All photos from demo: some taken by me, others taken by friends.
When I heard of the call raised In Oakland, California, to “Occupy the Prisons,” I gasped. It was not an especially radical call, but it was right on time.
As the carload of us walks back along the two-lane road toward the parking area, leaving a crowd of 500 or so outside the east gate of San Quentin, clusters of military-looking guards stud the hills above us, watching through sunglasses. We’re tired from walking and standing for a few hours. I’m feeling cranky, and a little disappointed. What was I expecting? Maybe the Occupy/Decolonize events have spoiled me with their frequent snake marches and militant ruckus-making. Shutting down banks; shutting down ports; attempting to take empty buildings for community use. Being near San Quentin (my first time) has me itching to tear down a wall or two.
If you’re dorky like me, you might enjoy mapping ideas and authors onto foamcore, and adding origami balloons just for kicks.
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Housemate Aneeta and I just began mapping a few days ago. Spatial funtimes with Socially Engaged Buddhism for me; radical history timeline for her (starting with themes of Palestine and capitalism). Maybe soon she’ll give me permission to post some photos of her map.
At this stage, these are seedling projects. I hope to be conversing with my map for the next year or so. We’ll check back in after a little while, and you can see how it changes and grows!
Also, I’m always on the lookout for great books, articles, videos, art, etc. about Socially Engaged Buddhism (loosely defined), so if you got ’em, send ’em my way plz!
About halfway through residency, the above object appeared on the sink of the righthand hallway bathroom.
At first I dismissed it on grounds of New-Age typography. The fortune-cookie-style strip; the Comic-Sans-ish font; the capitalizing of every word in a sentence. Semi-watercolor background. Like every label of every decontextualized crystal, healing oil, or incense stick in Berkeley. Not to mention the spiral of prayer beads, disembodied and ornamental, like a hippy-fied Tiffany’s ad.
But a couple days later, I realized that I kind of agreed with the message. I’ve often thought it would be wise to chart one’s well-being, day by day, in order to study and understand emergent patterns over weeks and months. Visually relate to those ups and downs that seem at the time like all-too-fleeting highs and everlasting throes. Get to know the middle ground, too. Vicissitudes. Know what I mean?
Maybe it’s time for a new chart project. Thanks to whoever left this on the sink!
By the way, anyone got insight into the prayer beads, and how they might relate to “measuring happiness?” My impression was that they’re used for counting prayers, which seems different.
How do you greet someone who’s just spent nine days not making a sound?
Our housemate Aneeta (who, incidentally, also authors the simple, generous, deeply healing, and truth-tellingly politicized dharma blog In The Process of Being) returns today from her first residential meditation retreat. In my experience, though each time is different, emerging from the womb-crucible of the meditation center has usually felt giddy and tender, and I’m amazed at how much effort is required just to speak. I feel it in my vocal chords. Each word, laugh, or murmur of assent demands attention in order to be born.
So as much as I’m looking forward to hearing all about her experience, I don’t want to be all like, Come verbalize with me!!! the second she walks in.
Frosting and sprinkles, then, to ease the initial homecoming.
I needed to know how to make my own shelves, so this weekend while I visited my parents, I asked my mom. My mom knows how to make things; she’s comfortable with studfinders, drills, all that basic and slightly-above-basic stuff. Her dad, my Opa, was a mechanic, which literally saved his life. In the concentration camp, during the war, he knew how to make things, and how to fix things. He was valuable, so they didn’t kill him.
When I feel anxious, making things helps to calm and steady me. Cooking, sewing, hammering, measuring. Adjusting and correcting. It’s not even about doing it well (some things I’m good at; others I’m not), but there’s a wonderful feeling of becoming absorbed in a project for hours and hours.
So today, with my mom’s instructions and some friendly help from the landlord’s husband, this new mini-pantry came together. Highly imperfect, construction-wise, but I love it anyway.
It's a little hard to see, but the bubble in the center indicates that the shelves are level. I was so proud that I just left the level on there for like three days, just gazing happily at it from time to time.______
Yesterday I watched Ella once again engage her Sisyphusean toy: a tempting pink ball encased inside a large plastic donut, with side-holes just large enough to accommodate a grasping paw.
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Suddenly I wondered: is the ball’s ungettability upsetting to Ella, or does it just prolong the pleasure of the chase? In other words, does this game more closely resemble tanha, the craving that leads to suffering, or simply the jouissance of good old healthy exercise?
A few fotos from Wednesday: most from my own vantage point (between holding banners, wielding a bullhorn, and passing out flyers . . .) and a few from my friend Cat during the march on Bank of America.
Yesterday, before my eyes, Oakland turned a corner. A successful general strike (or, as Clarence Thomas of the ILWU Longshoremen’s union put it, “the closest thing this generation has seen,”) shut down capital and commerce around the Town, including the fifth largest port in the nation. (And, as I understand it, the port workers went home with pay!)
Busy, busy, busy. Good times. Exciting times. Overwhelming times.
Don’t have many words at the moment; feeling kinda worn out from an East Bay Solidarity Network picket this evening, plus helping a few friends move over the past couple days.
But I can’t let tomorrow’s historic event go without some autobiographical comment! Lol.
So here’s a visual offering of some of the beauty I’ve seen at the #occupy encampments in Oakland and Seattle. (I’ve briefly visited SF’s spot, too, but it was nighttime and my camera takes crappy photos at night.)
These are small-scale, low-key views, observed during the day when not too much was going on: so for the dramatic pics of the GA crowds, or OPD tear gas, or community art made out of torn-down fences, you’ll have to check the news or your favorite political Facebook friend’s feed. :)
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Since these photos were taken, Oakland’s encampment has been raided, destroyed, and rebuilt. People have been severely injured (though thankfully not killed) by OPD’s “crowd control” methods, the aggressiveness of which reflects and extends their typical, too often lethal aggression in Oakland’s poor Black and brown communities.
And since these photos were taken, thousands of Oaklanders have taken to the streets, participated in General Assemblies, and worked hard to build support for tomorrow’s General Strike. Solidarity demonstrations have cropped up as far away as Israel and Egypt. And tomorrow, workers will leave work, students will leave school, and we will remind the 1% (and remind ourselves) that WE are the ones who generate the wealth of billionaires, and WE — all of us — deserve food, water, clothing, shelter, clean air, medicine, childcare, freedom from police, deportation, and military terror, and total democratic control over the places we live and work every day. The time for asking for these things is over. It’s time to take them.
That’s all for now, friends. See you in the streets!
Kloncke 