Giannina Braschi - United States of Banana

— Don’t blame me. I don’t exist anymore. You exist. You are the guilty ones. You should be blamed for their deaths. Not me. What did you do to me to make me capable of erasing all those innocent people — and myself — from the map of the earth?

The suicide bomber blows the anonymity of the crowd into individual pieces and pieces of individuals. Nobodies suddenly become somebodies with names, nationalities, stories, and faces. The individual rage of the crowd awakens when its collectivity is threatened. It’s the fear that it could happen to you — or to me — or to any one of us — anytime — anywhere the crowd gathers. The crowd becomes an instant celebrity after being a nobody. The government worries that the roll call of the death toll will storm the polls and overturn elections and cars, businesses and samenesses. When the government proclaims war against terrorism — it proclaims war against the awakening of the masses. What the suicide bomber kills is the passivity of the masses. Walter Benjamin noted the decline of the halo in Baudelaire — the decline of the sacred. But the halo of the poet is rising again. The halo of the poet rises when the crowd unites in one voice that becomes the voice of the individual claiming his voice through the crowd. The crowd says— in my opinion —and its opinion is always what it just heard — it is hearsay said here — by someone who steps out of line — to say— in my opinion —and a circle forms around him — a circle of the same opinion. And nobody else enters that circle, but the groupies. You don’t belong —the groupies say. These groupies — I enjoy hearing what they have to say — these bunches of bananas or grapes — and I like their shapes — and how they fall out of favor at the height of their flavor.

It doesn’t matter how often I hear: religion, religion, religion. I know deep in my heart that it is not about religion. It is about the battle of matter and spirit — the battle of the oppressed that are dispossessed — and want to possess — because they feel possessed. And they are possessed of spirit. It is the call of the oppressed to be possessed by something higher than material dispossession. After all the schisms of isms — after capitalism, socialism, Marxism, communism, feminism — after separation of church and state — it is an anachronism to call it a religious crusade when it is a global conflict between the ones who have too much and the ones who have too little, too little to lose.

Why do we count the number of dead as the relevance of a terrorist attack? The impact of the event should not be measured by the casualties, but by the possibilities it opens to other casualties, by the copycats, by the inspiration it produces, by the consequences of the act.

— Only 3,000 dead —I hear people say— is nothing compared to the victims of AIDS or starvation in Africa or the earthquakes in Mexico or the tsunami in Japan.

I don’t count the casualties. I count the impact of the event on the collective psyche. Its relevance. Accustomed as we are to what is expected — war is expected — and casualties are expected. That is why the impact of the event cannot be measured by casualties — because that is what is expected — and impact is not measured by the expected, but by what has no name or tradition. It is based on the new. Success can be measured by numbers — and not just by the number of dead and wounded — but by the number of spectators around the world who witnessed the fall of the American Empire on TV. It changed the world’s view of the self-proclaimed superpower. It made the superpower appear powerless. When success and impact come together, that event marks an era. There is a before and an after.

I used to worry about keeping my job, and losing my job, and what would I do without a job, and how would I survive without a salary, and whether to fight the system and sue. But now, as things are, I am more concerned about the Taliban than my boss. I am more concerned about my expatriate status than my unemployment status. Do I leave this country? Do I have enough money to survive abroad? And where would I go? Is Barcelona any safer than Berlin? I have two recurring nightmares since living at Ground Zero. One of white parachutes descending from the skies — invading us — ahead of our time — the avant-garde of warfare. The second is a white aerial vehicle hovering over Park Avenue — looping northbound, southbound — and after a few laps — everything around starts falling down — lampposts, traffic lights, awnings. If I have a third one, I will leave the country. Although, come to think about it, before I moved to Battery Park, I had another doomsday dream about an atomic bomb exploding over Radio City at Rockefeller Center. But that was not a white dream like the parachutes and the aerial vehicles. Those two worry me because I saw the white of fear in America’s eyes. We don’t fear the way we should fear. Our sense of danger should be at the height of our abuse. I get caught in bumper to bumper traffic jams of strangers — on curbs, in cabs, on bikes — I hear music from the back — and from the aisles — I have options — not this store but that one — and my choices are personal — my stops at shops, capricious. I turn around at the sound of a horn or a siren — or somebody speaking a foreign language that attracts me — and I applaud street performances. All distractions are welcome because they counter my thoughts. Sometimes it pains me to be alone — and I am surrounded by masses of people — alone in their heads — and the world is in turmoil. I don’t know how to escape my silence. My mouth is shut — like a piano lid — or a store closed for business — until somebody next to me answers my thoughts. I don’t know how my voice sounds — until I hear it — and it’s not a matter of speaking, but of communicating. When I least expect it, I find the story I was looking for. I fell on the corner of 32nd Street and 8th Avenue. I tried to stop the fall with my hands, but even my control freak instincts couldn’t stop my nose from breaking or my Gaultier glasses from shattering. I looked around to see what had caused my fall. A forklift had flipped me over onto my wrist, my knee, my nose. I was surrounded by construction workers shouting:

— Put your head back!

— No, no, put your head down!

Back or down, I couldn’t stop from choking on the blood running out of my nose and my mouth.

Through the revolving doors came the head of security with a clipboard and a pen, and he handed me legal papers.

— Sign here.

— Why? Why should I sign?

— Explain what happened.

I was supposed to be catching a train to give a poetry reading at Bard College. Instead I heard the sirens of the ambulance coming toward me, and as the paramedics wheeled me away on a gurney, a black security guard came over and said:

— You look bad, real bad —and he rubbed two fingers together, saying— your fall is worth money, baby, $100,000.

All of a sudden, my brain turned from a piggybank into a cash machine. My eyes used to move as slowly as the eyes of the sages in Dante’s Inferno, but now they had no time to reflect — only to count the cash that was spewing out of the cash machine. My eyeballs went blank before the cash was cashed. I have been writing poetry my whole life and receiving pennies for my thoughts — and feeling like shit — honestly. My worth is zero to the bone. The more poetry I write the more neglect I receive. People mistake priceless for worthless. But now I was cashing in. How much can I make on this accident. My nose was cracked to the bone. I had to get a nose job. The operation made my accident worth more. My lawyer who told me to have the operation— so you can be worth more —when he saw the new nose — said: