Queerly Complex

The Tale of Amar

2011-12-30T01:38:00.000-08:00

Once there was an old, gray Mutt with a large bushy white mustache and black feet named Amar. Amar was floating on a boat made of reeds on a sea of charcoal and ash. He magically appeared there one Friday afternoon after eating some black and white mushrooms that had bright red hairs growing out of its cap. They tasted like the earth and smelled like the morning dew.

He found the mushrooms on the side of the road after roaming in mourning for almost a week. You see, Amar had lost his companion Tally, a runt of a Raccoon, a week ago Thursday night, and he was now the last Animal on earth.

Any other day, Amar would not have eaten those mushrooms, but today he was grief stricken and desperate, so he ate them hoping to forget. Still, as he swallowed he could only think of Tally: the way he clamored up fences, the way he smiled when eating, the way he always had a tale to tell.

Full and exhausted, Amar slept. He woke up floating on the ash and charcoal sea with dreams like white dandelion seeds carried by a breeze dancing above his head. He could not be bothered by those dreams because he knew none of them could come true for his biggest dream was the return of Animals and his most pressing dream was to bring Tally back to life. Dreaming was hopeless; it meant the impossible. He preferred to sleep.

And, sleep he did. The gentle rocking of the charcoal waves lulled Amar into a deep black slumber. As he rocked in his reed boat, his left paw fell over the side and touched the ash sea. His black slumber erupted with memories of the First Animals.

Diona and Mirwais were the First Animals from which all else were created. Diona was an elephantine ant with a large, extended abdomen, and Mirwais was a monstrous onyx jackal whose head was larger than the Sphinx. Diona and Mirwais roamed the earth as it still formed. Magma did not burn them; nitrogen did not freeze them. They were great and more powerful than god, but gods they were not. The were, simply, the First Animals.

With each step they took, mass solidified beneath their feet. They wandered in complete silence until the earth was a large desolate rock. Nothing grew on its surface and its atmosphere was inhospitable to anything or anyone one other than Diona and Mirwais.

Upon seeing the desolation, Diona sighed and created the First Wind. It traveled the world picking up loose debris and dust, the tiny particles not forged in the footprints of the Animals. The debris and dust assaulted the earth forming high mountains and deep canyons.

Mirwais overjoyed by the frenzy of formation laughed boisterously. His laughter morphed into a wild tempest. Blue-gray clouds soon blanketed the earth. Then, lightning lit up the entire sky, which bore thunder. It was the First Music of the world, and it made Diona and Mirwais dance.

As they danced, vast deserts and wide valleys formed. The earth was finally beginning to take shape the way we know it today. Still water and life and language were missing.

Diona and Mirwais danced for what seemed like centuries until they were finally so tired they tumbled to the ground and fell asleep. And they dreamt the First Dream.

Diona was not just an Ant; she was the keeper of all things on and beneath the Earth. Her extended abdomen undulated as if something grew inside her. She was a radiant bronze, glowing like a sun and just as hot. Everything she touched melted until she found herself in the exact center of the Earth.

Mirwais was more than a Jackal; he was the gatekeeper of the borderland between the heavens and Earth. His obsidian fur sparkled like a galaxy. He grew and grew and grew until he completely surrounded the Earth creating the night sky.

Mirwais and Diona had not known loneliness for they had always been together. Now that they were apart it caused the First Sorrow.

The Jackal cried until all his life fell to the Earth as rain. The inconsolable Ant, driven to madness by the separation, tore open her abdomen. Out poured the Second Animals.

The death in their Dream was not a dream. Rather it was their transfiguration, and it became the First Memory.

Amar witnessed it all as he slept in his reed boat, his paw lightly skimming the ash sea. As he slept, he, too, cried. The death of Tally was but an echo of the First Sorrow. It overwhelmed his entire body, and his paw in response slipped deeper into the ash sea.

Another memory flooded Amar.

Mira was a Second Animal, and she looked like a Great Panda except tufts of bright red fur grew between her claws. The tufts looked almost like paintbrushes -- some coming to a fine point and others flat and wide.

She spent most of her days quietly chewing bamboo observing the world around her. Mira loved the way the sun, wind, and bamboo brought the forest to life through light and shadow. She loved their dance.

Sometimes, when the wind blew from the east, she heard echoes of the First Memory. She heard it not in words but as the tickling of her bright red tufts. The breeze caught inbetween her toes, and she found herself lifting her front paws to the air. Then, as if someone else took hold, she painted the air and watched the story of Diona and Mirwais unfold before he.

A longing grew deep inside Mira that mirrored the First Sorrow. She wanted a companion. She no longer wanted to be alone.

One late afternoon when the sun was about to kiss the horizon, the air grew bitter cold and the earth warmed beneath Mira's paws. And while Mira knew she needed to endlessly chew bamboo for her body demanded its daily nourishment, all she wanted was to hibernate, to curl up in a cave and let winter pass.

The sun went to sleep and the first star appeared. It twinkled bright red the same as the tufts on her paws, and it called to her. She followed it all night across a wide, turbulent river and up a perilous precipice until she was on top of a mountain covered in hard, crisp snow.

Mira had never climbed the mountain though she had seen it many times on the Northern horizon. Now that she was on top she forgot the bright red star and looked out over the valley below. She could barely make out her bamboo home in the distance, and she felt a longing for her homeland sprout. She watched the sun rise turning the black sky a deep violet, then navy then ultramarine and periwinkle until finally the sun was high in the azure sky.

Mira hadn't noticed her weariness and hunger mushroom as she followed the bright red star, but in the crispness of day it was impossible to ignore. Her belly rumbled and her eyes itched. There was no bamboo on the top of the mountain, and she hadn't the strength to climb back down. So she set off to find a place to sleep.

She wandered all day finding nothing. In fact, Mira had tried laying down in the snow, but as she closed her eyes waiting for the final slumber the wind visited her bright red tufts and jostled her awake.

The sun set bringing an even more bitter cold and a more desolate darkness. Mire was no longer weary; she was frantic and desperate. Her head turned furiously hoping to catch a glimpse of the bright red star of some other hope. That is when she noticed a flicker in the north. She ran and ran and ran towards that flicker until she buckled from the weight of her laborious breathing. The cold enwrapped her and turned her bones to ice. As she lifted her head for what she thought was surely her last breath, she saw a glowing cave in front of her.

With every last ounce of life, she crawled into the cave. A fire and bamboo greeted her. Grateful she ate. Then, she slept.

In her dreams, the Ant and the Jackal visited Mira. They showed her in minute detail every moment of their creation and death. What once had been whispers carried on the wind and afterimages painted in the air was now solid and clear. And the First Sorrow, which had only been but a mirror, was now physical and real.

When she woke, the fire still glowed. She watched the shadows dance on the walls, and she longed like she had never before longed for the dance of bamboo, sun, and wind. It was then that Mira knew the bamboo forest was her companion, and she also knew she would never see it again. This was the Second Sorrow.

