I’ve been wondering how all these people can continue doing what they always do, how I observe myself doing the same (because what else is there to do now?), when my country is about to start a war, when many of its troops and all of its targets are somewhere else preparing for atrocity.

I long for a cultural mourning ritual. We need the old women to start wailing in grief, to summon the neighborhood to news of death and give the neighbors permission to grieve outwardly, whether in concert with the wailing women, or privately, in the shadow of the unabashed crying.

But we have none; we have no permission to grieve, as we well know, and so I watch as all of these people, as in the days after the WTC attack, deny emotion by burying themselves in meaninglessness.

And I am nervous, sitting in the comfort of my house, feeling powerless.

I’ve written to my representatives and will continue to write. There is some sense of having performed a duty in writing to them. Although, we have to watch out for that Maria Cantwell—she dodges.

I’ve demonstrated in the streets and felt the comfort of being among people with similar views, if it accomplished little else. I’ll continue with that, too, because we have to be consistent, when the Congress members can’t, with the message that it’s not OK for the United States to start wars of empire, and that it’s tyrannical to ask the citizens of our military to carry out that task.

I feel like making tea, in a drawn-out ritual of contrived movements. Both yoga and chado are meditations based on intentional action. I think I’m attracted to these practices because intentional action is a good way to cultivate agency.

And then, I am reminded of Mrs. Chung, working and practicing tea everyday with the intention of honoring her mother, who worked very hard during and after the Korean war to provide for her family. Mrs. Chung said that her life is easy compared to her mother’s, and so she does not allow herself to take that privilege for granted.

In many places of the world people are hiding or stockpiling or imprisoned. In the Gulf region, soldiers and Iraqis are preparing for invasion, the comforts of quotidian tasks denied to them. The quiet comfort of washing dishes, making a bed, relishing the peaceful interior of the walls of a home.

These things and others I can do, thoughtfully, because I am free to do them, yes, but also in honor of the inalienable right to that freedom.