by Felix Shafer

You’ve gone past us now.
beloved comrade:
north american revolutionary
and political prisoner
My sister and friend of these 40 years,
it’s over
Marilyn Buck gone
through the wire
out into the last whirlwind.

So begins “The Blue Afterwards: Mourning for Marilyn,” a beautifully moving essay of mourning/remembrance/and reflection by Felix Shafer, longtime activist and friend of Marilyn Buck.

Readers/writers say:

What a beautifully touching memorial tribute to Marilyn!!!
i read it last night and was quite moved by the insights and your really authentic feeling for her life as a woman and revolutionary.
– Jack Hirschman, former poet laureate San Francisco

I felt many things as I made way through it; from exhilaration about what has been accomplished thus far to sadness about what has not; anger at our enemy and pride in being the enemy; sadness for those who have transitioned and deep, deep grief for the loss of this one of our most valuable warriors. You succeeded in evoking her spirit and I could feel and hear her as you described her many attributes …
– Curtis J. Austin, historian, professor, author of, “Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party”

It is quite something. I feel your very personal love for her and also appreciate your ability to contextualize her in the struggles of her time, so many of which she was a part of. Sometimes your writing literally lifts itself off the page–so beautiful …
– Margaret Randall, writer and poet

Shafer’s incomparable meditation on Marilyn Buck is both illuminating and passionately astute to her heroic project of her uniquely engaged, compassionate, and creative politics.
– David Meltzer, poet and teacher

Felix Shafer’s biographical sketch is so much more than just that, his critical analysis of Marilyn’s Buck liberation trajectory adds unknown historical data, with a clear and impassioned eye towards showing us her brilliance and grace. This is a must read to begin to learn about Marilyn and her enormous legacy.
– Susan Rosenberg, former political prisoner & author of “An American Radical: Political Prisoner In My Own Country” due out in March 2011

“The blue afterwards” can be found at marilynbuck.com.

Dear Marilyn,

Greetings from the Big Apple – my first trip here since your release from prison. I so wanted to be able to see you in person when you got out, and sorry not to have written sooner. I don’t know why writing to you is always such a challenge, given how much I treasure the way it conjures your presence. I think that you inspire me to make me want my letters to rise above the trivial and mundane and convey moral or political substance worthy of your great heart, mind, and spirit. But in truth, it is your caring and concern about those little things in our personal lives that reveal so much about your generosity of spirit. I’m just sorry it took me so long to realize how really sick you were – much less believe that you are really gone.

There are many reasons for this. One, of course, is that you complained so very little about your health, despite the pain that you endured. Another is that since the vast majority of our relationship was carried out long-distance, your physical absence does not create much of a difference in my daily routine. But the biggest is the ongoing power of your spirit to encourage, inspire, and challenge us to be more courageous, creative, and caring than we might have been, had we never met you.

The main thing I wanted to talk with you about, though, was those 7:00 .a.m meditations. In the end, although I’m not sure how much they did for you,  I can tell you that what they  did do for me – strengthening my spiritual core and disciplines (let’s not comment, here, about the radical materialist being the one to teach this lesson to the Christian minister). I still have a long way to go, but bit by bit these practices are helping me replace some of my chaos with order, some of my tension with tranquility.

This letter is not intended as a covert attempt to push some concept of the afterlife to which many of your friends would object. It is, however, a statement about what I  experience to be simply true: that your spirit is very much alive, continuing to inspire, strengthen, and encourage us in so many ways for all the work that remains to be done.

Marilyn, querida hermana, I miss you so much – but you remain very much “¡presente!”

Love,
Nozomi