoism that have been expressed in our e-mail discussion.

The erronous logics of a terrorism which takes the symbols of US global power (the World Trade Center, the Pentagon) as material representation of the "evil" ("US imperialism") and hence aggressively destroys them, is cynically repeated in a counter-attack scenario (prescribed by the Bush government and followed by its allies, Germany among them) which takes the very same symbols as material representation of the "good" ("democracy", "civilization") as those to be aggressively defended. It seems to me that the arbitrariness of symbols, the contextual differences of meaning, the contingency of positions--historical, political, social, gendered, ethnic, class-related--and the ambivalence of emotions needs urgently to be thought about, talked about, written about before and while re/acting to what undoubtedly was an onslaught on humanity, a terrible, inhuman act.

It is especially hard to make (perceive and create an awareness of) a difference, or rather to make differences in writing (the use of words and symbols) that subvert the simplifying dominant discourse, when this very discourse is so emotionally charged. And yet these differences need to be made, thought, spoken, and written--risking the judgement of "cowardly thinking," rather than not thinking at all.

.... What makes sense is to continue to assemble a life in the aftermath. The writing is such an assembly, though it is never "after" but current, and a current we ride to--where? Directions don't make sense now. Every direction is suspect.

I'm in Buffalo, on the US/Canadian border. The day after 9/11 I tried to take a walk along the Niagara River (our border) to find the otherwise well-trafficked area all but empty except for scattered Vet-types with binoculars trained north.... My co-ambulator and I were advised against walking on the pier, which had been my desire, because of a bomb threat to the Peace Bridge that runs above it on over to Canada. It was eerie, we felt unsafe, and we left.

We felt unsafe for the next three days and never parted company, except to go to classes, to teach, which was almost fruitless--on Thursday I cried, looking out onto the tiny sea of my students to take attendance, just glad that they were there. They were sobered, and we went on--I teach composition--and learn we did.

.... Basically, I've been thinking, how would How2, if she could talk, want the Forum to function? This is where we interpret her "constitution." While on the one hand I value hearing intelligent women-poetry-thinkers critically address all manner of issues--I love especially the way this forum, email, lets those issues evolve, accelerate--I wonder how can this be brought forward in a way that's true to How2's urgencies--to poetry and women? And yet, oddly, Ann's suggestion that we need to "actually rethink what the very basis of being civilized might mean or perhaps even more, what it might mean to be human today" really urges me.

Perhaps that's not so odd, though, when one considers how poetry is being cast about amidst all the rhetoric of memorial and war in the U.S.. According to National Public Radio, to be human and male is to write Poetry; to be female is to talk and to grieve. Our only nationwide forum for news and culture, NPR has brought poetry to the foreground, in the voices of Billy Collins, Robert Pinsky, and, today, W.S. Merwin, offering profound reflection and dour sentiments.

Women, when they form audible words, sound in untrained yet eloquent prose. These are the wives left behind. What NPR forms is an apparently unbridgeable sexually-differentiated cultural divide. At what point do contemporary women enter to define a national/poetic response? We stand, like Greek women outside the gates of the polis, mourning. Olson said to Carolee Schneeman when she went out to Gloucester with her then partner in the late 60s, that it was when the cunts began to speak that Greek tragedy began its decline.

Anne Carson's fascinating essay "The Gender of Sound" illuminates: "Greek women of the archaic and classical periods were not encouraged to pour forth unregulated cries of any kind within the civic space of the polis or within earshot of men. Indeed, masculinity in such a culture defines itself by its different use of sound." I've often wondered what stake male poets have/had in "masculinizing" their practice, keeping it pure of certain (read "feminizing") emotions. I'm not essentializing here (women write "emotional" poetry), but just noticing how the burden of emotion is often pushed onto women while at the same time this burden is used as an excuse to prohibit women's cultural production, where culture is seen to proceed in a rational, or in some sense formalized, manner.

1) Spinning off of Linda Kinnahan's remarks about what it means to be an innovative writer who is also political: How to be a non-narrative poet in the face of such REAL, linear surreality, you know? I don't even WANT to write about it all, but it's the only thing I AM writing about, in one way or another, and I feel slightly irresponsible for going sideways/non-linear rather than being directly story-telling about it all. To this end, I am planning to read Celan, whom I think of as a brilliant avant-garde reporter of very direct and personal tragedy. Can anyone suggest other poets who have done this, especially women poets?

2) I am also thinking a lot about what it means to be a global citizen. I am not so naive as to think that America can or should pull out of all foreign policy...at this point that's simply not realistic, nor is it generous. So how can a country like the USA use its power for good instead of evil? How can I be a part of urging it to do so?

I want to also note, in regard to Linda K's comment about Pinsky (whom I almost always find self-righteous), that I did hear a pretty good alternative to the voice of HIStory when Boston's NPR call-in show, "The Connection," had a day dedicated to the uses of poetry at times like these, and guests were Marie Howe and Naomi Shahib Nye.... One of my favorite moments on that show was when the (male) host brought Nye on the line, and instead of either Howe or Nye addressing the questions at hand-- or the host--Nye said, "Hello, Marie, I have been thinking of you in New York" and Howe said, "Hello, Naomi darling, I have been thinking of you." Such a human--and, dare I say, female--moment.

Dear all
I have been reading your thoughtful messages with gratitude, and with admiration for such articulate reflections. Many of the sentiments expressed echo my own--in particular my feelings of frustration and powerlessness--but I am made hopeful by the determination of everyone involved in this correspondence to make sense of their lives, and to plan for future action--be it the re-reading of Celan, the writing of new poetry, the raising of issues in HOW2, or meeting up at the Modernism conference. (I wish I could be there). Ann's suggestion for the rethinking of 'what the very basis of being civilized might mean...what it might mean to be human today' ties in with my own concern regarding our (my) lack of understanding of how such inhumane acts come to be perpetrated.

I was in China on the 11th, in an area where we unable to receive CNN News, or indeed any other English-speaking channel. Rumours abounded, and to see the TV images with no commentary or explanation was terrifying. I rang my daughter in London, and she told me what she knew of events. As we spoke, news reports were coming in on her TV from the USA. She told me that a White House spokesman was about to appear, and asked--did I want to hear what he was saying? Hungry for any information, I replied in the affirmative and she held the telephone receiver close to the TV. It was not what he said that made me weep, but just that I suddenly became aware--in that moment--of the distance that