Movement

Friends, Meet Henry Mills.

kloncke5 Comments

henry frogazoomOh boy.  Oh boy, oh boy.  You know those reflex tests where the doctor taps your knee and you can’t help but kick?  Or if you’re asleep and someone pinches your nose shut, you can’t help but open your mouth?  Thinking about Henry Mills is kinda like that for me: no matter what, a smile just comes.

As Beyoncé Knowles once said (yes, seriously), “You are who you’re around.  If I don’t want to be like you, then I don’t want to be around you.”  The positive side of that aphorism: surround yourself with people who not only impress you, but also inspire you.

Henry and I met in the summer of 2006, volunteering in New Orleans with the Common Ground Collective.  I still can’t believe my luck in running into him.  Henry is the kind of person you want to be around.  Especially in the following situations:

> walking in a quiet park or garden

> cartwheeling in the rain

> getting juggling lessons in your Uncle John’s basement

> reading children’s stories aloud in a giant used bookstore

> brewing ginger tea

> mourning a loss

> driving in a fantastic lightning storm

> gettin’ down at a great show

> making your own great show

Another great situation to share with Henry (and I hope he won’t mind my saying this) is a kissing situation.  Continue reading →

Writing Letters

kloncke6 Comments

This summer, inspired by a couple of friends, and in the spirit of making things with my own hands, I started writing letters.  When was the last time you wrote one of those?  I hadn’t done it for as long as I could remember — maybe since summer camp — but the process immediately clicked with me.  An expression of love, a mode of communication, artistic playtime, and an excuse to buy stamps.  There’s a sense of accomplishment, intrigue and nostalgia when you slip an envelope into the mailbox.

From the beginning I was very ambitious.  I had read somewhere that Einstein wrote an average of one letter per day.  I aimed to write one per week.  I wanted to decorate them with stamps and stickers, illustrate them with pencil drawings — the whole works. I dutifully studied the advice (sage and often uproarious, if a bit anachronistic) of Lewis Carroll, who, for instance, offers guidance on how to begin a letter:

Continue reading →

Family In Gaza

klonckeLeave a comment

One of my roommates, Noa, one of the people I care for most in the world, spent her childhood summers with family in Tel Aviv, Israel.  When I hear fireworks, she hears bombs.  When I hear lightning storms, she hears explosives.  I can never understand what it’s like to grow up where she did.  To love a family that remains there, a family both culpable and vulnerable.  Still, I know that Noa’s heart is heavy, like mine, at the news of today’s invasion, and for the people killed.  They are also family; they are also loved.

Below is an email from someone I don’t know, forwarded by my dear, wonderful friend Henry Mills (Introduction forthcoming). There’s such a feeling in it of familial loss and heartache, mourning the dead and calling the living to action.

I have resisted writing emails like this for so long, emails to tell people what they already know and feel.
I woke up this morning to news from my family about 200 people killed in Gaza overnight in raids, and clashes happening right now in Ramallah.
I could say, these are two hundred people that had lives, lists of places to visit before they die or a plan for a better life, even a TV show they have been wanting to follow till the end, but it doesn’t matter.

All I can think about, are all of those people that are still alive. Continue reading →

A Word About de Blog: Or, A Reality-Based Community

kloncke3 Comments

Cyberspace: “A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators…”

–William Gibson, Neuromancer

As I wrote in an email introducing the Kloncke project (an email now appended to the first post — and thanks again to everyone who wrote me back!), for the last half a year I have been running full speed ahead in the opposite direction of all things blogospheric.  The “consensual hallucinations” that had once captivated me, that had held such promise, suddenly felt hollow.  Bankrupt.  Not only did they fail to build the kind of physical human community I wanted — they also seemed to corrode the ones I already had.

But, as George Mumford says, there’s no failure: only feedback.  So I’ve changed my aims and altered my expectations.  Before, it was about informing, exposing, debating.  A blog was a boxing ring.  Or a soapbox.  Or an echo chamber.  Now, I want to try something different, less grand, and maybe implausible.  A hallucination that helps to ground us in reality. Continue reading →