Fruits of the Practice
Earth
New To The Blogroll
Check out two dope thinkers, writers, artists, community builders, system challengers, and dear friends of mine:
cnekez at to live (def):
and Crunch at …or does it explode?
Read, relish, engage, and benefit. And have a good Thursday, y’all.
(Tech) Independence Day
Shooting stars, camping out, mosquito-bite constellations, redwood cathedrals, waterfalls, 85 degrees, epic vistas, winding roads, meditation. Partnership.
And independence from the tyrannical rule of gadget addictions. ;)
On Not Writing For A Minute
Friends! The lucky spell continues. I was fortunate enough to go take a hike on Wednesday with Ryan. A recurring joke from me along the trail: Can I borrow your internet phone to check Feministe comments?
But really, as much as I love spending upwards of 8 hours a day engrossed in writing and reading, it’s especially important at those times to be able to unplug, step away, and reconnect with life around me. (Thanks for that reminder, Wisdom 2.0.)
What a beautiful land I’m living in, and how grateful I am to be able to witness it.
A Few More From Angel Island
Busy day today: accompanying a new friend, a Guatemalan woman with two kids, 7 and 13, to set up her CalWorks (food stamps, medical, and general assistance for people with children). Then, my friend Lea is coming through SFO with a 10-hour layover, so we’ll get to hang out in the city a bit. Won’t make it to Angel Island, so this post ain’t too topical, but I just thought I’d share some more of the photos from a couple weeks back.
Workin on a couple of longer pieces, too, so stay tuned. Happy Wednesday!
Passage
This plant lives on Angel Island. It’s everywhere on Angel Island. And other places in Northern California, I’m sure.
Ryan and I fell for it pretty hard when we ferried over to the island for a day hike and picnic on Saturday. We’re no botanists, but tried to identify different stages of its very colorful life cycle. (First three photos by him; last one by me.)
Because I met this plant on Angel Island, its associations in my mind will be bittersweet: lovely but linked to the sadness of life and death that happened there. Not only Native people exterminated, but also hundreds of thousands of immigrants — mostly Chinese, but also from Eastern Europe, Japan, and Central and South America — criminalized under a racist immigration system (sound familiar?); locked up and detained for weeks, months, or years; looking out the windows and watching the seasons change.
The passage of time reflected in this gorgeous, morphing, splendidly named “Great Quaking Grass” (Briza maxima) takes on new meaning in light of the poems carved in Chinese calligraphy into the detention barracks’ redwood walls.
Clouds and hills all around, a single fresh color
Time slips away and cannot be recaptured
Although the feeling of spring is everywhere
How can we fulfill our heartfelt wish?
More Angel Island poems here.
Mission Pie with Ryan
Mission Pie is the best kind of pie shop. A bright, airy café at 25th and Mission, filled with sweets and savories, operating on all kinds of good-for-the-community-and-environment bases. Ryan and I met there yesterday to do some work: I was editing a video blog, and 18 hours later it’s still not finished but we got a sweet little photo story out of the deal. I didn’t notice until uploading the pictures that they’re all in primary colors. A fine, bright afternoon. And who can resist that smile, huh?
Free Farm Down The Street
The Free Farm lives on Gough and Eddy, five blocks down from our home at Faithful Fools. It’s being built on a vacant lot where a big church burned down fifteen years ago. The first plantings happened only a few months after I arrived at the Fools, if I remember right. Welcome ministry, an anti-poverty group up on Sacramento Street, has spearheaded the community project, and borrowed our Fools van on a few occasions to haul manure and mural installations. In short, I feel a heart connection to this effort and its facilitators, who are close friends of the Fools and deeply Foolish themselves, in many respects. Reverend Megan Roher, head of Welcome, has made a number of FF street retreats. She is legendary for her ability to rake in the busking dough, singing and performing in the subway stations.
Last Wednesday, a brief visit to the Free Farm — with its beautiful volunteer growers, homed and homeless, some inebriated, all open-hearted — proved just what I needed to kick-start a wondrous afternoon.
Anchoring Chromatically
When I was about ten, my very favorite outdoor colorscape was a kind of calm, rich, horizontal trio of soft gray, dark brown, and brilliant green. You know how we associate scent with memories? Color works the same way for me (and probably for many of you, too). One or two shades can evoke a whole time and place and mode of being. Clay red and robin’s-egg blue bring me back to a wet walk through a southern Indian suburb. Rusty orange is the color of Barcelona. And yellow is the color of my bedroom: for nearly a decade, whenever and wherever I’ve been able to paint my walls, they’ve always turned out some kind of buttercup or saffron.
Yesterday I reconnected with color thanks to some more helpful tips from Soren Gordhamer’s book Wisdom 2.0. He says that in order to take a real break from computer work, we should try to (a) reduce information intake, (b) breathe deeply, (c) go outside (important one for me to remember!), (d) move around, and (e) keep communication to a minimum (147-148). So we should not, for example, read an article or catch up on a webcomic or play a computer game or text a lover or watch a TV show, even for fun. The most effective resting happens when we relax our discursive mind altogether, and anchor ourselves in experiences beyond screens and words.
With that in mind, I decided that instead of rushing to take the bus home and return to my reading, I would take my camera and meander around the Western Addition on my way back to the Tenderloin.
Friends On Friday
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!
And have a fantastic weekend.
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love,
katie
Kloncke 