Instead of wondering when your next vacation is you ought to set up a life you don't need to escape from – Seth Godin

Sometimes this annoying twitter business does bring good things. A fellow named Martin J Allsop started “following me” so I went and checked out his stuff (which, btw, I do when you friend or follow me anywhere because that is what one should do – go see what people who like you are like – ya know?).

 

And he has a lot of quotes that he publishes on a regular basis that make sense to me…inspiring, but not like…out in left field unrealistic things.

 

When you begin to piece them altogether you get a picture of a man that believes that faith in one self, coupled with commitment and effort can help you achieve anything.

 

But, that all three have to be in agreement and you – the pilot of your ship – must be aware of what they are actually agreeing on.

 

Too often what the mouth and the brain are saying on the surface is what you have faith, expectations of and commitment to do not match AT ALL what your actions, your effort are revealing that you believe in and are committed to.

 

Like the quote at the top of this post.

 

Like the newsy post yesterday (and I do love that term, some of the new mirror sites don’t get it because the sites – like facebook, don’t import the newsy videos that went with that honkin’ long ass blog yesterday).

 

The message is look at what you are actually doing to see where you actually are.

 

Don’t just pay attention to how you have dressed something up.

 

Unless you think through the totality of a response to an issue, you may actually be recreating the same disaster over and over (or the potential for it).

 

I have been pretty open about the extreme overload and stress I have been under from just about every aspect of my life and I had the most delightful conversation with someone last night who “got it.” That sensation of having someone “get you” and hear you was like…having someone turn that screw down a few notches.

 

I get a lot of  - take a break, rest, take some time off and regroup and while that is an immediate solution to being overwhelmed it fails to recognize that it also deepens the pit in a lot of ways and perpetuates the problem.

 

The trick is not so much to learn how to balance things but to figure out how things went together to create the disaster and then destroy that balance that you allowed to come into being. So in recovering from your whatever, you are doing it with choices that refuse to allow that same thing to be created again.

 

With money issues the solution is never to “get more money” even when on the surface that would solve the immediate problems. The solution is to recover from the immediate problem in a way that does not allow for is to be recreated. Do you see the difference?

 

If you never pause and address the “how did this happen?” to leave yourself open to repeating the same mistake.

 

Unfortunately, this also means that quick fixes (I will just drink massive amounts of coffee and work constantly till I am out of the hole) don’t come. The fixes are slower and more painful because while you are fixing, you are also rebuilding.

 

In the conversation last night the person said, “Oh god, its not like you can take a break to rest because that will just make things worse.”

 

And that is true.

 

There are times when you have to …not “get through, “ that phrase tends to be tied to a very passive approach that involves repeating the same that got you there in the first place – but you have find the reserves within you to continue on and continue building almost as if nothing has happened. Almost…but never losing sight (because how could you?) of the reality of the situation you are in.

 

Faith, Commitment, Action.

 

That is the formula.

 

And for a lot of people, that is very hard to do.

 

But in the long run it is what builds the life that you do not need a vacation from.

 

The news can be a very funny thing.

I think we have had numerous conversations through this blog about the nature of the news that we see being careful constructed to promote and support the advertising placed around it. Last summer, when I was reading that book and posting excerpts about how newscasts are designed, was an education for all of us.

Sometimes the news we see is skewed to get us fired up about nothing in particular in order to feed on our emotions to “keep us coming back,” or to sell us something that promises to make us feel safe and good.

Sometimes the news is real and void of economic influence but it is …inadequate…in helping you understand the totality of something that happens because it is out of practice with the art of informing without ulterior motive.

Disasters are one of the few things that can happen that money can’t touch when it comes to the news, at least in the beginning.

The reporting on the earthquake in Haiti brought a world together as we witnessed the almost total destruction of Port-au-Prince and bore witness to the staggering death, property loss and human grief caused by the disaster.

People and governments moved to help Haiti with a speed rarely seen (and partly learned from the abysmal response to Katrina) to give aid.

It was a moment of shared humanity that moved many to a feeling of hope for the world at large beyond just being able to respond to need in times of disaster.

And then…

the news stories began to change…

American Missionaries were arrested trying to take 33 Haitian children from the country as orphans without proper paperwork and despite the fact that 22 of them had living parents. Some of the parents of those children said that they willingly gave their children to the missionaries because the missionaries promised they would be educated.

One of the world news stories that has not been reported much in the US is that Aid groups in Haiti are estimating that half of their efforts in distributing the food coupons is spent spreading false information about distribution locations in order to distract gangs of men that have been attacking and robbing women of them. Camps are being set up for women only to try and protect them from increasing levels of rape and robbery attacks by these gangs. The men are complaining that they are being treated like animals.

The Haitian lawyer for the American Missionaries was fired for trying to extort $60,000 dollars from their families for what is believed to have been bribes to have them freed.

All adoptions from the country have been halted, whether begun before the disaster or not.

Aid agencies have released a list of priorities that name food, shelter, water and medical care as the sole priorities.

Haitians struggling to survive on the streets are skeptical of the tents and tarpaulins for one very practical reason – June 1^st is the beginning of the hurricane season.

In Haiti there is a grim recognition that the almost complete destruction of Port-au-Prince has cost many not just their family members and homes, but also the very means with which they identified themselves within the culture. The Haitians who emphasize their French heritage lost just as much as the Haitians who emphasize their African descent.

Everyone has been reduced to survival. Yet, there is also a strong urge to grab whatever one can to rebuild a sense of place and prestige which for so long has been a part of their identification in a society divided by race and economic class. This has led to behavior by some Haitians that is unfathomable to aid providers (such as the selling and trading of food and coupons).

Oddly enough, the one area of the city that survived the earthquake the best is the Citi Soleil, or Sun City, one of the most notorious and violent ghettoes in the Western Hemisphere. Populated by gangs made of mostly orphans loyal to (and trained by) Aristide, this ghetto is so lawless that it was considered a major step forward when Haitian police, backed by armored UN peacekeeping troops, were able to walk one block into Citi Soleil and remain there for one hour in 2006.

These gangs, who were promised money and prestige (social power and acceptance) by Aristide and then betrayed by him, have spilled out into the devastated city; a city that spurned their cinderblock and sheet metal shanties, the sole surviving structures of the earthquake.

The lost children of Haiti are what roam its streets now, preying on people because these children have never known anything different. A world without is the kind of world they know how to prosper in and the rest of Haiti, who has spent so long clinging to race and class divisions, does not know how to go on without a concept of us and them. There is not one Haiti, but three: the French-Haitians, the African-Haitians and the Lost Children.

But make that four Haitis, for there is still the peasants in the countryside to consider.

(Just as an aside, it is 7:11pm on the 7^th as I write this, I just checked the news and the reporting on Haiti has slid to the bottom of the top ten list. A story about a prostitute getting a degree is now #3.)

More and more Haitians are fleeing the city and going to the mountains, returning to families that neither have the agricultural means to support them or the market of Port-au-Prince to sell their crops and goods in to provide differently for them. But the city has become a place of the ultimate betrayal for them and they are reluctant to stay and face rebuilding, reluctant to stay and risk the violence that is increasing. Yet their flight threatens the few areas of Haiti that were not devastated by the earthquake.

Where aid fails is in considering what will be the next step.

(it is 7:16pm on the 7^th as I write this, I just checked the news and the story about a prostitute getting a degree is not about a prostitute, but the child of a prostitute who benefited from a charity that allowed him to leave the brothel and study in America.)

It is hard to understand the statement “when aid fails” in the midst of a response to a great tragedy, it seems cruel and cynical to talk about it; but it is realistic. Aid fails more often then it helps because although the intent is good, the integration of the effort with the reality of the situation prevents the aid from being more than minimal survival and going towards helping rebuild something stronger.

Kind of like right hearted missionaries blasting off to save children and not having a grasp of the reality of documentation. In their right hearted ignorance they have shut down an entire process that could have continued to help and place children with relatives and instead has become such a political hot bed that the welfare of orphaned children is not even on the list of priorities any more. One of the Haitian Americans I spoke to for this blog, who has been trying to adopt the children of her deceased sister for over a year, was informed that the process is now stopped. What should have been the easiest of aid to give is now prevented.

Haiti’s history is rife with aid from Western countries that was offered (or forced) without the necessary follow-up thought that examined if the aid was going to make matters worse. Now, while that may sound like Haiti has been constantly rescued by the Western World it is also fair to note that the Western World, primarily the US has been the primary responsible party to creating the original economic despair in Haiti and then performing in such a way that Haiti has had little chance to recover from it in the ensuing almost 100 year history of the two countries interactions.

Every time Haiti has begun to recover itself - something has happened and the US has been there with a form of aid that was not that well thought out in the long run. Like the epidemic of African Swine Flu that USAID demanded be solved with slaughter, not considering that this removed the sole source of income and wealth from the peasant population that was just rising out of a destitute poverty and provided no inclusion in the aid package for rebuilding herds.

