Eulogy for those coming out of isolation

April 28, 2020

Eulogy for Those Coming Out of Isolation

The carpenter bee has a hard, black back

You can hear it when it kamikaze flies into the side of the house

Because it can

It has a hard shell and a soft belly

It has the capability to hover 

It’s craft being to get right down to your level and stay there

Looking you in the eye as you wonder,

Do they sting?

“I’ve been told they can sting”

Is what they said after they killed my hover bee friend

Because they feared it could sting, or

Because they knew they had the power to kill off the disturbance in their soul

Objectified in this being perceived to be lesser (can YOU fly?!)

Who knows, the males don’t have a stinger

Was my friend who I just greeted when I came outside in our shared territory

Were they a male?

Maybe he didn’t even have the capacity to sting but I didn’t fear her because I connected

I felt them a part of the family, like siblings

I learned about them and how they burrow in isolation during the winter but make sure 

each isolated pod gets the food and resources they need

They do the hard labor of burrowing the wood so that they can leave this trail to a necessary 

resting place for the next bee to come along

I cried as he lay lifeless on the ground

He was my teacher and my friend, the black man and the black woman in the hospital bed,
on the concrete earth, under the earth

Harriet Tubman leaving supplies and shelter for the next…

So we don’t all have to kamikaze our way through this life but might have a place to land,
a path that’s tread, the food and resources that we need

A place for my grief springs up as my bee family has come out of isolation for the spring and summer

I’m sure they have much to teach us about how to be once we come out of necessary isolation,
and while still in it, how to eulogize our changed environment, way of living

There’s a way for us to stop waiting to face imposed outcomes

Like the bee, I hover, I’m still moving, breathing, in place, in a cyclical air of energy that creates
resonant vibration

I feel that vibrational energy transferring to my voice, building up to a shout

WE MUST NOT LET FEAR OF ANOTHER CAUSING US DISCOMFORT, DISPLACEMENT
OR HARM BE OUR EXCUSE TO CAUSE HARM. 
WE HAVE TO RECOGNIZE THAT WE’RE SUPPOSED TO TAKE CARE OF ONE ANOTHER,
NOT JUST ENSURE OUR OWN COMFORT OR INAUTHENTIC SENSE OF POWER.

Comfort and power at the expense of mutuality have passed on March 10, 2020 at 1:29pm. 
They leave behind many beloved estranged family members: mutual aid, interdependence,
familial comfort, nature connection, spiritual shifts, internal integration...and so many more. 
You can experience the gifts by making contact.

Saying their names…

Ahmaud Arbery

Breonna Taylor.

...Visioning the eradication of suffering and the liberation of all people, especially Black people

ROOTForce Dance Class, Dancehall Excerpt 3/5/17

How can I...

How can I think myself inconsequential when I hold the Universe and the horizon behind my eyelids...

Behind Closed Lids...

Now more than ever we are poised at the precipice of...
I see swirls of light, breath, peace, love, and freedom
Behind closed lids
I sit and listen to my own breath
and feel the vibration of millions of my ancestors and contemporaries
We in this life
We are about this life
We are this life
I see light - lightness and love in conversations between two people
We are agile
racists are fragile
bastions of white supremacy will tumble
because there's a rumblin' underfoot
a movement
by those who can see the future
behind closed lids
a time of peace
prosperity for our
people
love that has as its genesis a love
supreme for our
selves
love and peace
peace and love
breath and light
blessings to our future

Live in the opening where there is no door to hide behind. - Rumi

Here

The story I’ve inherited from my ancestors is one of strength and unity.  Of pride and solidarity.  Of water, clay, mud, powder, oil, duality.  Soft chests to lay on and hard backs to bear the brunt of the weight for many people and for too long.  Intelligent minds and bodies, bodies that disconnect from emotions but still exhale the essence of all the troubled feelings and the muddied waters.  The breath becomes partially trapped, never having the luxury of breathing in for too long or exhaling fully, particles of anger, fear, doubt, determination, resolve, resignation, steeliness get trapped in the chest, belly, organs, neck only to be softened by the small miracles of daily life that hold a seed of the promise.  The particles get soothed down to a fine dust and washed out with love and care.  A house built for my grandmother.  A dream house that my own mother can finally gift herself with after thirty years of long nights, early mornings, Sunday dinners, crying jags, and spates of laughter and togetherness.  A place of one’s own, owning something - that is part of my family’s legacy.  They have always been intent on owning the place they lay their head, having a roof to offer another in need, having a lot and some to spare.  Giving of themselves with their time, their money, their presence; sharing over food, music, and company of all ages.  