The fire died leaving behind soot and charcoal and one tiny wisp of smoke. The wisp tickled Mira's bright red tufts and pulled her to the entrance of the cave. There in front of her was a large pool of water, and she knew exactly what to do.

Mire mixed the water and soot making the First Paint. She used her bright red tufts as the brushes she knew they were and painted the walls of the cave with images of the First Memory and the First Sorrow. When all the walls were covered and she had no more life left to give, Mira curled up in the center of the cave and welcomed her final sleep. Thus, from Mira was the First Language born carrying with it all the beauty of the Second Sorrow.

The sorrows poured form Amar's eyes and formed as a pool in his reed boat. The pool lapped Amar's back paws and woke him. He did not remember where he was or how he got there. He could only think about Mirwais and Diona and Mira. Images and emotions whorled inside him making him dizzy and the rocking of the reed boat was no longer lulling; it was nauseating.

It made him sleepy, sleepier than he was before. Amar collapsed over the side of the boat and his front paws fell deep into the ash and charcoal sea. His bushy white mustache skimmed its surface.

Another memory engulfed hum as flames consume gasoline. This time it was not of some distant history. It was of Tally.

Tally traversed a glowing white field of snow towards a looming mountain range in the South as if called by it. His diminutive frame made it seem as if he was floating instead of walking. He didn't even leave any footprints.

Tally never paused. He did not stop to take in the marvels of the snow-covered land. He did not stop when he wolves howled their hunger nearby. He did not stop when the cold bit his toes and nose causing them to crack. Tally had a singular focus of which nothing could distract: the mountain.

The sun set and rose six times, and still Tally pressed onward never eating and never sleeping until finally the steep cliffs rose before him. Then, Tally flew. He flew with the speed of the wind up the mountain. At the top, a cave greeted him.

He quietly and quickly entered the cave.

In the middle of the cave grew the most glorious mushrooms. They were black and white with bright red hairs that looked like the bristles of a sable paint brush grew out of its cap. And they emanated the most glorious warming bronze light, which illuminated and brought to life the paintings that decorated the cave walls. Tally was mesmerized.

Before him unfolded the tale of the First Animals and the First Sorrow. Never before had he witnessed the power of the First Language, and it now made all words seem inconsequential and insignificant. It was as if a veil had been lifted from his eyes and he could finally see the world as it is not as it is perceived.

He immediately wanted to share this experience with his companion, Amar. But Amar was a whole world away. Tally knew he could never describe this beauty, this sorrow. It could only be lived.

Then, as if a chorus rode on the wind and rose from the mushrooms, a song filled the cave.

Tally born of the morning dew
the First Memory is shared with you
for as one of the last of our kind
you must preserve it for all time.
We wish not to fade from history.
Thus, take with you the First Memory.

Tally gathered the mushrooms and held them tight to his chest. The bronze light faded and so too did the First Memory.

Suddenly, Tally was surrounded by a blackness that was more than just the absence of light. It was a tangible blackness that gripped his heart and cause the deepest sorrow he had ever known. In that despair, he whispered, "Amar, where are you?"

The wind heard his whisper and rushed to his aid. It lifted Tally and carried him back to his home. There it laid him down, and Tally slept.

The next morning, Tally was covered in dew still holding the mushrooms close to his chest. He recalled a dream about a mountain and a cave covered in magnificent paintings. There was a story to share, he remembered, a story that must be told, but the details were all so fuzzy.

Groggy and still clutching the mushrooms, he rose. He rushed off to find Amar careless of the world around him. As he crossed a busy street, a silver car struck him dead. His limp body tumbled over itself until it was on the side of the road. His arms still clung to the mushroom, which now were covered by his corpse.

"Noooo!!!" Screamed Amar and he shook himself awake. Gone was the reed boat and charcoal and ash sea. Gone were the dreams dancing like white dandelion seeds on the gentle breeze. Gone was Tally. There was only Amar laying on the side of the road.

Bright red mushroom spores covered Amar's black paws and looked like a galaxy. As the spores whirled like dervishes each memory that had visited Amar as a dream replayed itself. Mirwais and Diona. Mira. Tally. Over and over and over again. Amar wept.

It was thus that the Third Sorrow was born.

When Amar had shed his final tear, he finally understood who he was. He was the avatar of the First Animals and the herald of the First Memory.

Amar to this day wanders the Earth telling the tales of "Diona and Mirwas", of "Mira and the Cave", of "Tally and the Mushrooms" to anyone who will listen. In fact, he shared it with me on the night of the full moon in December 2011. I found a black and white mushroom capped with fine bright red hairs growing in my backyard. It called to be eaten, and eat it I did.

I fell asleep and witnessed the First Memory unfold. The next morning I woke covered in dew.

And this...? This is but my humble attempt to put into words, which are so inadequate, the Tale of Amar.

This Place of Red Bricks and Aging Mortar

2011-11-24T12:11:00.001-08:00

This piece is inspired by two things. First, I am working with OutLook Theater Project on exploring the intersection of faith and the queer community with a (hopeful) partner in San Jose. This is project is inspiring me to explore the edges of darkness: a space where light finds itself trapped. To me, it is in these spaces in particular where one witnesses the true power of faith.

The second thing that inspired this was the passing of my friend Ted. Now, it is kind of misnomer to say Ted was a friend. Rather, he was an acquaintance. But upon his passing, something changed. I'm not quite sure what, but his death and the fuzzy details surrounding his murder in Juarez, Mexico, made me think of him differently and dearly. Ted was a writer, conflicted, in agony, and loved. It is clear he was loved so very, very much. I'm not quite sure he new exactly how much. He was funny that way. He always loved the exaggeration, desperation, and creation of stories. That was his life. And many times it was not the life that others saw of him. There was a beautiful and tragic disconnect between his world and ours.

So...this story is to faith, queers, and Ted. Long live the exaggeration, desperation, and creation of stories.

****
It came to me like a dream comes to you in the daylight: hazy, askew, and intangible. The longing that I felt for what had been lost so long ago drained as quickly as pasta water through a colander. I was left only with that longing clinging desperately to self. The majority wasn't there any more, and what remained was integral to perfectly cooked farfalle. It was that explosion of salt and liquid as you bit into it that I loved. I never wanted it to go away fearful that when it did nothing would be left but the residue of my memory.

I happened upon this place -- this building with its red brick from centuries ago held together by crumbling mortar lazily applied -- as I wandered the streets at three in the morning. The stained glass broken cut my hand as I crawled through St. James the Less high on hopeful hallucinations of more saints and sinners. I don't know what compelled me to relieve myself at the abandoned shrine to Madonna the Blue. It felt good to just let go. I did so again in a corner with St. Peter staring emotionlessly at me from above with his slightly condemning expression only a repressed artist could conjure.

