Lifting the Veil

Through the virtual looking glass

“It occurred to me: What if everything I’ve ever been through was preparing me for this moment?” - Jonathan van Ness

The veil here is thin.
On one side are lives
constructed from conversations,
news clips, visits to hospitals,
hospices and graveyards,
the torn and faded photos
of loved ones in denial
soaked with facts
and formaldehyde feelings -
shock, dismay, disgust, disbelief,
and inevitable, reluctant relief -
parsed down and defined by words,
words you never expected or wanted to know -
thrush, PCP, crypto, Kaposi sarcoma, encephalopathy -
and wish you didn’t know now,
marched across pages in orderly rows
so history has a record,
so humanity can move on.
On the other are
hints and innuendos,
half-finished thoughts -
sheer and shimmering as dragonfly wings
stirred by offshore currents,
moist with the promise of rain
and the silence of anticipation.
Here, in the pause between words,
time forgets to tick
and everything we promised
to do and see and be
with and for one another
seeps into awareness like watery sun
through ancient, rippled glass,
a weak but welcome reminder
of grace. - Jena Ball aka Jenaia Morane

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It’s been 14 years since I accepted the contract and began the research - interviews, readings, conversations with doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists, historians, journalists, infectious disease specialists, government officials, and executive directors of NGOs - that would lead to the construction of your life. It was a life well imagined, executed with precision and in exquisite detail. A life we could both embrace with gratitude and pride.

Another 10 years have passed since I watched that life vanish and the land it was built on become nothing more than a flat, featureless island in a shimmering virtual sea.

That life - the life you and I designed and built - was and continues to be as real as any I’ve known in any world. If anything, it is more concentrated, focused, and intense, distilled as it was from a singular, life-altering event - the contraction of HIV.

As many who have experienced their own “singular events” can attest, there is no stepping back from the edge or the questions it raises. That was the goal of course - to ask and answer questions - to peer behind the curtain, and with any luck at all catch a glimpse of what Rumi calls, “the light that blazes inside your presence.”

And so my friends, as the 35th annual World AIDS Day approaches, and the specter of COVID hangs like a dank, stifling fog over our lives, I’ve decided to rebuild and retell Uncle D’s story - to invite you into our conversations, allow you to interact with and explore the things he loved, and by doing so debunk stereotypes, challenge stigmas, and get to know and learn from the man who was so much more than the virus he contracted.

~ Jena

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