This is the part of my inheritance that is resonating with me now.  My journey has taken me from reflecting on my family like fragmented pieces of glass to seeing all of us like a crystal.  We are reflective, dynamic, at times distorted when our perceptions are not clear, always whole and one.  2016 is a powerful closing of a ten-year cycle for me during a time when it became clear to me that everything I was experiencing, every decision I enacted, was to come to a closer integration of my self.  My spirit, joining with the spirit of my ancestors and Source, has been calling me to recognize myself without the veil.  I had a dream not too long ago of myself standing in front of a wall that was not really a wall, it was a thin veil and when I woke up, I knew the next part of my journey was simply to walk through to the other side and to have the vision of both sides.  This is the part of my journey that I’m in now.  Writing in my sketchbook/journal last year, I drew a spiral and lines that shot up from the center of the spiral and I was scaling the walls of the side… I have spent ten* years going inside very deeply.  (*Likely, I’ve been inside in this way for much more of my life than not).  That drawing was symbolic to me of the climb I’m making up and to the outside of myself, to reach others and to show/share myself through dance, yoga, writing and so much more that I have yet to envision and channel...I am here. I am we. We are here and we are whole.

Emptied?

It's empty in here
Cleared away like ash after an intensely burning fire
I deliberately sucked it all up and threw the ashes to the wind
I figured it could have a new life upon the breeze of someone else's fresh start
or in the belly of someone's warm home
Warm milk
makes me think of childhood
the way I used to warm up my cereal like my dad did
warm milk and crunchy cereal turned soggy sweet
I liked it like that.  Still do
People think it's absurd
Just like giving away almost everything you own
So that you can clear the clutter of the past and
be free
Can I ever be free of my past?
It's the foundation that my present is built on
Happily I accept
The strength and insistence and persistence of women
The gentleness of men
The careful tidiness of home
The warmth of burning fires and the smell of home cooked food
The tinkling sound of laughter and music like a distant bell
Ringing through the living spaces
Where we lived
And laughed
And cried
And danced
And cared for one another
And tried to forget
And tried to find ourselves
Everything is relative
So of course there was pain and suffering
But there was also joy and growth
I accept
I build my present and my presence on the winds of the laughter ringing
like a distant bell
I bring myself closer to it
And hope to fly

The Power of...

Repeating myself.  It's the most apropos phrase I've heard yet for what I've long thought of in these terms:

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.  - Pema Chodron

The power of repeating myself shows up
in the way my voice parrots without my permission
in the job that I have entered, yet again
only to feel the life stifled out of me as I support someone else's thin vision
there's no air up here
in the resentment I feel at not being seen
being disregarded by those who are trying to pull me close
closer and closer
until I disappear from their field of vision in their near-sightedness
it's really bad enough that I can't see myself
it's enough really
but to not have a mirror that reflects
anything of me at all
I guess I've disappeared myself
I fit in where I get in with you
I don't ask for support getting what I want
and even when I do my asking is trumped by another's needs
ground zero
starting over
right where I started
I have to appear myself
let others off the hook for not seeing me when I erased myself
all is forgiven
and in time I will forget
I will stop linking the stories of today
to my feeling of yesterday

Textual erosion...inspired by Claudia Rankine, killing of black bodies, justice-giving re-telling of stories

Our bodies as text.  What are you reading?  Are you reading me right?!  Do you have the right reference text (it's big and heavy and goes back a long way and you couldn't have read it in the minute it took you to make your judgment)?  I judge all the time.  Unfairly, perhaps.  Instinctively sometimes. Trained, yes.  The types of judgment I pass are protective and I was trained and then trained myself up to do this.

My mind flashed back on erasure today...both as in the poetic literary technique, and as in the feeling that I and other people of color have felt in certain spaces and around people who don't (want to) see us.  This thought was sparked (again) by starting to read Claudia Rankine's An American Lyric.

We are...scattered fragments...text worn away by the elements...disappeared landscape...molten objects...why did I just read about the alleged lynching of a black man in Mississippi?!  Why did this happen?  Why is this still happening?...

We are being disappeared because of the threat of our insistence to be seen.  To be heard.  To be revived as human form who can inject power in our stories and tell them ourselves.