This place -- this place of religion and history and collected memories and whispers -- spoke not in a language understood. I knew it spoke only by the tickle in my lungs as I inhaled from the bottle of poppers I keep in my breast pocket whenever I need a rush. The brain cells died, and I was closer to this god, a god I never wanted to be close to. I knew this god well. It visited me as a specter of childhood and phobia constantly preying on my need for trust. I trust only that which I ingest or inhale. Communion was always metaphysical.

There I laid splayed like a sacrifice on the marble alar to gods renamed. There I was staring at the crucifix suspended by rusted chains ready to break from time and neglect. There I was readying and steadying myself for it. The breath held in place by hand on chest and belt choking neck, I came: a spasm; then paroxysm; then nothing. There was no wetness or relief or joy or guilt. There was only that longing. Then that residue. Finally, always finally, nothing.

He watched from the shadows fearful that his desperate eyes would be recognized as desperation. He was like the neighborhood feral cat: always fed and loved, always ravishingly hungry and distrustful, always conflicted. I saw him only by reflected light off of bared teeth. They were all silver. Or steel. Or maybe lead. He was one of those creatures left in alleys after society has used them. He can only be seen out of corners of eyes; can only be heard though manic whispers. Yet he is there -- will always be there -- even when his body transcends this world. He is captured by our fear.

I know him intimately even though we've yet to speak or acknowledge each other's existence here in this place that once was refuge for the faithful and now is home to the wandering. I know him because we are one. He is who I have become. I am who I was. I crawled through St. James the Less over a week ago. I've laid on this marble altar ever since fasting as a saint fasts: fed by devotion and inflated ego. I've counted the creaks and the sirens and the rattling of doors by others who are too chicken shit to give themselves to St. James the Less. These sporadic rhythms and bursts of melody lull my racing mind. It's as if as times creeps forward and the less I move acceleration occurs. The distance between crescendos physically increases and mentally decreases. It is then he appeared as a flicker of a candle extinguished over twenty years ago when this place of unanswered prayers closed its doors. I want him.

He's an animal, a monster, something others divert eyes from. The scabs on his hands from gashes deep and uncleaned bubble and ooze its semi-liquid puss. His hair is oily and unkept tangled like tumbleweed. He is more than these fearful appearances and pungent smells but mostly others only recognize in him the things they hate about their selves. He amplifies their insecurities. He manifests their fears. It is the lump on his shoulder that terrifies me.

Saints and sinners be damned. All of them be damned. I am lost here, and I hate their stares and constant need for forgiveness. I've never received mine. I never will. I am here because I am lost, trapped, isolated by choice and fate and god's will. I want that crucifix to finally become unhinged. I want time to do its duty and age. I want that hunched man in the shadows to stop staring mindlessly at as he fiddles with the remnants of some dead thing stuck on a decades old trap. I want to be free, something not yet experienced. I want the release of self that comes from passage. I want union with the unknown. Mostly, I just want him to leave and he won't.

The siren blared again this time louder as if it was at the front door. It must have been. I felt the flicker of warmth first as if the summer sun cut through fog and gently dried the earth. He laughed. He just laughed and rocked. He was mesmerizing, and I too laugh and rock. I now was him or more likely he is me. Time and flames collide. I feel my shoulder and there it grows. It is to be the only thing that will survive this desperate destruction. I know it immediately. I claw and scrape as only someone can do right before death. Then blackness, an electric pulse through my chest, the smell of carbon, and an impression of solitude.

I was no longer. He is gone. This place of red bricks and aging mortar only a shell. Gods and saints and sinners die.

I am here still. I know I am. You can find me as a vanishing thought or a tickle in the lungs as you inhale your poppers. You can visit me often and frequently. I beg you too. I ask only that you not divert your eyes. Look at me. For you are only looking at your self. You won't like what you see. No one does. But that is the point:

we all are hunchbacks lurking in shadows waiting to be seen.

God's Consequence

2011-11-24T11:35:00.001-08:00

Once upon a time God had no home. There was no place she could go to rest her feet. There was no warm fire in the fireplace. There was no fluffy bed covered in heavy wool blankets. There was no kitchen in which to make a meal. God had been evicted, and now she roamed uncomfortably throughout the universe, but mostly across the Earth. She liked it here even though it was humans that evicted her.

God long ago had lived in luxury. Although she never really loved luxury because it always came at a cost. When she was at her richest -- placed on an altar or on a shrine or in a temple -- she was mistaken for a man. God didn't really want to correct her worshipers (she was just happy to have worshipers at all), so she kept her mouth shut and being God grew a bushy big white beard to reinforce her masculine wisdom. People seemed to like her this way. At least they did for a little while.

Then, like most children, people's fancies changed, and soon God was kicked out of all the homes she had across all the Earth. That was 26 years, 7 weeks, 14 days, five hours, three minutes and 19 seconds ago. But she wasn't counting. She could tell just by looking at the sky. She was God, remember, and as God she created the sky to be her watch. Now, she regretted that decision. Imagine never being able to escape your alarm clock!

God was growing lonely and bored, which is not quite so good of a thing for anyone let alone God. In fact, it was her boredom that caused the dinosaurs to disappear. She didn't like how simple the dinosaurs were despite their giant stature. So, she created a giant ball and threw it at the Earth hoping to start all over again. The ball did explode when it hit the earth, and it did kill the dinosaurs, but, alas, if didn't kill everything and so she had a big mess to clean up afterwords, which she didn't clean up very well. In fact, her lack of cleanliness is why oil and coal pollute. But that's another story for another day.

This particular day was cold, extremely cold, the kind of cold where nothing you do gets you warm. Every place in the world has these kinds of days even the hottest of places. It is more a quality of the air than an actual temperature. Somehow, the air cuts through all the skin and veins and muscles and bites bones. It was biting God's bones, and she was becoming increasingly angry.

"How dare the wind that I created bite my bones. I wish it would stop," she whispered under her breath from the inside of a cave in which she happened to be squatting. She had no idea why she whispered other than she had become fearful of her words because they always came to be. She thought if she whispered instead of spoke if they did come to be than at least it would only be a whisper. But even her whispers had unintended consequences. She was God and therefore was Truth.

The wind heard God's whispers, and suddenly it was a warm breeze, the kind of which you can only find in places with humidity like the jungle or while laying on a beach on the Mediterranean in the middle of summer. Only, God was in that cave which was on top of a snow-capped mountain outside Turpan, China, and it was January.

"Ah....that is so much better. Now, I shall not be cold," God said thankful that she was no longer cold and completely unaware of what that meant for the humans on the Earth. "I don't think I've slept since I was kicked out of the Basilica of St. Peter 26 years, 7 weeks, 14 days, five hours, five minutes and 33 seconds ago. I think it is time for a nap!" (You see, the Basilica of St. Peter was the absolute last place God was kicked out and that was the result of the Pope finally losing his faith after the church's bank accounts ran dry.)

Like I said, God was Truth, which made her words facts, so upon uttering the word "nap" God grew incredibly sleepy and fell into a black dreamless sleep that lasted 10 years, 41 weeks, two days, seven hours, 22 minutes and 58 seconds.

