Page 46 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2

visited in steady waves when stories and images of loss from around the world came through various

media channels. That my body is done convulsing does not mean that I am no longer affected by the

pain of others; it means that I am free of processing it as if it were my own. Pacific recalls a point of

witness to my own emotional evolution as I read a fabricated story about the billionaire boy’s birthday

extravaganza in an online magazine that mocks true current events with such extremes. The obscenity

of today’s world is such that this event is not too far from the truth as elephants endure the faces of

their loved ones hacked off in mass for ivory.

Curiously, it was not the time spent with

elephants and their grief in July 2014 as part

of my monthly witness practice that punched

a hole in the bottom of my well, but this tall

tale of a rich boy’s senselessness. At the

beginning of July, as I was clearing my desk

to begin fresh, I asked out loud whether I

could be present with the elephants’ pain. .

Immediately after I spoke, I found myself

heaving in a ball on the floor, my gut

convulsing. The body’s response lasted

through a hot bath and to its exhaustion. I
For the third year in a row, unusual numbers of sea lion

pups are washing up on California shores. This year, sea lion
wanted merely to recoil into poem then. The
pups are stranding earlier than ever before. Photo

copyright The Marine Mammal Center
body felt done, but it wasn’t. It was not until
http://eepurl.com/bfgzjH
the felt experience of the rich boy’s

numbness that my own being was liberated from the pain. I now experience a state of stillness like

placid water when painful images cross my desk. Only the face cringes into a weeping smile. The head

bows. Deep breath into the chest follows. My well now drains in a steady pulse of words arising from

the pain that is bound to escalate even if the growing wails from land and sea are felt and heeded by

the many.

Inspired initially in fall 2014 by the tall tale, Pacific came to completion in February 2015 when a friend

who works with the Marine Mammal Center of Marin County, California shared images of abandoned