The re-writing of a story to inject power in it...  I saw this in Scandal recently when Shonda Rhimes wrote a story that was achingly similar to Michael Brown's.  A teenage boy was shot by a police officer who claimed he had been armed.  As the boy lay dead in the street (in Scandal), his father appeared with his shot gun and determined, sat over his son until he was assured that the investigation would be handled properly.  Turns out that in this story, the shooting officer planted a knife on the teen to make it look like the killing was justified; the officer was arrested.  All of this uncovered by Olivia Pope, a black woman who is the protagonist in this show.  There were many layers of race, class, judgment, protection issues being addressed, and inherent in the writing of the story was a making visible the invisible factors that surround these real life dramas.  The erasure was of the dominant narrative.  It happened slowly in this story as Olivia herself came to realizations and through her lens, the narrative shifted.  +++++ our renewed insistence to be seen and heard and to tell our own stories through every possible medium will mean a wearing away of the imposed text that some have trained themselves up to see, at the exclusion of all reference.

passage from Tablet I*:

he is splayed on the… … … like a worn-out pig (god?)
he is un- + + + + + + + +
his is dis- + + + + + + + + + + + +
he is + + + + + + + + + + + -less
his de- + + + + + + + + + + +
he is impossible on the dry ground + + + + + + + + + + before … … … ..
he is non- + + + + + + + +
he is pre- + + + + + + + + + +*

*Armand Schwerer

Resource me, Mum

like a dream to me now, faded in its imprint but real nonetheless 

...She was darker than you and me but despised her own blackness.  She would have loved your humor and you would have won her over with your big grins, hearty laughter, and irreverent jokes.  She was queen of irreverent jokes and liked to carry a cutlass.  She was a warrior.  She shook people down for money owed her.  She ripped at things like thongs (*uck me quick panties), people who said things she didn’t think made sense (what are you, shtupid?!), and sniffed out lies around every corner.  She was straightforward, no nonsense, and cared about our wellbeing.  After she died I mused about how well I knew her.  What had our connection meant.  What did I learn from her.  That’s when I started to dream about her and when she started to come to me about the then-current man in my life.  She came to me I believe, to teach me, to build me up, to strengthen my belief in myself and the role I could have in this world.  She had a man (my step-grandfather) who though married, built her houses, dwellings for her and for her family to live in and to have a future with financial resources and security.  He was moved to care for her in tangible ways even when he was primarily responsible for others.  This was a strong example to me of a relationship that superseded the seemingly impossible circumstances to survive and thrive.  She supported him until his death and she was supported well past hers and their legacy has now benefited the second and third generations of her family.  I don’t know yet what legacy really means to me but I’m finding my own definition...  

Value dance

Value dance by Melissa Alexis  November 21, 2014

In past weeks The Boston Globe Opinion page has been overflowing with arts-focused writing upon the appointment of Julie Burros, the incoming Chief of Arts & Culture for the City of Boston. (http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/11/14/developing-boston-arts-community/UGqbfurzCJYC7qaHc1bl8L/story.html).  I want to add my welcome to a dance world in Boston that has a lot of room for positive growth and development and implore the City of Boston to renew focus on granting robust funding, for operational and programming support, to companies with a high number and quality of trained dancers and strong leadership. Two such companies are Jean Appolon Expressions (JAE) and Urbanity Dance.  I interviewed the directors of these companies for whom delivering high quality dance programming in the communities in Boston is just as important as delivering top-notch performances.  Both directors acknowledge the well-known trend in Boston of dancers working for free or little pay because like theirs, many companies don’t gain adequate funding to allow for more than nominal operational costs, such as space rental and production fees.  There is a ceiling for dance growth that additional support would help companies like these blast past to aspire to join the ranks of the merely one professional dance company in Boston that is well-funded enough to retain a large number of highly skilled dancers and pay them a living wage.  For this reason, JAE is embarking on a campaign for operational support - let’s call it a human capital campaign: https://www.crowdrise.com/jeanappolonexpressions

These are under-resourced, under-valued companies serving under-resourced, under-valued communities - a model that is clearly not sustainable.  I also want to ask Ms. Burros to examine and with professionals in the field, publish, standards of fee for artistic service; and let this take root in our vocabulary and our negotiations.  In my love note to dancers, choreographers, and presenters, I want to remind us all that we help set the standard.  We should accept and offer nothing short of a fair fee for artistic service given the education/training, time, work, operational expense and salaries for which we have to account.  As Jean Appolon puts it, “the value of dance is very high, not just monetary, but it is something that the community needs.  People coming to my class are so relieved to listen to the music, to move their bodies...now more than ever, everything is about dance - from So You Think You Can Dance to the toothpaste commercial - we need to respect it and value it so we can all benefit from it in the future.  I know that dance is really essential to the growth of our communities but people have a hard time understanding what this means.”  Simply put, dance heals.  We should all invest in this kind of healing.

