Reflections on Beth Bird

I want to thank Beth for her life and for asking SF Quakers to create this space to be with her and Betti Sue on this journey with them. Participating in this vigil is a blessing; it has given me the space and time to reflect on Beth, what she meant to me, what she imprinted on me and what she offered of herself in our walks and conversations which mostly took place in the early 2000s in Los Angeles.

There are three specific things -- times and impressions --  that keep rolling around in my head as we all let go. This vigil -- which comes with 3 opportunities a day where I am given the chance to reflect and organize time around this reflection - has been so rich and meaningful. It is the simple gesture of marking out time to hear from others or just be silent together with her, that has opened up a portal for me to these memories. 

The first reflection: After Beth gave birth to Mateus and brought him home I remember so vividly how full of joy she was to be together, the three of them - Beth, Betti-Sue and Mateus. There was so much joy that Beth went over the words and descriptions of her joy again and again with me -- and I’m sure with everyone who would listen. She said, “Julia it’s like we are in a cloud, it’s a cloud of bliss...it’s like we are this cocoon of perfection...it’s so amazing, this cloud of bliss.” I can hear Beth’s voice in my own head -- the way that she did, she just repeated the word cloud, bliss, joy, happy, lack of sleep, food, sleep, crying, feeding, no sleep..there’s this cloud of joy...She was in love with this time and also in love with the process of finding words to describe it -- so much so that she needed to go over it and repeat it again and again. 

2nd memory -- this specific Beth mannerism of how she held her fingers and brushed aside her hair when she was talking. Sometimes I find myself holding my fingers in a particular way and doing that gesture and immediately I think of Beth. I love that there is a specific gesture that brings her immediately to mind through a physical action.

Three -- I was in a reading group with Beth. We were reading Empire by Negri and Hardt, so this was around 2001, 2002 or 2003? I believe that at the same time that we were reading Beth was also shooting her film, going back and forth to Tijuana. Several times after returning from Tijuana she would write long emails about her time and how the process of being with this self-starting community that was demanding land and recognition was a perfect meld of activism and philosophy in action. There are two specific scenes in her film that she was shooting at this time: one of her main character (whose name I do not remember) cooking for her children in her house. Beth shot this scene with so much intimacy and care that as a viewer you felt you were there watching her make tortillas on an open fire and fry eggs for her children. It was an important scene in the film because it showed the domestic space -- how the people in her film lived day to day. The other scene was the building of the school that this community created for themselves -- putting up the walls and creating a classroom for their children, completely on their own accord, with no help from the government. These two scenes are lodged in my memory and when I connect them to Beth and the person that she is it makes a lot of sense. She created a family, that is bound by intimacy, love, -- much like the feeling that i got from watching that scene of domesticity. She also was a person of conviction who lived and breathed her politics and understood the struggle for self-determination and what it took to build that  -- how better to meld the personal and political by building a school. 

Reflecting on all this today -- It makes so much sense to me that she would find a way to create this space for us, a school in a way -- teaching us how to go through a dying process in a dignified and reflective way. to speak together, to wrestle with love and loss, life and death, and try to find a way to make peace with all this complexity of emotion.