God awoke refreshed and rested and sweating profusely. It was no longer warm. It was blistering hot. It was so hot in fact that had she not been God the heat from the stone would have blistered her body.

It was also awfully sunny. It was the kind of sunny that makes your eyes squint and gives you a headache, and as God slowly made her way out of the sweltering cave, she loudly cursed the sun for its existence and for giving her a throbbing headache. Immediately, the sun vanished and all became pitch black.

Outside in the darkness, God fumbled. Her long sleep made her joints, muscles and limbs sore and clumsy. It was exactly like the pins and needles of a foot falling asleep only it ran through her entire body. And God's eyes still had not quite adjusted from the black of sleep to the blazing sun to the pitch black of a sunless sky. Everything was fuzzy, so it should come as no surprise that even God herself fell.

God fell from the cave, which was at the tippy top of the mountain and which had previously been covered in a glacier, all the way down to the formerly lush valley that once was home to a farmer and her husband. The farmer and her husband were no longer living. They had perished shortly after God fell asleep. You see, the warm breeze never let up because God never commanded it to let up. Instead, it blew and blew and blew and in its constant blowing melted the glacier on the top of the mountain which in turn created a great flood in the valley. The farmer and her husband drowned in the flood, but right before the flood overtook their farm they built a very small boat out of reeds that grew in a nearby river and put their only child, Bao, in it. Thus, Bao was saved from the flood.

Now, I need to take a minute a tell you about Bao. Bao was less than a year old when she was placed in the small reed boat, and her parents were incredibly superstitious. They had still believed in God even though everyone else did not. In fact, unknown to God herself, their faith was the only reason God found that cave on the mountain in the first place. When Bao's parents placed her in the reed boat, they said a prayer to God and asked God, which they called Him, to watch over their innocent daughter.

Whether it was a miracle or luck or there was some other force at work doesn't matter nor will we ever know. What matters is that Bao survived, and she was now the last person on the Earth. She also, up until three minutes ago, believed in God for while she never knew her parents their prayer lived in her.

But like all prayers, the further we get from them the less real they become, so on Bao's tenth birthday, which was exactly three minutes ago, her faith faltered, and she stopped believing in God. Thus, God woke from her nap.

...which brings me to the present.

God fell from the cave all the way to to the valley below. She landed like a God: right-side up. Her landing loudly echoed through the valley that was now a very hard, dry, hot desert.

Bao heard the echo from her home beyond the valley. The never ending warm breeze had pushed Bao from the land of her birth years ago. She was now living deep in the Earth in one of the only spots that was cool enough for humans. She survived by eating bugs and mosses that grew in dark corners. Having never tasted xiao long bao (her namesake), she did not know how wonderful food could taste. Instead, food was simply something to stop your belly from grumbling.

With the sun now gone, the Earth cooled slightly making it possible for Bao to leave her underground home for the first time in at least four years. Only she didn't know this, at least not yet. Instead, she heard the loud thud echoing and became fearful. It had been too long since she had heard anything of that magnitude. With the constantly warm breeze, the world had grown almost completely silent except for the scurrying of bugs, which now overtook the entire world. Bao didn't even know that the sun had disappeared because she was that far underground.

Well, the thud continued to echo, and it started to make the stone tremble. It was almost like a beautiful song. Only, Bao did not know music and so she did not know what a song was. But, still it was beautiful, and its beauty compelled Bao to leave her home.

In the desert valley, God just sat there trying to get her bearings and hoping that the pins and needles shooting through her limbs would go away. Something seemed different about the valley, but she could not yet place it. The Earth itself seemed harder than she remembered, and she could no smell the berries for which the valley was famous. Suddenly, she grew insatiably thirsty, and all she wanted was a refreshing drink from the clear river she remembered flowed just beyond the valley. Her eyes still had not adjusted from the back and forth from darkness to light back to darkness, so she had to guess which direction the river might be, which she deemed was to her right. Thirsty and somewhat blind, she set out for the river.

Bao emerged from her home underneath the Earth and for the first time really saw the world. Her eyes long ago had adjusted to the pitch black and as a result she was able to see the Earth. She never knew the world of her parents, and so she never knew that it once was covered in green and all the colors of the rainbow. Now, the Earth was all a pale, pale yellowish-brown. The sun and the warmth faded everything everywhere, but now with the sun gone everything was different shades of blue. It was the most beautiful thing Bao had ever seen, and she cried.

As I said earlier, the whole world was almost completely silent except for the scurrying of insects and the echoing thud, so Bao's cries also echoed and were carried on the warm breeze. Together -- the cries, the scurrying and the thud -- made music. This music was heard by God and she paused momentarily. As the music filled her body, her eyes cleared and she saw for the first time how changed the Earth was, and she was horrified.

"I've done this," God shrieked and it immediately stopped the music.

Bao heard the voice off in the distance and hope swelled inside her. "I am not the only one on this land!" is what she thought, but not knowing language it sounded like "Ahhhhh...gghhh..rrr...faaaa..."

Bao's primitive language rose from her belly out her mouth and into the stratosphere. The warm breeze picked it up and carried it to God, and God immediately had this thought, "I am not the only one on this land!" And then, "Where is that voice?"

God being God did her magic and suddenly appeared before Bao as if in response to God's own question.

"Hello," God said to Bao, but Bao did not understand God. Bao had never spoken to anyone and did not know the conventions of conversation. She did not know that it was proper to kneel before God nor did she know that you should at least bow your head in deference. Bao did not know that touching God was unacceptable, so when she reached out to touch God's face happy that another being was roaming this Earth, she was dumbstruck when her hand was slapped away by God.

"How dare you!" God yelled. "You should never touch God!" And as with all God's words they are made manifest, so Bao's hands were quickly no more.

"What just happened," thought Bao, which escaped her lips as "Llllaaa...ttttrrrr..kkkii."

And God thought, "What just happened?" and then said, "I'm sorry." Although God did not give Bao her hands back.

Bao became fearful of God. She knew the being that stood in front of her -- the one who still had a bushy, big white beard and whose eyes looked like galaxies -- was not like her, and somewhere deep in her memory, the kind of memory that is locked in a tiny space behind the heart and to the right of our left armpit, she remembered the prayer of her parents. At once, she found words.

These words started erasing her fear until finally all fear had vanished and was instead replaced with a boldness she had never known.

"Your apology is not needed," said Bao without pause, "for you are God, and you do as you see fit. I am but a lowly human, and in a previous life I would have worshiped at your feet. But, alas, that life is not mine, and I see no need for prayers or worship."

God was struck by these words and the memory of home filled her with longing and remorse. She wanted her worshipers back. She wanted more than anything to just go home and be served. But all those homes were now gone and it was in large part her fault. She fell to her knees and started shedding great tears of despair.

"There is noting more pitiful than seeing God cry," Boa said. "While I have longed for a companion all these years, I have no need for one who cries for the consequences of their decisions."