Excerpts of interview with Jean Appolon, Co-founder & Artistic Director of JAE and Betsi Graves, Director of Urbanity Dance (JAE has been in operation since 2011 and Urbanity since 2008):

What do you consider your primary mission?

Jean/JAE: To make dance accessible to everyone, but mainly underprivileged kids in Boston and Haiti.

Betsi/Urbanity: Empower, engage, and inspire individuals and communities through the art of dance and movement.  At the forefront of everything we do is community-building.

What are your primary activities?

Jean/JAE: Performance; teaching classes and workshops like our classes at Cambridge-based Community Arts Center; contributing to conferences/convenings (scholarship and community-focused); and conducting a free summer institute in Haiti.

Betsi/Urbanity: Performance; on and off-site teaching; and producing our own shows and other companies through the Boston Contemporary Dance Festival (I’m not sure if this can be continued because of the cost; this goes back to our vision and mission to support Boston-based dance companies and to revitalize Boston as a leader in presenting dance).

From which activity do you derive the bulk of your revenue?

Jean/JAE: Grassroots community fundraising and grants from institutions.

Betsi/Urbanity: Mostly our on-site school but not overwhelmingly.  A lot of performances break even and programs right now are completely sustainable. Boston Public Schools (BPS), for example, were told exactly how much it cost to run programs at selected schools and the schools chipped in.

Who are your primary funders?

Jean/JAE:  Kellogg Foundation awarded us a one-time grant last year for $25,000.  Before Kellogg, individuals mostly, friends and class members. We’ve also received support from FOKAL, a foundation in Haiti.

Betsi/Urbanity: Individuals; giving $250 on average.

As director, do you pay yourself a salary?  Do you pay dancers?

Jean/JAE:  My dancers and I are on a volunteer basis, but we are finally able to pay ourselves for performances and a monthly stipend.

Betsi/Urbanity: Yes to both.

What is a living wage in dance?

Jean/JAE:  A minimum should be $700 weekly.

Betsi/Urbanity: What you need to live a comfortable life. In the same way that teachers prepare for class...you need to take into consideration the hours before and after rehearsal, of craft and the toll it takes on bodies.  Like in other industries, a tiered pay scale to reflect education/experience. A lot of our dancers have a college degree and pay should reflect that.

What is a fair fee for artistic services and how do you calculate this?

Jean/JAE:  Calculated by how we can pay a company of 8 dancers, 4 musicians, and 2 directors.  To me, fair is $5000 each time we step out to do a performance. Our baseline price for a performance in the Boston area is $2500 although we often negotiate.

Betsi/Urbanity: Biggest factor – does it have to be an original work; if not, it’s easier (more cost effective).  $2000-2500 (existing repertory piece), $5000 (for original work).

How can the City of Boston assist your organization’s growth?

Jean/JAE:  There needs to be more engagement.  I feel like in Boston people need help figuring out how to get engaged with dance.  If they’re not coming to see a performance or to see a friend perform, they don’t come. 

Betsi/Urbanity:  There has to be a resurgence in the value of art.  It’s hard to make the case for that when there are competing priorities such as homelessness, hunger, imprisonment.  It’s hard when you compare art to these issues.  I think art is as important. In a city that has so many creatives, other institutions that do great work, this doesn’t make sense.  It doesn’t make sense that we have only one dance institution [Boston Ballet] that is the only option.  What I see is a pretty stark inequity between 1) arts organizations and other [industry] organizations in Boston; and 2) the relative success of [established] institutions and the “little ducks in Boston” that have a really unique and important voice.  It would be really sad if people’s experience of dance in Boston didn’t include all of these colors.

Get me off the grid...

