Meditation
Ocean Vyong’s poetry illuminates the possibility of joy while bearing witness to violence. To live fully is to feel fully, to pay full attention to all that is both bright and dark in the world. Born in Saigon, much of Vyong’s works speak to the immigrant experience in America and the power of storytelling to remember our roots. “As a species, as life on Earth, we’ve been dying for millennia, but I don’t think energy dies. It’s transformed. And when you’re using language, you can create it, use it, to divide people and build walls, or you can turn it into something where we can see each other more clearly, as a bridge,” he said in a recent interview with OnBeing. How do you make sense of he brevity of our time on Earth? What about your life is gorgeous? Where does that beauty end? What can you do to pin your hand to the chest of another in recognition of their gorgeous heart? How can you feed the hunger of this Earth?
Brianna Curran
Washington, DC
