Giannina Braschi

Banks are the temples of America. This is a holy war. Our economy is our religion.

What we have here is a war__he war of matter and spirit. In the classical era, spirit was in harmony with matter. Matter used to condense spirit. What was unseen__he ghost of Hamlet__ father__as seen__n the conscience of the king. The spirit was trapped in the matter of theater. The theater made the unseen, seen. In the Romantic era, spirit overwhelms matter. The glass of champagne can__ contain the bubbles. But never in the history of humanity has spirit been at war with matter. And that is what we have today. The war of banks and religion. It__ what I wrote in Prayers of the Dawn, that in New York City, banks tower over cathedrals. Banks are the temples of America. This is a holy war. Our economy is our religion. When I came back to midtown a week after the attack__ mourned__ut not in a personal way__t was a cosmic mourning__omething that I could not specify because I didn__ know any of the dead. I felt grief without knowing its origin. Maybe it was the grief of being an immigrant and of not having roots. Not being able to participate in the whole affair as a family member but as a foreigner, as a stranger__stranged in myself and confused__ saw the windows of Bergdorf and Saks__hat a theater of the unexpected__y mother would have cried__here were only black curtains, black drapes__howing the mourning of the stores__o mannequins, just veils__lack veils. When the mannequins appeared again weeks later__one of them had blond hair. I don__ know if it was because of the mourning rituals or whether the mannequins were afraid to be blond__argets of terrorists. Even they didn__ want to look American. They were out of fashion after the Twin Towers fell. To the point, that even though I had just dyed my hair blond because I was writing Hamlet and Hamlet is blond, I went back to my coiffeur immediately and told him__ye my hair black. It was a matter of life and death, why look like an American. When naturally I look like an Arab and walk like an Egyptian.

The president, the secretary of state, the businessman, the preacher, the vendor, the spies, the clients and managers__ll walking around Wall Street like chickens with their heads cut off__ushing to escape bankruptcy__lotting to melt down the Statue of Liberty__o press more copper pennies__o breed more headless chickens__o put more feathers in their caps__edals, diplomas, stock certificates, honorary doctorates__ggs and eggs of headless chickens__ultitaskers__ystem hackers__ho never know where they__e heading--northward, backward, eastward, forward, and never homeward_(where is home)__ome is in the head_(but the head is cut off)__nd the nest is full of banking forms and Easter eggs with coins inside. Beheaded chickens, how do you breed chickens with their heads cut off? By teaching them how to bankrupt creativity.