And Bao feeling absolutely nothing for God turned her back on God and set off for her home under the Earth.

God just stared at Bao as she left. God wanted to stop her, to make Bao turn around and worship her, and she knew all she needed to do was utter those words, but only silence and nostalgia filled God. She was unable to speak.

As Bao was walking away, she said, " I do wish to thank you God for one thing. Thank you for giving me beauty. I had never heard a song, and I had never known there were so many shades of blue. I will never forget this and while I may never have need for you again, whenever I come across something of beauty I shall remember you."

And within moments, Bao vanished from God's sight, and God was once again alone and without a home.

And so God spent the rest of her days unmoved and silent waiting for a prayer to bring her back to life. Only, it never came for Bao was the last human and she passed away at the age of 47 underneath the Earth.

And as for Bao? She lived her remaining 37 years with a smile upon her face for while she never saw anything as beautiful as the millions of blues or heard anything as beautiful as that song, she was thankful that she was not God.

Do Not Read These Trivial Meanderings

2011-11-24T08:53:00.001-08:00

These thoughts that manifest externally as if the sun has plucked them from the creases of my brain and planted them as some bird of prey, bright orange the same color as the bitter mood of yesterday's discomfort, turn. This is too much for me -- the days spent wandering, the racing of possibility. I yearn for the days of blank computer screens with fingers madly typing with nothing but an order to compose. Then, it emerges -- forever emerging -- almost like an archeologist exhuming their fist dinosaur bone, a feeling of discovery yet to be achieved.

A story, possibly about a boy whose own father has left him to be found somewhere among the redwoods -- the only place the boy has called home -- is threatened. It is being torn down like all great trees are, turned into planks and pulp. He digs his way to its roots and plant himself like so many seeds. He's never found. He is killed mindlessly as trees uprooted pierce his heart. Blood spills consecrating this future mall. Haunted, it closes only months later. The boy is left to wander empty hallways more hallow and dispirited than his dead redwoods.

Or is it meant to be something other than a ghost story? Is it meant to be fact uninterpreted and unbiased? Then, these trees are not sacred. Rather they are just trees like so many other things alive that can never speak for itself, know no heart beat, and therefore are just that: things devoid of emotion or feeling. They are just things to be consumed and any thought otherwise is strictly editorial. If it weren't for its sacrifice, I couldn't even write this in my notebook of empty paper. So even as I scribble I am hypocritical. I am western.

I am nearing the end of his tale, and all I do is weep. Facts are sorrow. They never tell the story I need to hear, and simile is a language corrupted by extremism. The sun did not pick my brain, and my bitterness is not orange. Words escape ability to communicate. So why are you reading this frippery? What hope do you have at understanding my significance?

That isn't necessary. The boy is but a circumstance just like the Soviet soldier holding a baby raising his sword to the motherland crushing the swastika. I am fearful that it will run away and find another home; I want it to be mine. I want to own and hold it and destroy it if the fancy strikes me like the passing whim of the child who plucks wings off the dragonfly or captures the firefly until its light goes out. Innocence breeds cruelty. I wonder what that baby will grow up to be.

Again you continue reading. I continue typing at this blank screen imagining you as you stare and eyes dart confused that I am speaking directly to you. It makes you uncomfortable. I can tell even if I will never watch you read. Writers don't speak to readers. They speak of themselves as if they are as important as the moon is to the tides. We are not. You are important. It is your interpretation that compels me to create the boy in the first place' it is why the Soviets built the statue. I am merely a conduit between existential imaginings and adventitious judgment. You judge me. You must judge me. Otherwise it is just a baby in his arms and a crushed symbol beneath his feet.

So what is the meaning of this? How are you synthesizing the possibility? There is so much underneath, between, amongst, above that goes unnoticed, that is still hidden in the blankness. I have only carved out one small undefinable thing; it too has no emotion or feeling. Should it be consumed? Do you claw and scrape and tear it? But it is on your screen and therefore is as intangible as the symbol. Destroying it means destroying a thing of yours. There is beauty. There is meaning. Where does it reside in you? What have you gutted?

The boy lurks. He has grown and is now a man. He is that Soviet soldier who once was the baby in his arms. The woman who weeps -- a whole manicured lawn separating them -- turns away. She cannot watch like you do. Her bravery is compassion despite the razed redwoods. She will not witness the mall. Will you? Will you visit the ghost of her son/spouse/brother/lover/father? Will you let the memory and imagination haunt your hallowed shell? I think not. It is why you read versus type at this blank screen. Does that discomfit you?

I beg you: continue your reading, even this trivial meandering. You made it, and I am desperate for your attentiveness. Don't let me become the boy; I promise I will make you her. She is so much more powerful. She is that blossoming bird of prey picked by the sun from the crevices of our collective acumen. She is orange, green, white, pink, sharp lines, and prickly points. Become her. Embrace the compassionate bravery of turned away glances.

Are you still reading? Turn away. Turn away. Turn away. Turn away. Turn away. Turn away. Turn away. Turn away.

Turn away.

"Reach out, touch a hand, make a friend if you can"

2011-11-24T08:20:00.001-08:00

I love The Staples Singers. I remember listening to "Respect Yourself" many times as a young adult. It was on compilations of soul and/or gospel songs like Black Power: Music of a Revolution. It was a song that inspired me to think differently and find hope.

I was introduced to Mavis Staples, one of the siblings in The Staple Singers, thanks to my husband. He brought home her album "We'll Never Turn Back" when it came out almost four years ago. I fell head over heals in love with her deep soulful voice and her messages of struggle, unity, and spirit.

As a result of my love affair with Mavis Staples, I went out and found old The Staples Singers albums. I had to have more of their songs and soul. I found and played their compilation album, The Best of the Staples Singers, over and over and over again until all the songs started blending together and I started to internalize their joy, sadness, and courage.

The Staples Singers were/are definitely an inspiration to me. I want to exude their same determination, casualness, perseverance, and compassion they did/do. Their music, while religious and spiritual, is more than just gospel and Christian. It is a way of life, a way of seeing the world that transcends spirit and is rooted deeply in personal experience and culture. If I can embody just a sliver of what they exude rooted in my own personal experience and culture, than I will have done my job.

I still listen to The Staples Singers and Mavis Staples religiously. I have to listen to them at least twice a month. And I still find hope and deeper meaning in their songs. They still bring me to a place that beyond the singular self.

Today, as I was again listening to them, their song "Touch a Hand, Make a Friend" really hit me. The lyrics:

Can't you feel it in your bones.
A change is coming on
from every walk of life
people are seein' the light.

Can't you feel it in your heart, now.
A new thing is takin' shape
Reach out, touch a hand, y'all.
Make a friend if you can.

Hey, I heard about you from my friend.
Ain't it time you come on in?
Live the united way.
Why don't you join us today?