Like focusing on tents and tarpaulins and wanting people to stay and rebuild damaged buildings in an area that is 2 and ½ months away from Hurricane season.

Most westerners are not that familiar with Haiti’s history. It was originally occupied by the British, French, and Dutch. These countries introduced a large slave population from Africa to the island. After a revolution, Haiti bought their independence from France for 90 million gold francs. Money they were loaned by other countries at what can only be described as usury rates.

Haiti paid that debt back.

It took them almost 150 years but they paid it off and began to build and thrive. There was a constant race struggle between Haitians who considered themselves French and Haitians of African descent but no more or less then any other country with a racially diverse population encountered in their inception.

What disrupted the balance of it all was the beginning of the World Wars and America’s discomfort with 200 Germans who lived in Haiti and had a lot of economic influence over the island. America invaded and occupied Haiti, first through gaining control of their national Bank through investment and then with military force. Being that Haiti only had about 3 miles of road on the island the Americans then began to build over 470 miles of roads to help with the military maneuvers of the occupation.

When the depression hit, not surprisingly, FDR saw fit to end the occupation – however, the USA retained control of all of Haiti’s external finances until 1947.

The various regimes that came into being were dealing with a country suffering like all other countries during the depression. To solve problems like covering the cost of maintenance on the infrastructure built by the Americans, they brought back laws that originated in the 1800s and were based in the original Code Noir law (which regulated the treatment of slaves) in order to press peasants into forced road labor in order for them to “pay-off” their road usage tax.

Slavery returned to Haiti.

Slavery is defined as a form of forced labor in which people are considered to be the property of others. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive compensation (such as wages).

There are more people today in slavery then at any other time in history with the numbers estimated to be at 27 million. Most slaves today are considered debt slaves, working with no compensation and no rights to pay off a debt. It is almost a given that they suffer from gross violations of even the most basic human rights.

In Haiti, as their governments rose and fell and moved from democracy to dictatorship (and all somehow supported and helped to be placed by US policy due to economic entanglements and strategic issues) the move from governing to abuse of power was always swift and sure. This is not surprising given that the culture of power that was in place was the culture of slavery, the culture of using. Whoever had the power made the rules to suit their desires. People were merely the tools to acquire wealth and to expand influence.

This culture of slavery translated into the fabric of the Haitian family where for a long time children were viewed as mostly a means to expand the families well being. These were not “legacy” children or children brought into the world with ideals of contributing to the future but tools to provide for the families survival.

Children that - as they became lost, abandoned or orphaned - became the armies of dictators and despots because they were told they could be the originators of their own destinies.

Haiti, a mostly Roman Catholic country, struggled to reconcile obedience with abuse and a constantly disintegrating economy. It was the words of Pope John Paul II, condemning Baby Doc, that roused Haitians to revolt in 1986. However, as with all things that seem to occur on Haitian soil, the Pope in his criticism of the regime did not have any concept of what was there to replace it.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide was waiting. By the time he and his army of lost children (the Famni Lavalas) were through with Haiti, he was airlifted out by US forces only to be returned to power by the US in 1996.

Aid comes in two packages – immediate and long term. Immediate aid is survival based. Long term aid is that which is designed to help a country rebuild itself in a manner that will best withstand a disaster of this kind from destroying it again.

Aid comes in two packages – the one we think people should have and the one they need.

The most significant change in Haiti has been the transformation of their attitude toward their children. While still seen as the providers and guarantee-ers of the success of the family, education is now recognized as so important that Haitians in the midst of absolute devastation are willing to surrender their children – not to promises of safety and shelter – but to promises of an education. Education is what they have seen is the only way to combat tyranny, corruption and poverty.

Haitians are not reacting to the devastation of the earthquake with a PTSD zombified state. They are, in the midst of their absolute despair, doing whatever they can think of that will rebuild their country and move them towards resolving decades long problems of poverty and oppression.

Unless the countries racing to provide aid can tune their services in a way that emphasizes and encourages this, then the aid offered will only get Haiti ready for their next round of loss. Haitians have survived so much that they know that the time for grieving is not now, but when you can look back to what has been from a different place. That is something that the foreigner seeking to provide aid and relief must understand and integrate into their approach.

(it’s 9:18 and Haiti is no longer in the top ten news items)

The earthquake of 2010 did more than destroy the lives and homes of 100s of thousands of people in Haiti; it has torn apart the very cultural structure that has for so long housed many of Haiti’s worst and sometimes, most subtle problems. The endemic culture of slavery, discrimination and abuse in Haiti is not solely their responsibility but also the responsibility of countries that have contributed to its creation through the pursuit of their own goals via Haiti’s people and economy and their well meaning but not well thought out attempts to help solve problems.

While we cannot undo history, we can take steps to change our thinking and approaches to avoid repeating it.

In the rush to provide aid, the world-at-large runs the risk of reinforcing the very problems that have plagued Haiti for centuries when many Haitians see that for the first time they have an opportunity to rebuild their country and heal it of its ills.

Aid that does not take into account the nature of the culture of slavery can resurrect the hierarchy that allows such a culture to exist. Aid that does not recognize that it is the new commerce and economy in a devastated area will fail to see the divisions it creates in a nation even as it helps them survive. Recovery is dependant on more then meeting basic needs. Culture and society must be included from the very onset. But this is hard to see because a culture of debt-slavery exists in almost every country offering aid to Haiti and to help them we must become willing to face our own ills.

The Great Aid Rush, while realistic and necessary, will provide nothing more than a means of survival until the next established disaster unless thought is given to how types of aid and dispersal systems are integrated into the complex cultural structure of Haitian society. Aid providers must work with Haitian leaders from all sections of the population to create a structure that feeds and supports a growing nation and does not recreate a one that suffers from the best of intentions.

Time is running out, Haiti is falling out of our news swiftly for there is little to be sold on disaster so complete and so far away. Our fervor fades quickly for complicated things, yet resolving or even beginning to try to approach resolving this hugely complex situation is something that is key to a global understanding of the nature of not only how things have come to be, but how to begin to effectively implement change.

conversation inside and out have taken on this kind of strange…acknowledgment…for lack of a better word.

 

I talked for hours with someone yesterday about the strange shift and trend we have noticed, a coming together of efforts a steady growing loss of the effortless – if that makes sense.

 

In the middle of this all, unspoken but felt, is an acknowledgement of a kind of generalized feeling of despair.

 

Despair that either is treated as an event and life stopping realization or, a despair that serves to strengthen effort and faith.

 

Sometimes it is a bit of both.

 

I am still working on that blog post that Newsy contacted me about, it will be out today or tomorrow and within it, I am having to touch upon (although not talk about) my own intense feelings of despair. It seems odd to me, at first, that in the middle of such wondrous things in my life and how I feel that there is such a strong river of despair that courses through everything.

 

Despair for what was believed and lost. Despair for what is the reality of some things and choices.

 

Despair for what is taken away. Despair for what was given up – whether the act of giving something up was intentional and mindful or a product of…misunderstanding of yourself or other things it is something that is very real and very there.

 

But what do you do when you are confronted with despair? I am not talking sadness or disappointment but true despair, which is the loss of hope.

 

We are so trained to think that hope is necessary to the future and to recovery that we fail to see the wheres and why-fors of why for centuries it was identified as a Demon and the worst Demon to plague all mankind.

 

Hope can prevent you from acknowledging reality.

Despair, the lack of hope, can allow you to see reality.

 

From there it is faith that brings the future. And I am not talking about religious faith, that in and of itself has become so wedded to the demons of Hope that it is hard to separate the two. I am talking about faith which is the confident belief or trust in the truth or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing – a state of being steadfast in your efforts.

 

With Hope, one is excused from making an effort or even having confidence other things or people because you are dependent on something coming along and “proving” that you are right.

 

A combination of faith and hope can lead you in the right direction, but one that lacks commitment. Because in confident belief and steadfastness there is no room waiting.

 

Which would circle us back to my harping on the concept of patience being the most active virtue of them all. We do not wait in patience, we prepare and do.

 

Despair, which so many of us touch upon in our lives whether through experience, sympathy or empathy is something that we are taught to run from, to resolve, to reject to replace…with Hope.

 

Despair, like the quote from Cesar Chavez I tweeted this morning, can be a part of the strength we find to believe in something.

 

In recognition of the depth and specifics of our despair we begin to see new paths that will take us from where we are threatened with stopping (lifelessness) and onto new paths (life).

 

In acknowledging the reality of our despair, without mixing in a Hope for some sort of relief, we begin to see what can be done to lift ourselves from this despair.