This box, solid like a wooden coffin some days
suffocating me
make a salary
do, do, achieve, and earn
no premium put on how we learn
no, just like a bounty held over my head
I can't get ahead
slidin' back like a baby tryin' to get up that slide
on the wrong not-the-ladder-side
I've seen the ladder from afar
As other people either climb nimbly from one rung
to another, or as I spot her there perched on top -
look closer
she's ingested a man's conditioned response and regurgitates
hardened to the humanity
of the reality
of a woman's work
Work, feed, clothe, house, decorate, earn, learn, pay,
educate, nurture, dig deeper into the well
surrounded by the four walls constructed by men
So weary of these air-tight walls
I can't breathe
said Eric Garner, over and over again in that video
that I wished I hadn't clicked on
to watch those men pounce on
closing in, constricting his airways
choking the death out of him as his life force had already
faded
He faded by their hand
Our humanity, my humanity
Is fading
By their invisible hands holding up the walls visible to the
invisible men and women of this country
And countless corners of the world that have been touched
by those hands
I want off the grid, out of the walls of
Earn to live, (y)earn to be respected, look and sound a certain way
to be acknowledged as a fellow be-ing
We're so busy do-ing that we have forgotten each other
Can't even see each other
Until we remember not to forget our selves and get on
the path to go closer, forge deeper... into the well
where walls don't exist.

Cross-posting astrology from the amazing, insightful Chani Nicholas. We need all the positive guidance we can assemble during these times...we are at the precipice...good things await.  I'm sure of it

http://www.chaninicholas.com/full-moon-gemini-horoscopes-week-december-1st/


My sister friend calls for us to determine 5 things we would like to accomplish before 2014 ends.  A challenge to all of us to make this kind of essentials list and attend to our time and attention in the next 30 days.  I'm on it...who's with me?

From today's meditation, my thoughts of dedication: December 1, 2014

I bow to the unknown.

It is all we have.

I bow to the unwavering and unchanging intention

that creates unwavering conviction in my actions.

I bow to great Love.

It is all we are.

The Tree of Life is a magical symbol for me and I see it everywhere... Blue Hills Reservation.  Communing with nature has always been a way for me to learn to be in the world - grounded and present, awake to all my senses, seeing myself in all living beings and all living beings in my self.

Here I am again...

Restless today.  Means I'm tired but also the deeper feeling for me is that I'm on the cusp of something new, another change.  I'm eager to expand my life and extend my reach... get outside of the confines of my life the way that it has been...again.  A constant growth process of bringing my two lives together - the one I've been living and the one in my dreams. Paulo Coelho speaks of this, of course...

From the "Manual of the Warrior of Light":

Sometimes the warrior feels as if he were living two lives at once.
         In one of them he is obliged to do all the things he does not want to do and to fight for ideas in which he does not believe.  But there is another life, and he discovers it in his dreams, in his reading and in his encounters with people who share his ideas.

       The warrior allows his two lives to draw near.  'There is a bridge that links what I do with what I would like to do,' he thinks.  Slowly, his dreams take over his everyday life, and then he realises that he is ready for the thing he always wanted.

       Then all that is needed is a little daring, and his two lives become one.



Here I am at the edge of the cliff again.

Nightmare

Written at 12:13am, 4/15/13

Awoke at midnight

Had been flying and looking at beauty

Outside

Starting to fall, a crash is imminent

Scary

Yelling, "I don't need to see this!"

And trying to wake up

But I can't 

I'm forced to see the almost end

As I scream, "no, no, no, no, no..."

It wasn't the fall that was scariest

It was trying to wake up so I couldn't

witness it

And not being able to

Being made to live through it.

The trying to escape, not the falling

Was the scariest moment

If you don't know what to do, just be moved!

Kute Blackson is speaking my language... say it!!! "And if you don't know what to do...just be moved!  Move in the direction that most feels right to you.  Move in the direction of your passion..."  Such a powerful reminder to re-connect to our heart center, to feeling, and follow that.  Not the money, not the shoulds, not the blueprint given by someone else but the blueprint revealed through our beings.  Love it!

Africa Today

Today I Googled the search phrase, "Africa today" and this is a sampling of what came up:


Africa Today - New Africa you don't see:


Africa Today, Voice of the Continent: http://www.africatoday.com/cgi-bin/public.v0.1.cgi

Africa Today Journal: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/at/

Africa Today Weekly Radio Show, KPFA (Berkeley, CA): http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/87610

Africa Today BBC Podcast: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/africa

Nneka - Africans