I try not to do too many reading-list posts, mainly because I know that most of us have our own gigantic stacks of reading to get to. But! These pieces are simply dope and exciting, and written or shared with me by people I like. Plus, the collection represents, in a way, some key themes in my life right now: feminism, political work, and spirituality. So!
The lovely and talented author of This Moi (elder sister of ei powell) has a guest post up at Jezebel on the Man To Man (M2M) phenomenon — as experienced by herself, a keen and observant young woman of color, during a trip to a shooting range.
And! The Advance the Struggle collective (AS) published their analysis of the March 4th day of action (for public education in California + beyond), which breaks down, in very useful, insightful ways, the dis/advantages of two different tendencies among the anti-capitalist players involved, and how to combine their strengths into a “genuine class struggle left.” Personally, it helped me clarify and contextualize my experience participating in the SF March 4th committee, which I found pretty frustrating overall. In hindsight, I now understand a lot of the key ideological splits that I couldn’t articulate at the time. As AS puts it, “the [clashes] of approaches to radicalizing consciousness were key determinants in differentiating the political forces in the movement.” Also nifty to see analyzed summaries of all the different major actions in Cali, as well as efforts in Seattle. Check it out.
This poem, which my boss read to me during our latest reflection session (yes, I’m lucky enough to have good poetry in my work meetings!) immediately resonated with a fear that’s been haunting me ever since I started deepening my meditation practice last year.
Tree
by Jane Hirshfield
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It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.
Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.
That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books —
Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
Will it be possible for me to combine a lifelong commitment to practicing dharma (with the retreat experience and internal work required) while at the same time holding on to worldly commitments like partnerships and social justice work? Oftentimes I sense that someday, in this one lifetime, I’ll have to choose. Do you ever feel that way?
Finally, a little something by Ahmad Jamal, just because.
Happy Thursday, friends, and happy birthday Henry Mills!
A stat counter is a common tool that lets bloggers see the number of people who visit their site. I learned about it back in 2005, when I first became acquainted with blogs, and have interacted with stat counters and traffic graphs in my bloggerly life ever since. Every day (ok let’s be real: practically every five minutes), I check my traffic chart on Kloncke to see how many people are reading. I glance at the line graph and its 15-day history, with the current day’s data point climbing ever upward until the stroke of midnight, when its ascending carriage takes a pumpkin-like tumble back down to zero. New day, new stats.
Within the past few months, I noticed myself monitoring my stat charts with increasing closeness and intensity. It became sort of embarrassingly compulsive. I checked my traffic at Gmail-like intervals (read: Too Frequently). And of course, my heart would soar and sink according to the graph’s altitude.
High: high.
Low: low.
Many page views: “My writing is helping people.”
Few views: “This blogging thing is just a narcissistic waste of time.”
Et cetera.
And then, the real kicker: auto-adjusting scale.
Let’s say I’ve been plugging along on my little blog for a month, and one day I get 25 views, the next day 30, the next day 7, and so on. The top of the y-axis represents the largest number of views in a single day: 150. The smallest, one notch above zero, is 3. Then, one day, the blog is viewed 170 times. What happens to the chart?
Anushka's techno-meditation: trying to stay mindful while using our favorite devices.
It’s been a looooong work day, friends, and there’s no time to get into the articles I was hoping to cover today (1, 2), but I want to offer a little teaser for a post that’s been brewing in my head for quite a while, and which began to peck its way out of its shell this Saturday, during a daylong workshop at the East Bay Meditation Center.
The beautifully conducted workshop, led by Anushka Fernandopulle, focused on Dharma & Technology: how we can apply the insights of the historical Buddha to our relationships with gadgets in our modern lives. I could go on about how dope the retreat was, including the fact that it, like all programming at EBMC, is offered on a dana (donation) basis. And how the participants all had fascinating and diverse experiences, concerns, and celebrations with their techno-tools. And how almost all of the participants were female-presenting women, which certainly surprised me. And how it helped me change my relationship with Facebook. All of that is so.
But one of the most exciting results, for me, was the final formation of this idea of mine for a project called Stat Dragons. The project is about dharma, blogging, craving, contentment, art, and yes, dragons. It involves talented illustrator friends of mine. And its first installment will premiere this week on Kloncke.
Many thanks to Anushka and all the fabulous workshop participants and volunteers. It was a wonderful environment in which to incubate my dragon egg.
Kind of like #followfriday, only more of a plain old celebration of the folks touching one Black girl’s heart this week.
Above, Miss Maxine, who slowly but surely welcomed me into her life after a rough start on Sunday. She’s almost as much of a delight as her owners, Chris and Donna.
Adrienne Maree Brown is just tremendous. Everybody should read her. You should read her. Like, starting now.
Aaron Tanaka is also tremendous. His blog is pretty much brand-new, but already one of my all-time favorites. Eclectic, on-point, funny, educational. Solid.
If you ever get the chance, spend some quality time with Carmen Barsody. Trust me on this one.
Last but not least, word has it that Advance the Struggle is about to publish a piece analyzing March 4th. Get excited!
Slowly making my way through the Faithful Fools’ canon. In a conversation about economics, Carmen recommended Lewis Hyde’s The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property. Not even 50 pages in, and it’s already transforming the way I see my everyday life.
Basically, Hyde is interested in the material and spiritual benefits of gifts and gift economies, as opposed to capitalism and economies of exchanged commodities.