 

A lot of this has to do with the upcoming post and project I have been assembling for a while now. A lot of this is coming from “the City of Love” as I untangle storylines and discover the meaning that each character is a vehicle of.

 

Which, has been a revelation in more ways then one.

 

And on and on…much to do today and hopefully it will be quiet because it is super bowl sunday and I, for one, could not care less.

 

Especially not after that one quote about that ad that basically summed it up for me – that people don’t want to see serious things during the super bowl, it’s suppose to be fun.

 

So when, pray tell, is the time slot for serious things that so many people will show up for?

well….I have been a little pushed to the wall and overwhelmed with things, half courtesy of the damn EFT which I still love and do, but my god – you know …I think I have really been trained by whatever to think that issues and change are things you sort of sneak up on and this sort of…bypasses all that.

 

Then, I have been sick as a dog all week and flat broke. Flat broke for no good reason but that is a whole ‘other story. It will resolve itself shortly but I have also had to pony up and move out of my RV mindset where words and handshakes are enough and really accept that I am back in the hard bound land of illusion. I am addressing some areas in which I seem to be acquiring habits of the house covered but not house owned and working to rid myself of them as well. It is interesting to note the difference. Frankly, I would like to note the distance from afar but here I am.

 

I think, one of the things that happens, when you live in situations where you do not own anything (and I am not talking about having few things I am talking about renting and mortgages) is that you acquire a kind of written value that nothing really effects anyone – really – that it can all be taken away or suspended and it will be ok because they will find another place or thing to do.

 

When you own your home. Outright. Some of you know this, life takes on a strange kind of calm and urgency at the same time. You tend to have this sort of respect for others lives that makes you want to both protect them and go the extra mile for them.

 

And there are some who have elevated themselves out of the “it doesn’t matter” mindset without ownership and I have to learn better to judge who that is.

 

So…sick, broke and changing…on top of this trying to keep up with my all and get ahead – that is how I have spent my week.

 

Then I woke up today and the words that flew through my mind, while lying in bed with MK furiously trying to chew my eyebrow was

 

I am bigger then my financial situation.

I am bigger than other people’s problems in my life.

I am bigger than my fear.

 

And it was like the world started to snap into place again.

 

So I got up, made coffee, threw the appropriate amount of little tail-less mice the appropriate amount of times, and sat down and began to reconstruct. To stop some things and start others. To make choices.

 

It is funny the extent we can go to convince ourselves that things are “just the way they are going to be.”

 

Nothing is the way it is going to be. To say such a thing is to be nihilistic, to think that life is without meaning or purpose, to think that all things in life exist not in stages of growth and change, but are dead and changeless. Even that we, from the moment we are born are dying – we are not dead yet.

 

Not one thing is unchangeable but death. And even that is simply life rewritten into a new form.

 

But the amount of people I meet who have chosen death while living is astonishing. Rather than try to find new paths they assume that what they know is all that can be and go out of their way to construct their entire lives to support that.

 

Am I ranting? A bit…so within the rant you have to know that a part of the anger comes from a recognition in myself that I teeter, more often then I would like to think, on making that same kind of nihilistic choice. It is easy to fall into because in choosing to believe that something about you is immutable – you have a kind of safety and security – back to comfortable failure again.

 

I wonder how much of my waking up like this has to do with my watching the raw footage from the new feature before I went to sleep?

 

But this is what these features are meant to do. Renew your sense of being.

 

Ok…bear with me, on a lot of the blog sites you will start to see an absolute mess as my signature now as I try to figure out how to incorporate a new series of links, twitter and a translator into the posts.

not only did I find the name of the book and author I could not remember last night...I found an excerpt and it sums up why all this is so important - a realistic concept of your own death increases your trust in life - not some frenetic desire have experience, but a willingness to trust and trust goes hand in hand with doubt, just like it does with commitment

An Excerpt from Intimate Death: How the Dying Teach Us How to Live by Marie de Hennezel

Hospice worker and psychologist Marie de Hennezel sees the task of keeping company with those on the way to death as a sacred calling. Here is an excerpt from her account of her experiences working in a palliative care unit in a Paris hospital. She discusses the meanings commonly attached to living and dying.

"We hide death as if it were shameful and dirty. We see in it only horror, meaninglessness, useless struggle and suffering, an intolerable scandal, whereas it is our life's culmination, its crowning moment, and what gives it both sense and worth.

"It is nevertheless an immense mystery, a great question mark that we carry in our very marrow.

"I know that I will die one day, although I don't know how, or when. There's a place deep inside me where I know this. I know I'll have to leave the people I love, unless, of course they leave me first.

"This deepest, most private awareness is, paradoxically, what binds me to every other human being. It's why everyman's death touches me. It allows me to penetrate to the heart of the only true question: So what does my life mean?

"Those who are privileged to accompany someone in life's final moments know that they are entering the most intimate of times. Before dying, the person will try to leave his or her essence with those who remain — a gesture, a word, sometimes just a look to convey what really counts and what thus far has been left — either from inability or inarticulacy — unsaid.

"Death, which we will live to the end one day, will strike our loved ones and our friends, is perhaps what pushes us not to be content with living on the surface of things and people, pushes us to enter into the heart and depth of them.

"After years of accompanying people through the living of their final moments, I do not know any more about death itself, but my trust in life has only increased. I am certain that I live more intensely and more awarely those joys and sorrows that I am given to live, and also all the little, daily, automatic things — like the simple fact of breathing or walking.

"I may also have become more attentive to the people around me, aware that I will not always have them at my side, longing to explore them and to contribute as much as I can to what they are becoming and what they are called to become.

"Moreover, after spending years with what are called 'the dying,' although they are in every way 'the living' until the very end, my own sense of aliveness is more intense than ever. I owe this to those I have imagined myself to be accompanying, but who, in the humility of their suffering, have revealed themselves as masters."

Somebody asked me the other day what I thought was my greatest problem in relationships. What did I think was the one thing about me or the way that I am that caused the greatest issue…and I thought about it for a moment and I said, “The fact that I am dying.”

 

And she was horrified and immediately went into comfort and sympathy mode and said “I had no idea you were ill.”

 

To which I reply, “No! No! I am fine. But, I live with an awareness that I am aging, my life is passing and eventually I will die. It may come sooner rather than later. There are some things I still choose to do in my life that are not exactly…helping my longevity, but, I could get hit by a car too or contract some rare and swift moving fatal disease.”

 

To which she replied, “ahhhhhhhh…yes, I could see how that could cause problems. Most people want to believe that they stop aging or can turn back the clock or just plain choose to live as if there was all the time in the world…it must suck dating you.”

 

To which I replied, “Thank you.”

 

Now, it is not like I walk around talking about death all the time but that awareness fuels my drive and when people ask me if I shouldn’t slow down or take a break I am like, “take a break from what? Life?”

 

Granted, one should strive for a kind of balance that lets you rest and recharge but the fact is that time passes and is lost.

 

The more you reach an awareness of your own mortality, the more…frustrated and impatient you become with all the nonsense you have acquired that prevents you from living.

 

Back to the idea of having become comfortable with failure.

 

When you begin to build a comfortable life within the ideas of things not working out, then what winds up happening is you cease to risk and try. Life becomes a circular movement that becomes steadily smaller and smaller because as everything else around you grows and changes, you will have to keep rejecting possibilities in order to preserve your belief in what you cannot do. Does that make sense?

 

The extent that we can go to convince ourselves of the rationality of our not trying is…awesome. We don’t have enough time, it is not our unique role in life, there is not enough money, we should be happy with what we have or the worst – it is selfish to desire more and we must work to rid ourselves of our sense of self.

 

Hello?

 

To what end is it healthy to seek to live as if you do not exist? It amazes me how the basic tenets of many mystical and spiritual beliefs have become corrupted. Buddhism, for example. The whole goal of learning not be self focused in order to connect to the totality of the world is so you can then see that the world, the universe exists within yourself and YOU HAVE TO COME BACK TO YOU in order to be effective in the universe, in order to be a part of the working order.

 

But you come back with an awareness that contains the duality of the self and the universal. Rather then just the solo self or self-less.

 

To be self-less is just as disastrous as being self-ish. Both, in the end, are the same thing, a denial of how we all function together (and that all being in context of the Universe).

 

But, to do that, you also have to have a sense of your mortality and you learn to love what will exist beyond your life.

 

That is the hardest thing to do.

 

I had a rockingly fun conversation with someone else last night about dying (odd how these things run in blocks). We were just talking along about life and difficulties and then she just opened up, blossomed, about her one true passion which is working with the dying. How she had this tremendous fear of dying herself and somehow, somehow, that translated into her going and volunteering at a Hospice and how it proved to be the single most fulfilling things she has ever done. How she just felt such a sense of joy and involvement like nothing else had ever engaged her before.

