The Empty Pot

Allmost black and white. Small town street with flags Victorian turreted shops. Seated woman in reading glasses with a khafia holds an empty pot. Behind her stand four shrouded figures, one person is lying down next to her. In the foreground, a sign reads “I’m “American” I pay too much for everything I vote for war for genocide my tax dollars buy weapons to attack starving kids in Gaza.”

Ring the bells that still can ring.

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack, a crack in everything.

That's how the light gets in.

~Leonard Cohen

I don't talk about Palestine much these days. I should. What the Israeli government is doing is a shame, a horror and a sin. It's genocide and we are financing it. Mass starvation has set in. I don't know what to say other than that. Maybe I should only say that. Maybe we should all only say that, over and over in answers to small talk at the grocery store, first thing in the morning and at night after we brush our teeth. But we would have no time to talk about the Congo or the American concentration camps or ecocide. Urgency becomes litany and I can't get through my days with that on my lips. I tell myself I would say all of it all day if that would save even a single life. Maybe. I don't know if I'm actually that strong.

The protest last Friday was entirely silent. On weekends, the prettiest little street downtown gets cordoned off and restaurants move their al fresco tables onto the blacktop. Between the brick clock tower and the gourmet ice cream shop, four figures stood, shrouded and silent, back to back in the middle of the street. They held posters with starving bodies, text that we all know by heart and do not read aloud. I sat on a little stool with a big empty pot. I didn't bother covering my face. There just aren't enough people who move like me in a town this size to make it worth it. Someone lay down on the ground beside me. People set up on the opposite curb, chalking the street with slogans. Silence pooled around us. The chatter of diners up the street, the conversations of people under the awning where one of the little shops keeps a well-tuned piano for passersby to play died like all the times we have wanted to scream that this is a shame, a horror and a sin. Genocide.

I sat as still as I could. Some of the people passing averted their eyes. Some met mine. Some were sad, some inscrutable. One woman crossed herself. I still don't know what that means. One woman dropped five dollars in my empty bowl. I had a moment of confusion. Were we collecting money? No. At least I didn't think so. I shook my head. I extended the empty pot and she reclaimed the bill. That's not what this is. I also thought, you won't get off that easy. None of us will. None of us should.

The bell tolled seven times into our silence, loud as the voice of God. The four shrouded figures were gone. It took me and the person lying down a little time to come out of our quiet places. I chalked Let Gaza Live as big as I could across the street. They are dying. Jewish Voices for Peace tells us 85% of Palestinians have now entered the 5th stage of malnutrition. At that stage, counter-intuitive as it may seem, food can kill a starving person. They need careful care, a slow, assisted walk back from the brink. That could still happen, not for the families who have died in the time it took me to write this and send it to you, but it still could but as long as there's anyone left, there's time. The Israelis could set down their guns and fill the cooking pots. We could protect the aid workers who have come from around the world and are waiting, desperate to be allowed to feed people. You already know the calls to make, the things to do to stop this as soon as we can. Maybe you want to stand in silence too, in your town. I don't know what else to say.