Seem to call forth in the most prescient way (the lyrics were written in 1973) what is happening around the world right now. We are seeing people coming together in unprecedented numbers peacefully (and sometimes not so peacefully) all over the world. We are witnessing a remarkable change. And while at times it may be frightening and scary and uncomfortable, it is ultimately hopeful. It is happening because we are reaching out, touching hands, and making friends.

It is my dream that I contribute to this much larger change in the world through what I do best: cuisine, conversation, camaraderie, and artistry. And I welcome you to "come on in" to both my life and my home. Who knows, you may even make a friend.

Lost and Still

2011-11-24T08:15:00.001-08:00

I was lost. It was as if I was floating in space with nothing tangible around me and the sun, moon, and earth blotted out by my inability to comprehend. I normally find comfort there. I like the feeling of non-attachment and distance. It helps me see and experience things others miss. This week, I just wanted to sink back to earth and feel solid rock. I'm tired.

Nothing extraordinary happened. Nothing inconsequential happened. Nothing really happened at all. That's what started it all: I didn't want nothing. At least at that moment. I just wanted a little motivation and some inspiration. I just wanted movement.

The trouble with waiting is that it truly is a tragic beast. Once the seed of want roots itself it is hard to see what is right in front of you. I had inspiration everywhere. It was there in the films by women I found this week that told tales of gratitude and dalliances with sheep and beetles eating hearts. It was on the bus in an overheard conversation of amazing boundaries being drawn by a young woman with her ex-lover. It was in a speech by Chrystos about shedding colonizer thinking, not being boxed by identity, and strength in struggle that is not self-less. It was everywhere around me all the time.

So too was motivation. Resumes were submitted. Meetings were attended. Conversations were had.

Still I was lost. Still I felt like my apartment looked: disheveled by contractors who were putting in a new window and drywall thanks to a leaking ceiling and wall. I just wanted to put it all back and ignore the water on the floor. At least on the surface it would look tidy.

This lostness crept into my cooking all week long. I made disastrous meals that didn't satiate taste. I tried my hand at an apple crumble and misplaced my mind when I poured in an extra half cup of milk. I still threw it in the oven hoping for a miracle. I took one bite, and no miracle was found.

On and on the week pressed as I, still lost, felt knots in my back and anxiety on my heart. I stressed over the meal to be shared on Sunday. I still hadn't found my inspiration and without it the food would never transform into cuisine.

Then, I stopped. I stopped looking and decided to observe.

I found myself in North Beach at a meeting with a coaching client. He sat across from me with the tools I brought between us. I shared youth development strategies, approaches and philosophies. I was doing my "job" not my role. As I was finishing up, I asked one final question, "Anything else?" He asked for help on one particular challenge. I was immediately unstuck. I listened and reflected and listened some more. Only then did I share a possible solution.

Our 30 minute session turned out to be an hour and a half. Not one of those moments was missed. Not once did I feel lost.

I set out from North Beach and meandered through Chinatown. A growing hunger begged feeding, but not any meal would do. I peeked in restaurants and perused menus. I had a vague feeling for noodles, but I didn't want chow mein.

I found myself peering in the window of Hon's Wun-tun House Ltd. of California. Not a single white person inside, I opened the door and took a seat at the counter. I placed an order for Sichuan noodles; five minutes later it came. I slurped up the fine angel hair thing noodles with the spicy shredded pork on top. As I looked up, I saw it: homemade wide noodles -- $2.50/pound.

It was exactly what I was searching for. I bought three pounds.

I'm now sitting in Portsmouth Square with Cantonese being spoken all around me and my fingers numbing. A tour group is in front of me trying dim sum treats. I am still except for the movement of my hand scribbling across this page. I am at peace.

I know I will find myself lost again. I know anxiety will course through veins and muscles will knot. I know that I cannot silence all of my wants. I just need to remember this moment -- the one where I became still.

I have two more days until my shared meal. Keeping still while wandering is how I'm going to make it there. I know magic will happen if I let go. And it will be called braised garlic greens with homemade noodles.

Compassionate Mirror: My Reflection of Q/queer

2011-11-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

(This was reposted recently on In Our Words: A Salon for Queers and Company.)

I have skirted the borders ever since childhood. I was always the queer. In fact, I was SO queer I got my tailbone broken in a game of Smear the Queer in the sixth grade. Needless to say, Queer and queer mater in my life. They are an essential component of my being as vital as blood and oxygen, as rejuvenating as my daily morning coffee, as fundamental as religion. I was queer because others called me that. I am Queer because I am.

I wasn't popular. Hell, I was called "faggot", "weird", "queer", "funny", "different", "odd", "freak, "fruit" almost every day. No one wanted my friendship. Everyone wanted my attention. They wanted me to see them, their pain, their cries for visibility. These peers were scared, hurt, reactive creatures running on instinct and urge. They lashed out because they knew no differently or had experienced the abuse themselves or because they just needed someone to be lower than themselves. I was an easy scapegoat because I was loud, flamboyant, theatrical, pushy, and poor. I was the kid in the 1980s K-mart clothing that took musical theater. I stood out in a suburb of white. And if I could be seen, even with all of my queerness, others wanted to be seen. Jealousy is a strong force.

I am/was privileged as an outsider and Q/queer. I get/got to see people not as they project/ed themselves to the masses but as they are/were. This space in shadows, borders, edges, and alleys is powerful: I am honored with people's truths. It also bears an incredibly responsibility: to be a compassionate mirror.

I haven't always been a compassionate mirror, and the weight of this responsibility has grown over time. In fact, this responsibility started only as a mirror regardless of form. Sometimes that meant only reflecting that which I heard paraphrasing it word for word until recognition washed across faces or confusion compelled them to leave. Other times, I was like that fun house mirror completely distorting the image often in unflattering and violent manners. Compassion came only as a result of seeing so many truths; often truths that conflict and harm.

Everyone is messy, disjointed, searching, and conflicted. Everyone has capacity for transformation. I have worked with white folks unpacking their privilege and watched them completely break down -- guilt flooding over faces -- as they finally bodily realize the impact of racism. I've witnessed a seventh grade African-American young man move from throwing around "That's so gay" daily to checking his peers saying, "Don't say that. You can't say that here." My mother went from trying to ban the Halloween books in my Catholic elementary school library to coordinating volunteers for an HIV/AIDS affordable housing developer.

These transformations have and continue to transform/ed me. I never expected empathy for the white woman weeping over the loss of her reality of the young man yelling "faggot" at me or for my mother who sent me to a shrink to become straight. Yet in each of these reflections I see my self: a terrified white man fearful of his loss of power; a young man wanting to hurt others because I hurt; a caregiver fiercely protecting their stead against the corruption of the outside world. Time and reflection grew compassion.

Compassion at its basest level is queer: strange, odd, unusual. It is weird to respond to epithets with an open ear. Instinct urges fight or flight. Letting that instinct run its course silently in the background while remaining in the moment conflicts with our nature. Everything pushes a reaction, a movement, a decision. The queer thing to do is the thing no one expects: to love utterly, completely, wholly, openly, unreservedly. It is also the hardest thing to do. Living queerly is work.