 

The people around us were horrified.

 

But, that is the nature of death and purpose. It is only in acquiring a sense of the reality of your death that you can really begin to find your purpose and release yourself from all of this…need for safety…that we corrupt our adulthood with. And I do say corrupt because that need for safety translates into bad economies, bad relationships, bad religion and bad self esteem.

 

Funny, that should be the result of seeking safety, no?

so….I filmed what will be the second video feature the other week and it is really giving me issue how to put all of it together. Namely because the women in question had so many things to say that I am struggling to pick and choose and then get them into a format that will work.

 

But I learned something completely new from her. A new way at looking at something…just a slight twist that I hadn’t really thought of before.

 

We were talking about the problems that a lot of people had with making a commitment to their work (or other things) and I brought up the well worn term of the “fear of success” and she just offhandedly said, “Oh no, at some point it changes from that to the fact that they have become comfortable with failure.”

 

Comfortable with failure.

 

If you assume that nothing is going to work out then what you do is create a little safe island for yourself in which everything remains under your control because you know exactly what is going to happen.

 

I hadn’t quite seen that the whole issue of “commitment” was such a control issue as well. When you commit to something you become open to the unknown. You are willing to say “yes I will be there” without having any way of knowing where “there” will be or what will be asked of you.

 

When you begin to build a pattern of failure – and I am defining that as the assumption that nothing will work out so you do not even really try or commit to the effort of trying – you have complete control over your universe.

 

Because you are spinning in circles.

 

It was…one of those moments where the whole way I was looking at something in my life just sort of shifted.

 

We forget that what something starts out as (fear of success) eventually grows into something else (comfort with failure). So when we try and change ourselves, if we are approaching it from step one and never seeing what it is now – we won’t be effective.

 

Do you see what I am saying?

 

Do you see why this video feature is really giving me a run for my money?

so I think I have made a mention of the fact that I have been going through a minor time of frustration/disappointment over a couple of things and then been suitably cryptic about the specifics…

 

 

well, I have…and been cryptic for some good reasons too but that’s enough about that but…what I got to the point of yesterday is realizing that I was encountering all this mostly from places/people that frankly – I already knew that it wouldn’t be any different.

But, that I had chosen to suspend what I know for whatever reason and then created an opportunity for things to happen that then caused havoc and disruption in my life.

 

Reliably.

 

That is the thing I realized. None of these things came out of the blue. None of these people behaved in any type of strange or new way, every one was doing what they predictably always did.

 

Reliable.

 

So…I decided that I needed to do something and what I did was make a list. Not of “who can I rely on who won’t let me down blah blah blah” but I made a list of everything and everyone in my life and exactly what I could rely on them for. No judgement, just a sort of historical statement.

 

And it was funny…not really…but I very quickly saw that I had sort of thrown a lot of my energy and weight into things and behind people who behave badly in very reliable ways. Not their fault, this is their pattern. I also got involved with some things that although they sounded good on paper, everything surrounding them sort of highlighted what could most likely come from them which would have necessitated a miracle for it to have been anything but disruptive.

 

The interesting thing is, I also very quickly saw how dismissive I was of the things and people that behave (reliably) in my life in ways that add to my well being or work efforts.

 

So I am setting about and changing that.

 

It is hard because I am currently in a position that can only be defined as …embarrassing…and while I can point at other things and go “well yeah, that didn’t work out and I needed that” the point is, had I thought about it for a moment before I made those choices I would have known that the reliable outcomes of all of those things was not going to get me to where I needed to be.

 

But we like to believe in the best in people and possibilities and I think we always should…with caution.

 

In the same way that we cannot expect people to just sort of randomly accept a change in us but that a pattern of behavior must be established to construct our new “reliability” we have to put the same on others around us.

 

Don’t tell me you have changed, show me. Be reliable.

 

Me and my charts and lists.

 

I did start working on the City of Love for real for real yesterday. Amazing…I am adapting something called the “snowflake” method of writing which is meant for novels and it is just incredible how much easier it is going. The fellow’s point being what would you rather do – spend 500 hours writing a rough draft that tortured you and is now a mess or, spend 150 hours writing something that will let you do your first draft in 200 and it will already be as if it has been edited three or four times.

 

Second one please.

 

The city of love is far more complex then I realized, and then again, not.  Then again, in working with this method I am making connections in the theme and meaning that I usually don’t get to for months.

Things have not been bad or good, but they have definitely been “not easy.” Hardest of all has been the steady stream of disappointment I have been functioning under.

 

But, and I do credit the whole EFT thing for this, I am slowly becoming less obsessed with the whos and whats of where that disappointment is coming from then the recognition of how choices I made left me open to a disappointment being created by someone else.

 

Because when I back up and look at it, if I hadn’t done certain things I wouldn’t have opened those doors, and some of those doors should have been opened a lot more carefully.

 

On the flip side of this, there has also been a run of steady things and people coming into my life that are sources of inspiration and motivation.

 

Balance, is always there, it just depends on how you choose to look at things.

 

I have begun the process of tying in the Little Flower to all its bits and pieces. Over the course of the next few months you will see it take shape, all the petals if you will, on one stem.

 

It just..takes a lot to get it all connected. But the last of the structure of it is being put in place and then starts all the mad making sure people can find it on the internet.

 

I shot what will be the second feature on friday and it is going to be very interesting. I am trying to figure out how to edit it now. One of the things I recently had my eyes opened to is that while I can produce things as long and as layered as possible, there is a real limit to who will be able to see them because of the reality of people’s internet connections and computers. So I am adjusting presentations and going from there.

 

In the middle of all this…the EFT…I am going to kind of keep you updated on my progress with it so you have a realistic understanding of how it works at least for me.

 

Last week was my first week doing it and by the end, I felt better then I have in a long time and yet simultaneously like I have been put through the wringer. I would identify something that was bothering me and do it, feel relief within a few hours from the tension and distraction that it caused and then…a few more hours would pass and I would make this connection between what had been causing the disturbance and how it really made me feel. Feelings, that for me, were not things I typically am comfortable admitting feeling and from there I have jumped into a revelation of patterns in my life that I just…didn’t see before, or saw them in a limited capacity because I so quickly danced away from the root emotions and assigned them other ones or chose to blame other people.

 

Not exactly a comfortable place to be, but then again, one that feels perfectly alright. Which is even odder, I sort of go “oh” and I can think and feel in connection to it without getting overwhelmed or plunging into some desperate form of escapism.

 

This is change and growth.

 

Today I start officially working on the City of Love and for the first time, I think that by the end of it, I think I am up to the task of writing it in such a way that I will remain aware of its depth and not be so much reliant on discovering its meaning (my own meaning) further down the road.

 

If you missed the my interview on Friday night you can listen to it by going to my website, lovewords.com. It is right on the front page, it was a fantastic 2 hour interview covering everything and I read from the Mexican poet’s works and then… as soon as the host logged off for the night – the entire show was shut down and erased, however, someone had already downloaded the podcast link.

Tonight I will be on the Truth-Project-Network being interviewed by Angelheart on her show "You Can't Take My Wings."

This is a blogtalkradio show which means you can listen to it live from anywhere in the world over the Internet, download the podcast of the show later, or call and listen through your cellphone.

go to
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/truth-project-network

to log in and join the live chat
or call

718-766-4871 from your phone to listen.

The show airs live tonight (Friday, Jan 29th) at 9pm EST.

I will be talking about Mexico and reading works from three of the Yucatan Poets (melisa grisel bermudez torres, fernando de la cruz and david alaujo) and one American Poet (don cellini) that I met while there.

Now, I am racing out the door to go shoot the second video feature for the Little Flower Presents, you are going to love this one.


c.2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe All Rights Reserved
Cassandra Tribe is a member of Newsy.com

I was a little caught off guard about people’s request for specifics about the EFT thing.

 

So…that is what this is about.

 

But first, I want to explain some of the basic principles behind why it has a strong chance of working for people and why, it is not something that will give you an immediate cure – but it may begin to bring you relief very quickly.

 

When you have an emotional experience two things happen. One, the emotion is tied to a thought (which can be so fast and fleeting you won’t catch it) and two, the emotional reaction cause you to have a physical response.

 

This physical response, if repeated a few times (and it really only takes 2 or 3 for something subtle and once for a bug emotional even) forms a kind of emotional memory in your body.

 

So…let’s say…I am scared of speaking in front of people, being scared makes me tense, this tense feeling makes my stomach upset. Now…no matter what I am scared of and in any degree I will immediately trigger an upset stomach to some degree. It is not that the stomach is upset per se, but that the muscles have contracted and are causing the pain.

 

I then begin to consciously and unconsciously avoid any type of situation that might cause me to be scared (to have fear) because my I also fear my stomach hurting – on a subconscious level this fear of my stomach hurting does what? Makes me have my fear reaction and makes my stomach hurt.

