Giannina Braschi - United States of Banana

It’s not that we can’t rescue him. We could if we wanted to, but we would lose a fortune. Segismundo thinks that he depends on liberty, but the truth be said — liberty has more need of him than he of the statue. The more he rattles his shackles and chains, the more tickets he sells. The military is afraid that some terrorist group will plot to rescue him. The people want to liberate him. Especially his own people — immigrants and prisoners from around the world. So, in order to prevent the coming insurrection, a voting system is created to give the people the impression that Segismundo’s destiny is in their hands. They are given three options:

Wishy

Wishy-Washy

Washy

If they vote for Wishy — Segismundo will be liberated from the dungeon. If they vote for Wishy-Washy, the status quo will prevail. If they vote for Washy, he will be sentenced to death, and nobody will have the honor of hearing his songs rise from the gutters of the dungeon of liberty. Every four years the citizens of Liberty Island vote for Wishy-Washy. They can choose between mashed potato, french fries, or baked potato. But any way you serve it, it’s all the same potato.

I read in the Post on August 11, 2001, about an attack by a suicide bomber on Jaffa Street, in Jerusalem, at Sbarro Pizzeria — and I was impressed by the mention of a little girl, 3 years old, who stood up among the rolling heads like Lazarus back from the dead, back to tell them all— wake up —and she saw her mother — sleeping beauty on the floor — and called her:

— Mommy, wake up.

The mother was dead. At this point a little piece of my glazed donut fell on the little girl’s face and another crumb fell on her mother’s legs. I picked up the pieces of my donut and ate them — the way I pass beggars in the streets — the worse they appear and the more they beg the more I ignore them, avoiding eye contact with the poor and thirsty — and as I turned the page — I saw the torso of a businessman whose testicles were blown off. He was screaming to a policeman who was passing by:

— Please, help me! I don’t want to die!

When the policeman saw the man, he vomited on the stumps of the man’s legs — and I felt the horror — but I ate my donut anyway, thinking:

— I’m glad I’m not there. I’m here dunking my donut while others are blown to bits and pieces. Good luck. Keep hope alive.

One month later I would be eating a glazed donut of the same kind when the first airplane hit the World Trade Center.

— Tess! Tess! Where are you? Let’s go!

— I have to get my camera. And my pink ticket.

— For what?

— To pick up my shoes.

— Where?

— At Stanley’s cobbler shop.

— Are you crazy! Let’s run!

— No —Tess said— I have to contemplate life from the highest point of view. That’s what Emerson said it is to pray.

So we went to the penthouse terrace — and from there we saw the second plane hit the second tower.

— They’re going to fall! — I screamed.

— If they fall, they will fall on themselves —Tess said.

Bull’s eye. What a prophet. I had told Tess when I was apartment hunting earlier that year:

— My only concern is the proximity of the towers. They will crush my building. If the Arabs came once to take them down — they will come back to finish the job. I know them. They were in Spain for eight centuries. They have a different way of measuring time.

They are turtles. We are rabbits.

— But they were designed by the Japanese —Tess said. If they fall, hari-kari, they will fall on themselves.

— I don’t want them to fall —I said.

— They won’t fall —Tess said— but if they fall, they will fall on themselves.

So I signed the lease, on February 5, 2001, my birthday.

It is amazing, you know, when I was a kid we used to say, my friends and I:

— How old will we be when the new millennium comes?

— I will be 45, an old lady —I used to say— and by then I’ll be dead.

But look at me now, running for my life, and wanting to go on forever and ever. Someday, I used to say to myself, I’ll have my day in the sun. And it will be a happy day. A holiday. Someday, I used to say, I won’t have to struggle to become because I will have come — come closer — every day to what I want to become. Oh, yes, that will be the day, I used to say, when I won’t have to struggle anymore. I will be pleased with my achievements. And I want to achieve myself. Can that happen. I used to ask myself. It’s not an enterprise, an ambition, or a goal I want to achieve — like a career — going from here to there — like running a race — where you sweat, you practice, and you get where you want to go. That isn’t it. It was staring at myself — and looking at the sorrows of my changing face — and depicting the changes — and being startled when a new friend or foe appeared — inside myself — a new relationship between one state and another — from a face without a heart — to the sorrows of the changing face — to the painting of a sorrow. I always wanted to become myself walking the bridge across my past, present and future. Maybe, if I can remember smiling openly at the full moon and saying — I am round too. No sooner would my shape start changing — and with the sorrows of my changing face — new ravages, new debaucheries, new inequalities would force the smile off my face — as if happiness were everlasting and could shape other facets of my life. Take it easy — relax — don’t worry — be happy. But foul weather came rushing through, and with age, other overpowering expressions signed their names around my eyes — as if they had never looked freshly at a fresh new day — as if spring could not stay green — because it had grown old and wrinkled — and a divorce between yesterday and today was becoming so obvious that the younger generation that was I was pushed over by another younger generation that called itself me —even when I insisted — I am spring. They would look at my forehead and say — no, you are not. If you don’t spy on the mysteries of your changing moods, they become flat and sterile as if permanently in digression, looking back and wondering when it all happened. Can I stop it — at least for a second so I can have a chance to understand what is happening to me right now — at this exact moment. But no, what happens happens when it happens without excuses — it just happens that I was here — and I thought I would be here longer — while I was enjoying my lasting moods, the longer I lingered in the ones that I loved because they made me feel good and round — they would turn over — like a good dream that turns bad in the middle of the night — making me toss and turn until the position feels right — because I want to rid myself of strife — I want to have good dreams and a happy life.

I go to sleep at night and dream of teeth falling out and holes being drilled and filled with gold filling — and I see rain falling — wind blowing — cars running — fools thinking they are as smart as a fox — and the teeth keep hanging on like earrings on earlobes — and I feel my tooth is loose — it trembles like a bell — it will fall out — in a matter of time — I can tell — because I have good timing — and the pace it keeps hanging on is quite steady — so it is steadily feeling lousy and clumsy — but it is hanging on — it has a good sense of itself — it knows how to hang tough through tough times — like a soldier who, wounded by 20,000 slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, hangs on for life like my loose tooth that I feel trembling in my hand — like a newborn mouse — moving around and smelling my palm — so many metaphors to say what. I mean, what can I say that has not already been said 20,000 times.