I began writing this piece in response to OutLook Theater Project's, a queer ensemble theater company for which I work, need to begin defining queer. We are in the process of figuring out strategic directions and next steps as to how we will show up in the world.

I started the task by reading loads of articles on queer theory and the essentialization of sexuality in identity. Most of what I read was from the mid-1990s to early 2000s. Almost all of them grappled with the evolution of identity, politics, community, economics, social change. There is a tension between the historical use of the word as an epithet and the reclamation of it by younger generations who view it as an open, fluid, and inclusive term for sexuality and gender. There is a difference between queer -- a particular way of being that unsettles assumptions and preconceptions of sexuality and gender -- and Queer -- a reference to a diverse and broad LGBT... community. Queer theory grew out of feminist theory and gay and lesbian studies as well as any other studies that construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct identities and aesthetics. These are helpful in my understanding of queer and Queer in relation to community and identity. They are not very useful in my understanding being.

To find being, I had to mine my life. I had to put a mirror in front of my self and study its features peeling back the layers, looking deeply and inquisitively at the muscles, joints, organs, values, valves, passageways contained within this body. I had to listen quietly as my mind spun tales of faggotry, otherness, and pain. There I stood raw and naked yet fully clothed a hint of make-up from a party the night before. I am all of these people I was. I am every age I used to be. I am all of my lessons yet to learn. There staring back at me is queer, and it has absolutely nothing and everything to do with sexuality and gender.

These are the essences of Q/queer to me: loving fearlessly, transforming radically, and compassionately mirroring.

I am honored I was asked for my definition. It forced me in front of this mirror, and I love utterly what I see: flaws, scars, tears, and all.

Precisely Not I

2011-10-19T08:52:00.000-07:00

I always sit here and scribe. It is one of the few places I can feel not here, not precisely in this city. I can stare down the wide boulevard with the old women in sweats scoffing and pretend I am back in another country where my mohawk is equally disdainful. The dogs barking in the distance are chasing me again like they did that summer of the new doberman next door. That wasn't here but rather in a suburb of green and turquoise and short, wide houses.

But as I sit here I am equally in another place not all together real. It is the memory of one branch that never happened, a simple future not meant to be. I pass him unnoticed in the night. I do not stop for early morning passion on the deserted streets. I keep walking to the bed of an ex-lover yet to leave. I sleep and dream of this day of ocean winds riding ahead of marine fog and old women scoffing. The sun skews perception: this is not precisely me. I am alone and writing but I am not looking up. My curiosity is for the hidden story on the page and not in the inquisitiveness of observation. I am not noticing the hideous mismatched stripes everywhere or the Giants' fan winking. Not I is scribbling some other story I cannot read or decipher.

But that is not me nor am I there. I am simply here with a bit of coffee left in the cup and a boy passing by in a hot pink t-shirt wearing a sparkly blue Diego backpack.

I like it here even with the scoffing women. I like how the sun casts long and the man preaching salvation keeps moving along. I like the briskness of afternoons in early fall captured between the ocean and the bay. It is magical here, and I can imagine. It is why I visit and remember the not to be futures: to feel.

Clatter Obstructs

2011-08-28T08:57:00.000-07:00

The cool ocean wind as it coasts to Oakland picks memories of forgotten falls, carries them to nose hairs, transports smells to that part of the brain that longs and seeks and sometimes yearns. The crisp immediacy beckons Lake Ada on October days when leaves as if in time lapse change green, orange, red, yellow, brown, then die. This is that and all other moments wrapped in a scarf of stark black and white warming veins and arteries confusing a heartbeat that knows no difference between contrast. All are the same. And each distinction is only a grain of sand passing through my wide spread fingers.

The light distilled by swaying leaves that will never change color and might never die disjoints time. The trick of memory and travel converge on a life meant to wander, to be stuck between objects and subjects, to always be on a bus that has no destination and never stops. You are here in the back seat waiting. Always waiting.

(S)he rummages through garbage with (her)his basket obstructing that bus forcing its stop, and you leave. It is your only chance. And you are confronted by (his)her poverty, (her)his homelessness, the stench of unbathed days. This is where you are supposed to be, and yet it is rejected so thoroughly by uncontrolled repugnance. Vomit, but not of the stomach variety, spills out of mouths, a sign of our collective distaste for things that confront and force discomfort. We never want our sphere invaded by others not invited. There was safety on that bus. Why did you leave?

Interrupted. A phone rings begging an answer that you are not ready to give. We wait for that moment when all is revealed unable to see the revelation of our current state. A revolution scratches under skin and irritates that state. You scratch not knowing, and I watch. I am (him)her as (s)he stacks cups and bottles of plastic and tin. We are the trinity: you, s(he), me. That is the beauty of English: first, second, third person implied in singular terms and yet contained in all. You, (s)he, me are our and we and they and you.

The sand that falls from wide spread fingers, each single grain multifaceted, collects its hope. I, s(he), you walk past it unknowingly each time we don't stop. There it is waiting to be found. It is in (her)his cup resting in (his)herbasket. It is what forced the bus to halt fleetingly.

We still don't see it.

We never will.

Clatter obstructs.

The President Who Wished to Be King

2011-04-23T11:35:00.000-07:00

There was once a President who was barely elected by the people. In fact, he had less votes than the other guy but his name was more recognizable and older. Some called him a prince. Others called him a dunce. His big ears and crooked nose looked funny, and when he spoke people thought he was dumb. He was only the President because a judge declared him winner. Little did the people know the judge loved the President’s father who had also been president and had appointed the judge. But supposedly there wasn’t any kind of concern because now the people live in a democracy not a kingdom, and there was no royalty. But there were still the rich and the poor. His funny face and dumb speech made him loveable to the poor. His deep pockets and family loyalty made him loveable to the rich.

Well, one day like all other days but not really like them, he woke with a migraine. Governing was very difficult work. In fact, it was some of the most difficult work he had ever done. It certainly was more difficult than bankrupting a baseball team. It was even more difficult than bankrupting an energy company and that is almost impossible. He longed for the simpler days when he didn’t have to persuade anyone why they were wrong, and he believed everyone was wrong except those that slipped him bundles of cash in the form of checks for his reelection campaign.

The migraine was blinding and throbbing. It was going to be a terrible day. He knew. He had a meeting with some advisor about a policy to make spying on people easier. It was as unpopular as he was, but the advisor was someone who also gave him a check so he had to listen. Then, there was a photo opportunity with children. He hated children because they reminded him of him. He was supposed to read a story to them about a king with no clothes. He often felt like that king. After the visit to the school, he was off to a luncheon with his wife. It was some sort of charity event for cancer or AIDS or heart disease or something. He believed reading to the children was charity enough. He also believed churches were better equipped to dole out charity. He liked when charity and salvation were linked. He even had a policy to make the link permanent. He didn’t care about history or laws that worked very hard at keeping church and state separated. He wanted a kingdom, and he knew that to get there he would need to start marrying the two again. It is how kings kept power.