 

I build not only an illness (the constant stomach tension then starts to disrupt how the stomach functions normally until the chemical balance is changed etc. and so forth) but I also begin to build a pattern of living that is desperate to avoid anything that could possible cause me to feel a fear I recognize.

 

This is why, when working with people who have difficulty knowing what they are feeling or accessing it, therapists will ask “where do you feel it in your body?” It is slightly different for all of us. My fear goes into my lower back, for some people it is in their stomach, I know someone whose right foot will cramp.

 

By teaching people to recognize where their emotions are located in their bodies therapists are able to then teach them how to recognize their feelings. A lot, a lot of people think that there are feelings that they do not have or are not capable of, that is not true. We are hard wired for the gamut, we all have them even if we have built a lightening speed pattern to hide an emotion and cover it with another one (fear gets covered with anger) so that we lose our awareness of the original emotion – they are all there.

 

With trauma, the emotions are written into the body in odd places because they have no where else to go, the psyche is overwhelmed and cannot deal with the situation. It can a little, but it has to tuck the rest away for later. Unfortunately, PTSD arises because later never comes because who in their right mind (pardon the pun) wants to revisit something so upsetting and overwhelming.

 

But, what ever emotions are involved in that instance then continuously get triggered anytime you have that emotion again. Maybe not to the extent that you re-experience the trauma but to the point that you trigger the fear or anger and start messing with your body in unusual places. Your body then becomes distracted (and your psyche) and you cease to really process through new experiences, you just keep repeating and re-enforcing the old.

 

With people that have extreme thought behaviors (circular thoughts, obsessive thinking)a technique was developed to give them immediate relief. They were instructed to wear a rubber band around their wrist and when they began to think in those patterns, to snap the rubber band three times against their skin – alternately, they were told to go get ice and hold it in their bare hand.

 

This jars the body out of its habitual pattern of responding to a sequence of thoughts and events. It does not cure anything itself, but it breaks a cycle and lets the psyche and mind shift into a different position from which you then work on the whatever.

 

In the same manner, brainwaves are trained too when you have emotional experiences. This gave rise to the development of EMDR. EMDR is basically a system where the person is asked to recall a traumatic event as if it were occurring again. When they are re-experiencing it, they are exposed to a light board with a sequence of lights flashing. These lights are flashing in a pattern that forces the brain to go to another type of wave – changing the brains conditioned response to trauma and letting the psyche work through it.

 

Because you have to remember, a part of the original event was already taken care of – we just think that the whole thing still exists full force so you are dealing with less and less each time you confront it.

 

Now, further into all this is the recognition that it is not absolutely necessary to have a full and conscious understanding of all the cause and events to heal, it is more important that the subconscious heals. So, sometimes you do not even have to recall the original event to fix the damage created by it. But, that said, eventually you should approach it so you can understand consciously how you then developed patterns based in it and applied them to your life.

 

Plus…acupressure…acupressure is a science of how energy moves through the body. Believe it or not, hokey sounding or not it is based on some very real things. Our bodies give up electromagnetic waves at varying rates according to what we think and feel and how our bodies and minds are biologically reacting. What do you think they are measuring when they hook you up to an EKG machine? They use sensors delicate enough to measure the bodies frequency. The body has a set pattern for where these frequencies are expressed, but, like a tense stomach – they can be re-written to the ill of the functioning of the person.

 

This is different from the Polarity therapy approach in which an outsider is in control of finding these energy disruptions and possible memories rather then you. Having an outsider find these things may put you in a position of dealing with memory/emotion out of order of the way in which you need to process them.

 

Now…

 

Throw all that together and add in some NLP (neuro linguistic programming which most people have a passing – and inadequate – familiarity with because of the Secret and the Law of attraction) and voila!

 

You have the basic recipe for EFT. I am going to describe it now but I have an EFT practitioner who graciously posted to yesterday’s blog and she has given me her link where there are free videos et al for you to use.

 

NOTE: The tapping cannot be done by someone else. This I firmly believe because…I work on cars…you don’t mix two forms of electricity and think something is going to work.

 

The Basic Recipe

 

Decide what you are going to address. Don’t be to loosey-goosey like “my low self esteem” be as specific as possible, grab an instance not a whole idea. For example, dealing with your low self esteem becomes “I feel like I am not smart enough to have the job I do.”

 

The first part of the recipe is making the statement “Even though I feel like I am not smart enough I deeply and completely accept my self.” (this is the NLP part)

 

Repeat this 3 times while rubbing your sore points.

 

Your sore points are located 3 inches down from the “u” at the base of your throat and three inches to each side. Use you index and middle finger of each hand to rub them (you’ll feel it when you hit the spot).

 

Then, using the middle and index finger of your dominant hand (the one you write with) tap the following points, in order while repeating your phrase. Tap them hard enough to feel it but don’t hurt your self. Tap about 7 times but don’t stress over the amount.

 

Tap the area above your nose at the end of your eyebrow (so you are slightly off center).

 

Tap the side of your eye (at the edge of the socket).

 

Tap in the cleft below your nose.

 

Tap in the indent on top of your chin below your lip.

 

Tap on edge of your collarbone (just off the u at the base of your throat)

 

Tap the side of your body on line with your nipple.

 

Tap the side of your other hand’s thumb, on the outside of the thumb lined up with the bottom of your fingernail.

 

Tap the inside of your middle finger (towards the thumb) online with the bottom of your finger nail.

 

Tap the outside of your little finger (online with the fingernail).

 

and finally tap the outside of the hand, on the fleshy part (right where you would hit someone if you did a karate chop).

 

Then stop tapping and saying your phrase.

 

Close your eyes,

Open them,

holding your head straight look down to the right and hold it for 7 seconds.

 

raise your eyes

 

then holding your head straight look down to the left and hold it for 7 seconds.

 

Raise your eyes

 

Hum the first two words of “happy birthday”

 

count to 5, outloud, very quickly

 

Hum the first two words of “happy birthday”

 

repeat the tapping section only add the following to your phrase.

 

“Even though I STILL feel like I am not smart enough I deeply and completely accept my self.”

 

-------

 

sounds like it will take forever but it takes about 2 to 3 minutes to do all that. It takes about 4 or 5 times running through it to memorize the pattern.

 

They recm’d you take the time to write down a list of things that worry, bother or upset you and when you go to do this basic recipe, pick one thing and only one thing to make the focus of the routine.

 

Sometimes there is an immediate change, if you are particulary sensitive to energy and how your body feels you will notice one, but for most it takes about two weeks to see a difference in how you are reacting.

 

Here are two links that have more information.

 

The first is from RuneMissy Dani, who commented on the blog, you will find more info and free videos etc.

 

http://runemissy.webs.com/efthealing.htm

 

The second is from another site that has a free 87 page illustrated manual you can download and then sells tapes and DVDS.

 

http://www.emofree.com/

 

NOTE: You don’t have to get it all perfect and right and there are variations to the technique but all the same things are being triggered.

 

 

of why I love Rhode Island...if you have been folllowing me you know I have this bizarre Lady Gaga fetish (that's a whole 'nother blog post)

but this is BINK, from Rhode Island, who all got Flip cameras for Christmas and then made this...if you haven't seen the original from LG go check it out to see how well they did, and also, read what they wrote about how it all came together. It is a hoot!

Andre Maurois said,

We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity - romantic love and gunpowder.

Which is true. Prior to the invention of both we had to be right up close to people to either form the ability to love them or kill them.

 

And as far a “romantic love,” it has always existed, however, it was the kind of love of bonding that formed the majority of lasting love relationships. I think, in a lot of literature and myth, love is shown to go beyond romantic love into a very real acceptance and desire for the reality of another person. Round about the middle ages, the idea of romantic love and love at first sight became popular and then went from fantasy to reality, along the way we lost all of our…experience with the language of loving.

 

And it is a struggle to get it back.

 

I posted a quote on twitter from Erich Fromm that basically said “love is the only sane answer to human existence” and it was funny to see the number of people who jumped up and down about love being insane….but that is not what he said. Love is the only sane answer, not that love is necessarily sane and, if you are familiar with his work, you will know that he thinks our definitions of sane/insane have become greatly reversed.

 

I just picked up a copy of his “Escape from Freedom” which is finally back in print. I am taking that as a good sign for the world at large.

 

He wrote the book, in the middle of a doing a much larger research project because he was shocked to see the depth and veracity of society’s drive to move away from responsibility and worth and essentially to seek to escape the freedom that comes with being an individual. Because with freedom comes great responsibility and insecurity.

 

We like our packages neat and tidy.

 

I am…all over the place, it has been a hectic past two weeks and this week will also be one as well.

