Friends

Visits From Good People Are The Best

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henry hangout

for years and years, by skype and screen

a friendship did maintain its sheen

 
 

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’til reunion found its time

out in california climes

 
 

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telling stories, counting rings

catching up on all the things

 
 

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 re-exploring classic texts

 
 

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taking up arboreal nests

 
 

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celebrating impish moods

 
 

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eating lots of tasty foods

 
 

henry new orleans

from way, way back in new orleans

a friendship has maintained its sheen.

 

text: On Violence by Frantz Fanon (from Wretched of the Earth)

food: eggplant by Lauren

friend: Henry Mills, no stranger to this blog

A Preacher. A Poet. A Manta Revolutionary.

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LIANNE_LA_HAVAS_-1
Okay, I may be a little obsessed with Lianne. But to be fair, so is Prince (yes, Prince), who called her to say congratulations.

Women and the genius things they make and do. Here are just a few.

I am not a Christian, so to my ears this recorded sermon by my friend Nichola sounded more like an arahant (enlightened one) elucidating the teachings of the Buddha. On this very night your life will be taken — by endless, cavernous craving. Tanha. I knew Nichola was brilliant, a student of Jesus, James Baldwin, and other pretty okay characters, but damn, I don’t think I had ever heard her preach before. At the time I was at a friend’s place in San Francisco, and once I started listening I was so captivated that I stayed huddled on the living room couch, rudely ignored my friend-hosts  while they tested the day’s crock-pot soup in the kitchen. (That craving, that need, even for wisdom — like she says at the pulpit, it’ll make you ignore your loved ones if you’re not careful.)

I am not a poet, nor a scholar, really, but I know what I like.  What makes me pause from internet “snacking” (a term I learned from web marketing experts studying cyber-habit-patterns) to recollect my breath.  My friend Kim, on the other hand, is a scholar and poet and artist, and thank goodness.  That piece will stay with me — and don’t miss the video she links to, minutes 3:45 to 7:54.

I am trying to become a revolutionary, but it’s less simple than it sounds, though thankfully also less cult-y (so far).  In this arena, mother and self-identified manta-militant Berta will remain unlinked, as she is best experienced off the Internet, but she has been no less crucial to my week and my spirit.  Berta torpedoes through this fearsome world with a cheerful pragmatism, a humble, no-bullshit incandescence.  She makes being a revolutionary seem like the only sensible thing one could do with one’s life — and vows, smiling, to keep at it til the day she dies.  I believe her.

And then there’s Lianne, who I mentioned earlier, and cannot stop listening to.

 

 

Birthday Cake from the Comrades

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birthday cake
Ginger-chocolate cake made by Becca, Eliana, and Roxy

I won’t talk about my birthday, but I will talk about James Baldwin.  Or, really, listen to him.

It is a pity that [Eldridge Cleaver and I] won’t, probably, ever have the time to attempt to define once more the relationship of the odd and disreputable artist to the odd and disreputable revolutionary; for the revolutionary, however odd, is rarely disreputable in the same way that the artist can be.  These two seem doomed to stand forever at an odd and rather uncomfortable angle to each other, and they both stand at a sharp and not always comfortable angle to the people they both, in their different fashions, hope to serve.  But I think it is just as well to remember that the people are one mystery and that the person is another.  Though I know what a very bitter and delicate and dangerous conundrum this is, it seems to me that a failure to respect the person so dangerously limits one’s perception of the people that one risks betraying them and oneself, either by sinking to the apathy of cynical disappointment, or rising to the rage of knowing, better than the people do, what the people want.

Because it’s my birthday week and I do what I want, I’d like to argue for a broad definition of “artist” that includes those of us interested in wisdom. (Baldwin, as an artist, certainly was.)  Which helps explain, maybe, some of the awkwardness and contradictions in the Buddhist-Marxist combo.  One operates at the level of the person (or the non-self, existence, but framed in an individualistic fashion that was revolutionary at the time of the Buddha’s teaching), while the other concerns itself with the people.

