Pre-birthday lunch

My birthday celebration has started. I began by driving home from Sue’s at dawn with the red chairs (see yesterday). I did a couple of hours of collaborative editing with Paula, then Stephie took me out for lunch, an Indian buffet. In the afternoon I wrote a little birthday essay and posted it on Facebook, as I plan to spend my 72nd birthday unplugged. Sue is coming over to my place in the morning, and we’ll walk again the route we took four years ago on my birthday, which was a kind of turning point for us. Then we’ll have a picnic. Then a further indulgence: unstructured time together for the rest of the day. No plans. No promises to keep. No engagements, no responsibilities. Free time. My favorite.

Here’s my birthday essay, and the Extra is the photo made by my friend Lisa Butler when she was in Cuba. I saved it for this day.

On the day I was born, Clement Attlee and his Labour Party were declared the winners of the UK General Election and Winston Churchill began packing to leave Downing Street. Attlee wanted an end to war. He created the National Health Service and sponsored measures designed to protect poor and orphaned children. He failed to mention me by name, but as a veteran against war, Attlee was shocked, less than two weeks after the announcements of his victory and my birth, when the government of my country blasted 129,000 people into oblivion in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Was my newly-emerged consciousness aware of the sudden unchosen departures of the 129,000? I didn’t speak a language at that time, and my seven-pound body knew little more than the shock of hunger, the shock of light, but I know I disapproved, even then, of bombs. I was familiar with ambiguity, as my body had developed in the womb of a woman who deeply regretted its existence. The only way I could ever have pleased her was to not Be, and I wavered in my willingness to Be for the first twenty-eight years of my life, but I have come to enjoy it, especially in summer.

On my eighth birthday, Fidel Castro initiated a revolution in Cuba and named it El Movimiento del 26 Julio, The 26th of July Movement. He made many long speeches that are now available on the internet, and he, like Attlee, failed to mention me, though I suppose they had other things on their minds. Like Attlee, Castro decreed that all people in his country were entitled to health care, whether they could afford to pay for it or not. Unlike Attlee, Castro recognized the toxic power of white supremacy and racism, and the deconstruction of racism has been my major mission in life. And so I feel that my life is bound up with a horror of war and bombs; a respect for movements that overthrow white supremacy, racism, dictators, capitalism, and corporatism; and a firm belief that all people deserve access to health care and safety. My thanks to Lisa Butler for this photograph taken in Cuba, where my birthday is still celebrated and remembered. Viva!