 

I am shooting the next Artist Feature and in that regards, you should go check out the page on my site at http://loveandwords.com/web2010/flower.html because it explains fully not only what the feature series is about but how things are chosen to be included.

 

And then, I would like to retire and move to a small tropical island. I would like to, but it will not happen anyday soon. I have the next six features already scheduled and a host of my own projects.

 

Also on that page is a copy of my opening lecture on the Rules of the Sublime that I taught in Mexico. I am steadily working to gather all of these things together for a book, I am slated to teach two more classes in the spring and it just seems like

 

the list goes on and on

 

But its rainy and like 55 here today.

 

Isn’t that something?

 

Ok…I am drifting around so I need to coffee up and get to work.

not really…but there has been a lot going on, some very similar things in some very different situations that I thought it might be a good idea to do a post about some of the do’s and dont’s of things…now, this is written towards poetry but you can change things around and apply it anywhere…

 

If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say it. Nobody really cares if you like or do not like something. However, someone might care very much to hear if something that they did caused you not to like it. There is a difference, learn it.

 

Believe in what you do. Don’t wait for people to support you or expect people to support you in your endeavors, believe in yourself and become your own motor – other people will follow.

 

If you are a beginner – ask everything of anyone – the worst that can happen is they will say no and nobody ever died from somebody saying “no” to them.

 

If you are a beginner – ask the same question of many different types of people and make your own answer out of their responses. Nobody has your answer and nobody is so good that they know the “right” way of saying or doing something. Take everything said to you as a suggestion and figure out your own resolution.

 

If you are established – don’t forget where you came from and think it is beneath you or too time consuming to lend a hand to someone on their way up. Remember, in the eyes of the world you replaced someone who was there before you and there will be someone who comes and replaces you so they can have their moment. Don’t lose sight of the fact that what you do isn’t and shouldn’t rely on recognition from others – don’t get caught in that trap. If you are pursuing recognition – well then honey, you are making your own bed but the same rules apply.

 

Don’t throw fits in public. Just don’t.

 

Do throw fits in front of your friends in private places.

 

Never call someone out in front of someone else unless it is absolutely unavoidable. You will find you get a much better response when things are addressed privately.

 

Do pay your bills on time. I know that can be hard, but what is a debt to you that you may not want to pay immediately may be food in someone else’s mouth.

 

Don’t take on more than you can handle.

 

Don’t assume you know how much you can handle and take risks in how much you take on.

 

Don’t decide for someone else…ever.

 

If you know someone is about to learn something the hard way – tell them. They don’t have to repeat your experience, and saving someone the heartache and drama of dealing with something that you did may make it possible for them to go further, faster.

 

The people you teach will go beyond you. If they don’t, then you haven’t taught very well.

 

You will surpass your own teachers and that just proves what a fine job they did.

 

Be kind to those who are young and those who are old and everyone in-between. It costs you nothing.

 

Don’t make others suffer for your bad days.

 

Do make sure others share in your good ones.

 

Write about what has been, so you never forget.

 

Write about what will come, so you keep the future alive.

 

Never call anything stupid, a waste of time , or worthless. The only thing that fulfills those definitions is the time spent on calling something or someone “stupid, a waste of time, or worthless.”

 

Remember that whoever you are and whatever you feel about your situation that somebody looks up to you; you are their hero and example, act as such.

 

Find your own heroes, we all need someone to show us the way.

 

Change heroes.

 

Keep some.

 

Never believe that you will never love again.

 

Never believe that you are not good enough. Skill can always be acquired. Worth arrives the day you draw your first breath.

 

Never let anyone tell you, through word, deed or action – that you are not good enough. If they do, make sure they never darken the door of your consciousness again.

 

Forgive responsibly.

 

Love irresponsibly.

 

and above all else, act like a Labrador, be enthusiastic, optimistic and slightly psychotic – you’ll live longer.

 

 

There is a theater in Pawtucket RI in which magic of a very real kind is being made. Next to the Blackstone River, in a place that was once forgotten, Ricardo Pitts-Riley’s Mixed Magic Theater has established its very own dreamland. Hosting numerous productions from Shakespeare to the work of local playwrights – Mixed Magic Theater is also home to ‘From the R.I.P.’ The ‘R.I.P’ stands for Rhode Island Poets. This relatively new poetry show is steadily establishing itself as a force in the area. It isn’t happening through grant power or by relying on name power alone, but by their exquisite integration of everything necessary to transform a night spent watching someone read notes from their private life, into a night spent with a poet breathing life and fire into the air.

This small theater hosts the show ($5 cover) and serves up free food, cheap drinks and accommodates BYOB. That could quickly get out of hand but the organizers have paid attention to every detail. Food is served to the audience as they sit in the theater waiting for the show to begin. Drinks are also delivered to your seat. BYOB bottles are left with the staff and you are given a color-coded card that you hold up for a refill so you are never getting out of your seat to disturb the show.

    

They’ve already developed some house habits of audience participation. One is the house habit of snapping your fingers in the air as a form of applause (although applause is encouraged and happens raucously). The other is the cry of “rewind!” This signals to the poet that whatever they just said was so bold and true, they need to “rewind” and let the audience hear it again.

Jay Chattelle, one of the powers behind the show and a poet in his own right, introduces the evening by conducting a brief “Poetry Etiquette Class.” These provide basic rules for the audience of what is and what isn’t a good idea. Then he outlines the evening. He also pointed out what we had already noticed, that there was a live band (bass, lead guitar, drums and saxophone) on stage playing a kind of rocking’ mellow jazz that would provide improv backing for the poets.

Jay turned the evening over to a man known online as “The Incredible Christopher Johnson.” For once, someone’s online moniker proved to be quite true. Christopher Johnson is the present Poet Laureate for the Black Repertory theater and has performed his "spoken word" on radio; at such venues as AS220, the Lizard Lounge, Cantab Lounge; and has been a member of numerous National and Local Slam teams. Christopher Johnson is not only a master of his words, but, as it turns out, is a highly skilled practitioner of the art of MC’ing.

     

On this night, Christopher introduced Rudy Cabrera as the poet to kick things off. Rudy is a Providence native and has video work available on youtube as well as pages on myspace and facebook. Rudy rocked – ‘nuff said. It was obvious that many in the crowd were familiar with him and his powerful style and they enthusiastically welcomed him. All was good until the surprise ending of the set when Jay and Christopher held Rudy on stage and announced it was his birthday. A cake with one candle made its way out of the audience and onto the stage.

   

Amy Doran, who was there photographing the show, swapped her camera for a microphone to sing a rendition of “Happy Birthday” that would have made JFK look twice.

“You shouldn’t trust boys with dead mothers
to look after girls with dead fathers”

and thought the crowd would let them go by unnoticed.

She ended her set in full stride with a story of disappointment in fairy tale endings that found its roots in her Pakistani family and sent its branches out into the world. She spoke of the kind of experience that all women, of any culture have known.


Jamilla Woods followed, petite and sweet looking, who opened her mouth and sang a heartfelt ode:

“I have never been broken with such care before”

laying the ground for her next poems. Powerfully written work that dealt with domestic violence, oppression and pain. She had to rewind more than once, until the audience had their fill of:

"Miss Mary Mack
All dressed in black
With purple bruises
all up and down
her back."

Then the features arrived. Having driven 16 straight hours from South Carolina to be there, Maximus Parthas, Tribal Raine and the Poet Without Apology were in the house.


Before the intermission, Poet Without Apology took the stage and brought to Rhode Island a little bit of Southern lovin’ much to the delight and finger snapping of the women in the audience. He could barely make it through his second piece as calls for “rewind!” came at a faster and faster pace as he tried to describe the oh-so-very physical metaphors of his love for a woman and ended on the phrase:

“because I love your body more then you do.”

Intermission found the audience snapping up pieces of birthday cake and hanging out to the beat of the band (who at the time, had no name, so forgive the lack of detail – their next performance at Firehouse 13 includes an audience challenge to find them one). They brought the intermission to a close with a request for a moment of silence for their friends and family in Haiti. All of the audience…let me repeat that…all of the audience gave them their heart and soul in that moment, that is the kind of magic that is woven here. The kind where strangers in a sold out house, having a good time, can give it up for a moment and touch that which makes us all part of the same.

There was a moment of touch and go at the beginning of the second half as technical difficulties delayed the premiere of Jay Chattelle and J-Queezy’s new spoken word and R&B video, Everyday Work.

 

The Incredible Christopher Johnson brought Spittin’ Image to the stage, a spoken word trio he performs with, and they provided ample distraction from the video woes with “Brother Juice” calling out:

“this ain’t Obama in a bottle”

as they wove their words into a call for young people to learn what it takes to be a “brother” by learning the steps of respect and integrity from their elders. The humor of that piece was softened by their next, accompanied by an a'capella hymn that brought the audience together into a kind of sacred space.