Perhaps a similar tension also underlies the queasy slipperiness of identity politics — or identity, period.  “Identity” (gender, race, ability, sexuality, etc.) is at once intensely personal, emotional, and subjective (our stories), and simultaneously collective, socially and historically determined (our position).  I’ve written about this paradox before; maybe an unsurprising fixation for a mixed girl. ;)

My bad, friends: this was supposed to be a birthday post!  I lead an extremely fortunate life amidst a blessed contagion of creativity and caring from those around me.  No idea how we’re going to reconcile the person and the people, but I’m lucky to find myself in community that wants to try.

Thanks to everyone for the bornday love.  And deliciousness!

Protecting Ourselves From Our Stories

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Morihei Ueshiba
Morihei Ueshiba, founder of the Japanese martial art form aikido, which aims to let practitioners defend themselves while also protecting their attacker from injury.

On March 1st, exactly one year after R and I broke up, I drove to his house to pick up one last smattering of my belongings, left out on the porch for me in a Trader Joe’s brown paper bag. Anticipating that it might be difficult and I might get sad, I had asked a good friend to come with me. And though I did feel nervous and sad, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Right on top of the pile there was a favorite belt that I’d been missing for like two years! When R and I were still together I lightweight hounded him about that belt — was convinced I’d somehow left it at his parents’ house. Don’t know where he ended up finding it, but I was glad to have it back, and as my friend and I drove away from his street, I thought I felt okay.

Still, the bag sat at the door of my closet, untouched, for a long time.

Again, though, once I finally screwed up the courage to go through it, it wasn’t so horrible. A swirl of memories: pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. A lot of the stuff wasn’t mine, but some of it was. Pillowcase. (Useful!) Books. (Beloved!) The scarf on the header image of this blog. (Nostalgic!) And oh, what’s this? I recognized a notecard, some stationery of mine.

It was the birthday card I had written to R last year.

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A Love Song For Valentine’s Day After A Long Flight

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Sometimes when you get home after a day of airplane travel, haggard and tired, you’re still buoyed up by a song.

“Blame It On My Youth” I learned just yesterday, thanks to my friend and award-winning jazz musician Kavita Shah, who just released her debut album featuring Lionel Loueke (one of my favorites!), and whose version of this tune (she arranged it herself) is just gorgeous.

 
Check out more of Kavita’s amazing work, and give a love song to yourself today, some kinda way!

Why Today Was A Win

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1. host-friends took me hiking in snowy wilderness preserve and helped me stay upright despite my hazardous “fake snowboots.” (DKNY, soles like sea glass, years-ago gift from california mom worried about cambridge winters.)

tottering along, i think of ani difranco:

when i look down
i just miss all the good stuff.
when i look up
i trip over things.

but i don’t mind looking down, concentrating on not falling. it’s a walking meditation, a game of balance punctuated by laughter, just as good a time as any.

 
2. after three days and four nights snowed in with them, host-friends are still not sick of me. he calls me “honey;” she shows me how to use a dip stick. they both teach me about art. their lovely house is full of tales; the soot of courage sticks to the walls. this couple is sharp and bright, with a base of warmth (like host-friend’s diced vidalia onions and cilantro on top of our paprika-and-pepper black bean stew).

this morning host-friend Dana lightly cursed her empty bottle of insulin (type 1 diabetic). brightly, as if on cue, Victor took the refrigerated reserve and warmed it in between his palms. “if it goes into your body cold, it hurts,” Dana tells me.

 
3. reading well-historicized analysis (a draft, a sapling) of revolutionary organizing methods, thoughtfully written in criticism and kindness. joyful joyful. makes me think hard; makes me grateful for people with whom to think and with whom to Do — people with whom to truly attempt. i read in my host-friends’ library nook, on a great lilypad of a chair.

 
4. weeks of dry, indoor-heated air have given me lips of eucalyptus bark. host-friend Dana gifted me a stick of raspberry balm from the amazing goodie basket that she keeps stocked in her guest room, but i was already so far gone that the stuff didn’t do much good. today, however, revealed a godsend tube of medicated blistex hidden between couch cushions.

 
5. brief moment of anonymous public crying, at a cafe. output salt of tears helps to balance input salt of delicious poutine (made vegetarian with butternut squash gravy). anonymous public crying makes me feel old and young at the same time.