Given material abundance, scarcity must be a function of boundaries. If there is plenty of air in the world but something blocks its passage to the lungs, the lungs do well to complain of scarcity. The assumptions of market exchange may not necessarily lead to the emergence of boundaries, but they do in practice. When trade is ‘clean’ and leaves people unconnected, when the merchant is free to sell when and where he will, when the market moves mostly for profit and the dominant myth is not ‘to possess is to give’ but ‘the fittest survive,’ then wealth will lose its motion and gather in isolated pools. Under the assumptions of exchange trade, property is plagued by entropy and wealth can become scarce even as it increases. 23
Having lived for more than a year now with no income, depending somewhat on my savings but largely on the generosity of others (including the major generosity of the foundation that paid for my undergrad degree, allowing me to graduate from Harvard debt-free), I’m beginning to see firsthand the ways in which scarcity, that fundamental rule of the economics preached in Cambridge, truly is myth and perspective, not fact. I’m becoming what Khalil Gibran calls, in The Prophet, a “believer in life and the bounty of life”:
There are those who give little of the much which they have–and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.
And there are those who have little and give it all.
These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.
There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism.
And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;
They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.
Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.
At this very moment, for instance, I’m sitting on a big, lovely, suede couch in a big, lovely, 4th-floor condo in the big, lovely Embarcadero neighborhood, enjoying cranberry juice and Pellegrino, as well as the company of an adorable terrier-greyhound named Maxine. I’ve been invited to help myself to anything and everything in the condo, and to have friends and loved ones over during the week to partake, as well. And more importantly, I’ve been invited into the lives of a wonderful, loving, giving couple: Chris and Donna. How did I get all this?
I got it by giving. I gave of my love, support, and time to Lori, by taking care of Buster — overnight for a few days, and now once a week in the afternoons. There’s no business relationship, she hasn’t hired me or anything, but she’s a true friend and I’m happy to offer what I can. She, in turn, takes me out for breakfast and tea, gives writerly feedback and advice on my blogging efforts, and stocks the freezer with frozen raspberries (my favorite) when I’m sitting Buster through the night. And then, when she heard that her co-worker Chris was looking for someone to care for Maxine while she and Donna vacationed in Hawaii, Lori recommended me. Chris and Donna had Lori and me over for dinner, and the rest is history.
This is just one example, but there are so many blessings in my life right now that trace directly back through gifts. Gifts of donations sustain the Faithful Fools. Dana (generosity — through financial support and volunteer labor) sustains the East Bay Meditation Center. An exchange of kind letters (one of my favorite types of gift) planted seeds for my current relationship. My family (including my eighty-something-year-old Oma) footed the first semester’s bill for my Masters program at Goddard. Unpaid organizers continue investing their blood, sweat, and tears into building power for workers. Everywhere I look, it seems, people are giving.
And what makes gifts “erotic” as property, as opposed to rational exchange commodities, is that they connect life, rather than separating it. Gifts bind us to one another, with a web of invisible umbilical cords. Sure, they can be abused, offered with the intention of obligating someone else, creating a debt. But then they’re not really gifts at all — just exchanges in disguise.
Even this blog, I realize, is a gift in its own way. Offered freely to whomever might find it useful. And for me, that’s what makes it more than a diary, a scrapbook, or journal (none of which I was ever any good at keeping). In the giving there is real contact. And abundance, too. I’ve connected and reconnected with such lovely people through Kloncke, and many of you continue to offer me your own wonderful gifts through comments, emails, letters, conversations, and encouragement. Not to mention the greatest use of the gift: not reciprocation, but taking inspiration to give to someone else. I’m reminded of my friend Ashley, who watched my Stevie Wonder video blog way back in the day and decided to call her grandparents, just to say hello. I’ll always remember that, you know?
So thanks, y’all, as always. For reading, for commenting, for linking, passing on, and participating in what Hyde might call an erotic connection:
Gift exchange and erotic life are connected…The gift is an emanation of Eros, and therefore to speak of gifts that survive their use is to describe a natural fact: libido is not lost when it is given away. Eros never wastes his lovers. When we give ourselves in the spirit of that god, he does not leave off his attentions; it is only when we fall to calculation that he remains hidden and no body will satisfy. Satisfaction derives not merely from being filled but from being filled with a current that will not cease. With the gift, as in love, our satisfaction sets us at ease because we know that somehow its use at once assures its plenty. 22
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Happy Wednesday!
love,
katie
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Ps: special thanks to Kyle Maurer, one of my first true surprise-blog-reader friends, for your encouragement and warmth, and also for the Hojicha, which has warmed the bellies of many people in Fool’s Court and dwindled down to one last teapot’s worth. :)
Feels like I’m starting to fit in around here. Happy anniversary to the Faithful Fools! Twelve years ago today, they signed the papers to buy the grand old building at 234 Hyde that would become Fools’ Court. Bought it with only five hundred dollars between ’em. It’s the fool’s way. Trust the moment, and don’t take yourself too damn seriously.
Friends, there’s so much goodness in my life that I don’t get to communicate here, and wish that I could. Every day, so many small moments, big questions. But this particular goodness, I’m very happy to be able to share.
The gist: a week or so ago, Abby, one of the Faithful Fools, got bedbugs. Not a fun enterprise. And though, to her enduring credit, she handled it like a champ, it’s still an enormous challenge for anyone to face — both logistically and emotionally.
So at a time like this, what do Fools do? Band together to completely clean out her entire studio apartment, carpeted with what looked like five years of cat hair. (From a very cute kitty, I might add.) Host her and said kitty while the place got fumigated. And then, tonight, throw a laundry party at her local coin-op, Amybelle’s Wash N Dry. How’s that for (unpaid) co-worker camaraderie?
Any of y’all seen Bagdad Cafe? I watched it last night with some work friends and fell somewhat in love. Everything about the film is just a little bit off, a little bit oblique, with touches of camp. To me it felt like a good short story: untidy characters; rich, indelible, lyrical images; a haunting setting that implies more than it reveals. Plus we all laughed and laughed.
And this, the theme song of the soundtrack, will stay with me for a long time.
Kloncke 