Then the video was ready to roll.

         

Jay Chattelle was recently featured in the Pawtucket Times as being one of the artists credited with reviving the arts in “Downtucket.” He, Christopher Johnson, and Rudy Cabrera joined together to form “From the R.I.P.” productions and host the “Poet’s Place.” Mixed Magic Theater founder and owners, Ricardo and Bernadet Pitts-Wiley, have provided ample support for the effort, helping the “R.I.P” host the event at a different location, then taking it into their theater when water damage destroyed its other home.

All involved see the nearness of the Hip-Hop and Spoken Word worlds, and have also - especially for Jay Chattelle - felt the power of poetry as a means to let out the things inside which threaten to bring so many down. “From the R.I.P.” is not just one person’s effort, but an effort spearheaded by three young talents (with support from more established powers in the community) to offer to the community a unique and unifying experience. It does not matter what life you have come from, when you enter their doors you become a part of another one that is based in moving forward.

Jay teamed up with R&B artist J-Queezy to record the piece, “Everyday Work.” Inspired not just by the events that brought Jay to where he is today (prison, a near paralyzing accident), but also his transformation as a man, the video (created by JSplit Productions) is a testament to the beliefs, motivations and transformation of everyone involved in the project. You can see the video at the end of this article.

“Everyday Work” could not have provided a better introduction to the two feature, Tribal Raine and Maximus Parthas, who had traveled from South Carolina for the evening. Both of them are long standing and award winning participants on the National and International Poetry scene. Their list of achievements can though, overshadow the true import of their work – they are revolutionary poets with a message to share.

These are poets who recognize, acknowledge and have chosen to shoulder the burden of one of the oldest roles that poetry plays in the cultures of the human race. Poets have not just been storytellers, entertainers, moralists, or carried histories and news to communities – they have also served as the rallying voices for social change and revolution. For this reason, as political parties rise and fall, the poet is always the first artist that “the powers that be” seek to control. The office of Poet Laureate was designed as a means for the current political office holders to try to influence what is considered poetry in an effort to silence outspoken and often critical voices.
 
Tribal Raine and Maximus Parthas are two voices that refused to be silenced. If all they did was speak and refuse to be silenced though, it would not be enough, Raine and Parthus have also chosen to dedicate themselves to their craft in a way that their words are constructed to carry a message – to deliver it home with a hammer if need be, and then take the audience – bowed by their revelations – and call to them “Rise Up!” and you can almost here the silent phrase, “and walk with me.”

Tribal Raine is a powerhouse. When she is talking about “the small man, not the black man but the small man…the I-can’t-catch-a-break-man” you know who she speaks of because she is speaking about you – no matter what your gender and race. The quality of her writing is that it transcends boundaries we would throw on top of the truth of her words for the sake of claiming a bit of belonging. Missing the fact that the tragedies, the oppression she talks of effect all of us.

“Soldier, soldier
I thought I told ya,
Freedom ain’t free i
f they still own ya.”

Max Parthas followed with a bit of comedy about what it was like to be married to Tribal Raine, asking the audience to imagine him waking up and saying “Can I get some breakfast?” and she screams “The Revolution is upon us!”

By request he performed the favorite “What Happened to Hip Hop?” a poem that makes the lyric bound cultural reference of Moulin Rouge look amateurish with lines such as:

“We were all hoping

she will come back to life

back to reality

back to the here and now.”

And the audience, granted this reprieve from the fire of Tribal Raine, was lulled into the kind of peaceful and receptive group that Max was just waiting for. He followed with his own calls for change:

“Doctors,

go out among the masses

and heal as many as you can,

not just the scores that can afford to be whores

to your insurance premium plans.” 

And got the audience going with a call and answer of:

“I was born free.

And I will be.

Respect it.”

The night ran late and they brought it to a close. Parthas reminding people to show up in their communities for the National Rally on March 4, 2010 called the ‘March Forth for Freedom.’ This is a rally to protest not just the privatization of the prison system, but the move to publicly trade the stock of these companies . Poets are gathering in the courtyards of every prison across the nation to stage all day “open mics” to make their voices heard.

What Jay Chattelle, Christopher Johnson and Rudy Cabrera have created is not so much a poetry night but a night that offers words to feed the soul. From the very real food at the door, to the food found in the voices of the talent they are bringing into Rhode Island, there is not one person in the audience who will leave an evening with them without having received everything they need to keep on going another day. Keep on dreaming of another way.

Ricardo and Bernadet Pitts-Wiley are examples of how the community that is should reach out to bring the community that is rising into the mix of it all. An exquisite integration of talent, skill and community; a night with the R.I.P. is just magic.

the galeria periferia just posted the page about my performance. The reviews are in spanish and english and there are actual pictures of it (versus my lame pix)


 the madness of desire

today has been one of those odd days where a million and one things inside of my mind have been busy figuring themselves out and resolving themselves without having the kindness or courtesy of letting me know the specifics but …leaving me all the odd dreams and bizarre cravings for naps.

 

Good things…you know how you have that feeling that whatever is going on inside of you is a good thing and you best not interfere with it? That kind of feeling.

 

Coupled, of course, with the flip side. The flip side to positive change is that as it begins to happen there is usually a resurgence of the opposite – not so much a battle between the two but, if you have a habit or pattern of resisting a change (that may be what would be good for you and desired – just not what you are used to) then those things rise to the surface as well.

 

But comes a point where your awareness of them renders them almost powerless over you. They still happen, but you are the witness and not the participant.

 

So all day I have had strange dreams, fits of being absolutely fine and then absolutely tired and then these small moments where there are these….attempts to return the balance to what has been, rather then what is coming.

 

The internet, surprisingly, gives you the kind of distance you sometimes need to notice patterns. Pay attention next time you are in a “mood” to what you do online, what you google, where you go – it can be quite telling.

 

Which then leaves me, at the beginning of night, with a semi-return to balance and a pile of work to do.

 

Work always it seems.

 

But here I am again, puzzling things out.

 

One of the things I went over in some of my workshops in Mexico is that when you stand up to read in front of the audience it is not you who is up there. And neither is it your poem. But there are 2 poems that are standing on the stage – the words about to be spoken and the body that will speak them. If you can get these two poems to duet, then you will have a fine time.

 

I keep returning to Famine and ripping it apart and putting it back together trying to tear myself out of it – if you know what I mean – of course I will always be in it. But, comes a time when it is no longer about me and that is what I am chasing down.

 

I am trying to imagine blocking and staging. After I meet with the other two poets involved, if it meet with their approval, I will post the collaboration in the blog to get your feed back about what should be happening on stage.

 

Right now I am imagining silk ropes like blood spilled and blood heated by love tying the two together and my third, the icy Famine and lost soul, separate from them all but capable of reaching out and interrupting their flow.

 

Back to work.

 

Almost…

 

I have been indulging in Netflix for days now…they have a collection of silent movies I am slowly steeping myself in that are beyond the beyond. No jerky speeded up movies these. I just watch the Berlin (symphony for a city opus 1 or something) and it is like walking into a photograph. Beautiful. Images without stories. Images that tell a story in a language we have all known that crosses all of our barriers. The man with a camera is another one…both of these focus on a day in the life of a city, no plot, just the images and music.

 

I am still trying to catch up from Mexico and things are just going at a mile a minute and then just not going at all it seems (although I know that is now true).

 

Yesterday was all about walking.

Walking and silence.

 

And then I came home and pulled together a rough draft of “the language of famine” that I am happy with in a rough draft form and completely unhappy with as far as a finished thing goes.

 

While I think I have sort of talked about it here I will go on again – it’s a collaboration. There are two other poets working with me – Jay Chattelle and Michaelle Saintil. It started because Jay invited me to feature at “From the R.I.P” in Pawtucket, RI. (I just found out that R.I.P. stands for Rhode Island Poets) and my return was “sure, but let’s do something to set it on fire a bit.” They have a stage. It is in a small theater. So my idea was to take the framework of one of my pieces (Famine) and turn two poets loose in it to write and then combine all three of us to make a new poem and perform it on stage.

 

So that is what we are doing. All three of us have very different styles in ever way you can imagine and it has been really amazing to take all three pieces and balance them so our individual voices are not lost but that we all fit together.

 

The purpose of a duet, or even a trio performance is not to alternate who is performing, but to bend and adjust the talents of all so it becomes one seamless piece.

 

And silence is beginning to play a very strange and important role of late. I have some tentative projects I am working on that will be predominantly silent.

 

So off to Netflix I go to stream endless silent movies and then watch still more (but with the sound turned off).

 

The mad kitten is being a spectacular…pain in the ass. It is really something else. I would be getting a lot more done but she is hanging, jumping, biting, knocking, spilling and in general…enjoying herself but kind of destroying my concentration.

