Showing posts with label questions for you. Show all posts

Friday, December 6, 2013

A Return to Communication! A Poem about Loving Myself! Maybe communication is loving myself! WOOOOAAAHHHHH

Oh the Juicy Yummy Goodness of writing, of output! It can all seem so arbitrary at times, right? But that doesn't matter, what matters if the feelings excited in my belly by writing things down, by sharing them with others. Hello Others, already so much closer than we could have ever expected.

I am grateful to share this moment with you.
First I am going to catch up a weeeeee bit but if you'd just like to read a poem you can scroll to the bottom of this post.

I am signing back on to this blog because I think we have more conversations to have. I'd like to hear from you. So this is me leaving you the first voicemail. Tag. You're it. Ha.

Since we last shared moments, I have been in many places. Physically, my body has rolled around the island of Puerto Rico, it has sublimated into ether on the mountains of Tennessee, it has condensed into cold rock at the altitudes of Colorado, and it has spread broadly into the countless memories and creativities of Upstate New York. Emotionally and spirituality, well shit. That is many stories. All of which have shaped me into this present moment, so though we can't catch up on all the juicy details I trust that the all tastes I've accumulated along the way will flavor the words I put out today.

What's real right now:
I am living alone in a one room cabin in New Paltz, NY.
I am spending most of my time on self-healing practices, which right now looks like yoga, journaling, and meditation.
I am alive.
I am very excited to use this space to get real about healing, about gender, about hope. Themes coming up are boundaries, commitment, lunar ritual and coughing.

For now, here is a poem I wrote in my attempts to address my intention of the day: Absurd Obscene Self-Love. Sometimes it's easier to embody something by pretending it is a dream. What does your dream of Self-Love look like?

Self-Love Dream

In my self-love dream I have many fishes to tend to.

My thighs cup the glowing bay where they found a safe place.

Their flickering muscled movements paint me back my secret colors

So I’m cultivating many, many fish.

Each Spring I spill them out into the roadside gullies and they feed the whole Earth.

Even you.

In my self-love dream the struggle is the best part.

Strangers gather on Thanksgiving around TV sets and watch me weep on the big screen

They eat chicken wings and knead moist tissues in their moist hands

Afterwards they are silent

Or they cheer

One sighs “Masterpiece”

and another pledges that one day they will weep like me.

In my self-love dream

My fingers are my lovers.

My palms orient to the soft parts of my hips

And the whole truth is renamed

pressing.

I hold up Pleasure again and again to marvel

Before I melt back into the tide.

Inevitable.

In my self-love dream all of the ants know my name

And even when no one smiles at me at the library

All of the ants still know my name.

In my self-love dream

I am not sitting in this chair.

My ass sits in the outstretched hand of Mother Earth herself. She’s just holding me here.

Even though it’s silly and I could really just use the chair,

She doesn’t mind.

She says

Sometimes Love is silly.

In my self-love dream

I am sitting in this chair.

I am breathing and I notice that

I am still breathing.

It’s too late,

And im too tired,

And my hair’s wrong,

And I cannot believe how impossibly beautiful

I am.

In my self-love dream

I wake up.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Some bitty thoughts on Resisting Racism: Queer Liberation is Collective Liberation Workshop

Jenna and Damien (facilitators of the workshop) and Ian (Provdience-based queer organizer and artist extraordinary) celebrating the warm feeling of "woah, we talked about some heavy shit" after the workshop.

Traveling organizers!
what a thought!
what a dream!

Last weekend Jenna Peters-Golden and Damien Luxe blew in to town for a weekend of doing. The two bad-asses facilitated a refreshingly (not being sarcastic! truthfully!) 4 hour long workshop about how racism manifests itself and what queer liberation has to do with all forms of liberation.
It was refreshing cause it didn't have to end as soon as we got started.
15 people came, which is wildly wonderful considering the time commitment. It speaks to the hunger of people to connect the queer movement to broader struggle.

We almost had enough time to and enough detail to get really specific with our dreams. One exercise had use imagine the collaboration of two historical activist groups who never actually had anything to so with each other. I was in the group combining the American Indian Movement and the Boston Women's Movement. This was surprisingly fruitful, but so rushed that we couldn't get very creative and I felt anxious the whole time about getting a chance to speak or about one person talking the whole time. So, note to all facilitators: give lots of time to the creative side of things! I felt like most time was spent on clever tricks for understanding racism, taught by the folks in the front of the room to the folks in the back of the room. Because it was an audience of activists, I think more time could have been spent sharing our own opinions and experiences, and spent on building alternatives. Remember y'all, i'm in a hyper-action-ey mood lately, so i guess take this criticism with a grain of salt. or don't.

There were almost only white people in attendance, which we didn't mention, but I just mentioned, so there. Is there a growing attempt on the part of white activists to get real about their anti-racist work? Is this just guilt? Is this just a tiny subsect of people who were already convinced that there's such a thing as modern racism? Where is this coming from and where is it going to?
My hope is that more folks are waking up to the pervasiveness of racism in the United States, that more folks want to figuring out how they can DO something about it versus comment on it often, that folks are increasingly seeing how racism operates at every level of society and identity.

What is the conversation around race in organizations and communities that you are a part of? What are the actions people are taking?

I'm particularly interested in groups that aren't explicitly anti-racist, such as feminist groups and queer groups - are y'all organizing around race?

Monday, July 16, 2012

Fuck This; or how I feel on Youtube; Or Sexism is more than a Feeling

This was set off by a conversation with my father. He was complaining that he'd heard all about this "war on women" thing, but couldn't see how women's rights are being particularly eroded right now, why there's a war on women specifically at this moment in time.

I answered that it's harder to get an abortion now than it was ten years ago. That one in six women get raped. That women still get paid an average of 77 cents to a man's dollar, less if you're a woman of color. All these arguments seemed to fall flat on him - those were issues of access, of economics, not gender. Those were long-standing issues that have gotten better, not worse. None of those things are rights that the national government has impeded.

I realized that I need more facts in my toolbelt. I need numbers, ratios, trends, graphs that help break down the invisible oppression that mediates most women's lives, killing them, raping them, preventing them from realizing their dreams, keeping them from health, love, and intimacy. Ok.

I will begin compiling my own and create a post with the most poignant information (i'll cite whoever sent me the info), so we can all use this in our toolbelt of education. Please send your factoids (cited if possible) my way.

Re-post this or respond, and we'll make a great resource for everyone!

In the meantime, here are some interesting youtube trends I've noticed. I was really excited to find Anita Sarkeesian's series, Tropes vs. Women. Get's into some of the nifty bullshit I'm almost entirely used to. So I get all excited and then start clicking on links that pop up on the page - featured videos, etc. At first I'm thinking - wow, Tropes vs. Women is so smart, so well produced, and it has so many views! Until I noticed how many views these other videos were getting.
Note how youtube works: you see an opening image, a title, and the number of views. With that in mind, check out these popular videos and imagine what sort of culture results in these numbers.