 

I am trying (again) to make it through my back log of work so I can clear the decks to move on but…sometimes things are so tempting.

 

I have a painting in the other room that is spending some time with me to save it from the potential ire of its creator. I feel sometimes like I am running a home for wayward art. An orphanage for ideas.

 

And if I keep feeding them and talking about them some one will come along and say “oh that’s mine” and off they go together.

 

Way too much coffee. Not enough vacuuming.

 

But isn’t that the way life is supposed to be?

 

John Silvio said to me the other night:

 

“No one got into heaven because they kept a clean house.”

 

 

The mad kitten is maturing into quite the odd duck. A friend looked at her the other day and said “there is something else in there besides a cat” and the way she was looking back at the two of us seemed to support that.

 

She spends a great deal of her time in her own private world under the blankets of the bed. She is not scared or hiding, its just…her private little kingdom. When I go to sleep she comes and says ‘hi’ and then burrows all the way down for the entire night.

 

When she is up, she is all about being in my back pocket. Whether that be literally hanging on me or making sure that every toy she has is at my feet (which get randomly chewed on as well) she is right there. And of late she has perfected this strange way of jumping into my lap in which she lands in the sleeping position.

 

It is the oddest thing I have ever witnessed.

 

I mean, I have a long history of odd animals but she is really…redefining the category.

 

Last night I got the roughs from the other two poets who are going to be doing “the Language of Famine” with me in March. Very good stuff, seeing how they wrote their pieces (in response to my scattered notes I gave them before I left for Mexico) started pushing me in a new direction.

 

I had sat last night and thought about the piece and began to discover new things about it. Specific things, knowledge about what Famine can mean – not just as a reality – but as a metaphor of how we would choose to starve because we are imprisoned by a memory of what has been.

 

Oh my…I suddenly got very hungry.

 

It is supposed to be 45 degrees today and sunny and everyone has already been swapping text messages plotting to play hooky from all our things and go off and enjoy the day.

 

The universe gave birth to the coffee bean to allow artists and poets to stay up late.

 

That is what I am thinking.

there are a million things to say about everything, yesterday was not the day to say them though.

 

Back to the issue that came up while I was in Mexico concerning my father and his stroke. And this is something that we don’t talk often about except in terms of theory or distant emotions is that when it comes down to it – there is a point at which you need to become able to recognize that all pain and history aside – there are human beings involved.

 

I have known people who have had strokes, but only after their rehab has occurred. I researched greatly the other night about what that rehab is like. I also, thanks to google, was able to plug in some questions about “why was I contacted at all?” I mean, my relationship with them all is beyond estranged…and there are many places where other people have asked such questions and people show up to respond and it is a good thing.

 

The answer was that no one had any kind of obligation to tell me, but that out of a sense of compassion they did. And compassion should not be confused with pity or anything else. It is a simple acknowledgment that come what may, there is another person involved and if you were in their shoes, you would want someone to act in this manner.

 

Which made me sit and think, and then go beyond my history and boundaries and realize that I have been in a position similar to what he is going through. No body asks for a stroke, while life style habits can contribute to them really – they don’t guarantee that you get one. It is something devastating and debilitating that happens to people for no good reason. No one asks for it. No one deserves it and as one human being to another, to simply say “I know you are sick and I know things are hard and I wish you the best and you are in my thoughts.” does not negate history, does not imply forgetfulness or any lessening of choice or responsibility – it is a moment in which you step outside of your own life and become something larger.

 

Doing that has costs me a great deal in my own personal life. But my own personal life cannot also be divorced from the fact that my life is entwined with others. We all share experiences, whether we know or recognize each other on the street. What is of me, I deal with in the confines of my mortality – what I am also a part of – is something that extends beyond my lifetime. Does that make sense?

 

The disaster in Haiti is beyond devastating and people were alitlle put off when I mentioned using the internet to show support. But you have to understand that our very Western imaginings of other countries, particularly those that we consider “third world countries” is a little – unrealistic. In many very poor countries the presence of cell phones and internet connections is quite common. As one friend put it, even the maids in Brazil had cell phones as of 10 years ago. Texting is a prominent, global way of keeping in touch, and now twitter. It is much cheaper then phone calls. If you were getting your news off the BBC they made mention of the fact that almost all of the initial news reports were coming from people reporting via twitter. Why? Satellite communications.

 

I would say, especially given my recent trip to Mexico, that a majority of the world is actually far more adept at keeping in touch electronically – because it is easier – then a lot of Americans. Think about it…the drive for laptops in Africa for each child; read some reports on the business of cellphones in Africa, China and the Middle East.

 

Haiti needs help that is beyond most of us. But via this medium we can do something that was not available to us before – we can reach out to others, surmount language barriers and distance and ….touch them, just to say that as one human being to another we know of your hurt and pain and loss and you are not alone. From across the world, from a different life we are thinking of you and wish you well. That, combined with aide and donations and what physical help we can send will help to heal people faster…because you do not let them fall into the depths of believing that their life is limited by what has happened to them – that nobody asked for and that nobody deserved.

 

I have secrets abounding about projects coming up. I have two people lined up for the next Artist’s Features that I think our going to surprise and delight you. One American and tentatively, one Canadian who is more a global citizen then anything.

 

We shall see…we shall see….

 

 

 

I served an elephant to a group of women in saffron saris and togas.

They had been left behind when the men fled, yet these women had no fear. And I had platters of delicious grilled elephant meat and I was selecting the choicest bits, saving portions of the ears for one of them and making them fresh barley water when they said they were thirsty.

And the whole dream was so intensely joyous it is hard to describe.

The dream rotated and revolved around one person in my life who was not really a part of my dream but was in it, simultaneously but on another level as we spun through the cosmos entwined.

I should dream like that more often.

I woke up with a kind of feeling of…grace and understanding in my life about something that I have been puzzling over. And I have gone from puzzling and worrying to feeling like I should be laughing outloud with the joy and simplicity of it because the problem has been a simple refusal to recognize what is actually there.

I am thrilled that all three of the Yucatan Poets I met and worked with in Mexico have agreed to let me read a translation of their works on the January 29th show (Angelheart’s show, details and links to come later) as well, another fellow I worked with, Don Cellini has agreed to let me read a short piece from his forthcoming book, Translate into English.

You see? As I travel so do you.

I am deep into digging myself out of a backlog of editing that piled up on my travel days.

And life goes on and on and is beautiful.

You see?

trying to put one’s feet on the ground after an intensive experience one finds that while the mind is willing, the body would like to sleep. And eat. And have bon-bons and tap its feet to music and do anything but focus.

 

I had a little snafu towards the end of last week wherein between the intensity of workshop and performance collided with travel time and I am just so behind in a lot of my “pay-the-bills” work and am catching up.

 

The performance, which I didn’t really fill you in on beyond a quick twitter about hanging the poems on the walls in the gallery in Spanish and English (which involved 18 hours of writing them out by hand on large pieces of paper) was amazing in the fact that everything that could go wrong – did. From the DVD skipping to the sound equipment not working (we tested it earlier in the week but hadn’t thought to also turn the gallery lights on and the power just wasn’t there) to my absolutely forgetting one of the poems half way through and making it up on the spot until I could remember my place.

 

But it all worked.

 

And one of the things I am so grateful for is that I think I am ready to drop “the dreams of bees” from my performances – I have finally gone beyond it and I am happy about that.

 

The mad kitten has been in my back pocket since I came in the door. She is just now letting me wander into another room without her having to come along as well. A friend has said that she thinks that like a small child, MK isn’t really aware that we are two separate beings and my being gone so long was like – temporarily removing one of her legs.

 

And here I am…tired, piled with work of all kinds including continued work with one of the Yucatan poets (I am translating, god bless the internet for giving us the means to do this) and life is good.

 

Very good.

 

Not any easier but definitely good. And perhaps, for me, what came out of all of this is a bit more clarity about the direction I want to go in and the direction I want to avoid. I was starting to fall into certain ways of thinking about the future that were…rather limited and I am pulling myself out of it all.

 

I am adjusting.

 

And one of the things I am having an intensely hard time adjusting to here is how damn noisy this place is. I mean, places I thought were quiet are just filled with sound. Merida is a much bigger city then here and more…close, but not nearly as noisy. The few times that I was places where someone chose to play music aloud or talk loudly it was an aberration and stopped as soon as they noticed that someone else was present. Here,  everyone talks so damn loud it is unbelievable. No wonder I had an easier time going and writing in a coffee shop on a sidewalk teeming with people in Merida then I do sitting in my house by a window, it was quieter on the street there then what I can hear through a pane of glass.

 

The same friend said, “That’s because Americans are still new.” and I replied “Well at what point are they going to get used to the fact that they are here.”

 

And that is a major question, at what point do you get used to the fact that you are here and start to live like it?