As he sat in his bathroom on the very cold toilet rubbing his head and blinking his eyes as he was trying to poop, a very tiny magical creature visited him. It was not a fairy or a leprechaun or a djinn or a saint or a gnome or an elf or a sprite or a nymph. It was no bigger than a gnat and smelled like rotting feet. It had six eyes and a body like a Betty Page. Its four wings were translucent. He almost didn’t see it, but its smell could not be missed. He hadn’t pooped yet, so he searched for the origin of the stink. And there… the magical creature rested on his nose. He had to cross his eyes to see it, which mad him look even funnier that he already looked. Imagine a man with big ears, a crooked nose, a cowboy hat, which was his security blanket that he always wore when not in front of a camera, with his eyes crossed and sitting on a toilet trying to poop. If only a camera had been there, but it wasn’t so you will have to use your imagination, which I am sure has not been used often enough.

Well, this magical creature was resting on the President’s nose. It was on its way to its mother’s house, which was somewhere around the drain in the shower, when it needed a breather. The nose seemed like as good of a place as any other to rest. The President did not like that thing on his nose not one bit. It was ungodly, even though it was supernatural. If this thing was on his nose and was real, then that might make him question his God. He would have none of it. So he slowly lifted his left hand to swat the magical creature and hopefully kill it. But like I said he was not a very bright president, and he forgot that he was right handed and as a result had absolutely no coordination with his left hand so instead of hitting his nose he poked his left eye, which made him howl and the magical creature with the Betty Page figure, six eyes, and four translucent wings take flight.

Now, this magical creature was buzzing the President’s ears because it was agitated, and rightly so. The President had just tried to kill it, and it was pissed. The President with an unnatural stroke of luck swatted the magical creature and caught it in his left hand. Now, you don’t know just how lucky that was. The President’s left hand was always doing things it was not supposed to do. One time it patted an aide on her rump in front of his wife. He wanted to do it, but thought better of it especially in front of his wife. But his left hand had a mind of its own. Another time his left hand found some fine white powder, and while he knew that it might not be a good idea to sniff it because it might affect his employability in the future his left hand grew a long and deep nail on its index finger, scooped some up and put it near his nose. Now, the left hand did not make him inhale, but he had been holding his breath and he had been made fun of for being a mouthbreather so naturally he had to take a deep breath through his nose. Needless to say, it did little to affect his employability. His pockets were that deep, and like I said his father had been President. And… vice president. And… governor before that. So the regular rules did not apply to him.

Well, that magical creature who was now trapped in the president’s left hand, screamed louder than could possibly come out of a body that small. It did not like being trapped, and so it started pleading.

“If you let me go, I promise to grant you one wish, but if you kill me I will curse this country and great tragedy shall befall you!”

The president while dumb was not a dumby. He replied, “What guarantee do I have that you will honor your agreement?”

“You have none, but I shall give you a preview before you decide. What is your wish?”

“That is simple,” said the President. “I wish to be king!”

“Consider it done,” and the magical creature bit the palm of the President’s left hand.

Suddenly, the president felt more powerful than he had ever felt. He knew that when he left the bathroom others would listen to him in ways no one had ever listened to him before. They would do as they were told, and he would not need to heed their advice. He was giddy with power and ready to rage. Then, the feeling went away.

“Thing,” he yelled. “You are a man of your word. That was the most powerful I have ever felt. I want my wish permanently granted.”

“Consider it done, but first you have to let me go.”

Well, something was wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. The spot in the palm of the President’s left hand where the magical creature had bit him was burning and itching. It was swelling quite quickly and soon covered his entire palm. The President did not like this, not one bit, and would not open his left hand.

“What have you done, thing,” he cried. “My hand hurts more than my migraine! Is this what I have to look forward to if I were king: small annoyances that grow to infinite proportions?”

The magical creature remained silent, or most likely couldn’t be heard, but it did not matter which it was because the only thing that mattered was the president couldn’t hear it.

“Speak, thing, or I shall squash you!”

Again there was no response or rather a response could not be heard. The President angry at the magical creature and irritated by the bite had a moment when his mind finally connected with his left hand, and he squeezed harder than he had ever squeezed before. And he felt the magical creature pop in his hand. Immediately, the swelling went away, and he was again alone in the bathroom with his migraine trying to poop.

Well, we all know what befell the President and the country that day. It was truly, truly tragic. It was told to the President as a whisper while he was reading a book to some students. Only, he could not have been reading because the book was upside down. It was being held by his left hand, which no longer was listening.

If you don’t know what happened that day, look it up as it is not my tale to tell, and others have told it better than I ever could. But the President did learn a very valuable lesson that day: there is no real difference between a king with no clothes and a country in turmoil.

And his curse? Well, it really wasn’t his. It was ours, and we are still living it.

The Land of Taramia

2011-04-21T11:38:00.000-07:00

It is said that the land of Taramia is full of vigor and life, and that it overflows with milk of all kinds and the grass tastes sweet like sugar cane. This land is blessed because in this land all are welcome. It is a utopia of love and hope. Or so it is said.

It is also said that to get there one must pass from this world and embark on a perilous journey through rough terrain and war. On one side of the war are the righteous. On the other side are the heathens. It doesn't matter what side you are on because your side is always righteous, and the other side is always heathens. Always.

Methuselah Medina set out to find Taramia. He had enough of this world, which also had the righteous and the heathens only they were called patriots and terrorists. Methuselah Medina had been both at various points in his life. He was exhausted at having to pick a side and knowing it never mattered which side he picked because both sides were right and wrong. Methuselah Medina just wanted to be left alone with his scars and dreams.

There is only one way out of this world, and it is death. Methuselah Medina knew this and knew exactly how he wanted to die: by the hand of a patriot or a terrorist. He could not take his own life, and he did not care which side finally ended his time on earth. So his journey started with trying to find a terrorist or a patriot.

He journeyed for five whole days without running in to a single person, which he thought was odd. "For sixty years I have been forced to choose a side almost daily," he said aloud. "For sixty years I have twisted my words to keep me alive. Now, when I only wish to speak truth to set me free from this world can I not find another soul. How cursed must I be?"

A fox happened to be hiding be hiding behind a bush near Methuselah Medina when she heard his pleas. She too had heard of Taramia and was tired of this land. She revealed herself to Methuselah Medina by somersaulting out from behind the bush. As she rolled, she grew to her true size. She stood on two feet and was the same height as Methuselah Medina. Her bright red hair fell to her waist, and she was the most beautiful creature Methuselah Medina had ever seen.

"My dear man, my name is Fox, and I have heard your pleas." Her voice was bright with a depth that spoke of sorrow. "I, too, wish to speak truth, and I fear I cannot speak truth on this land. I am searching for Taramia. Only there shall I be free."

"My dear Fox," said Methuselah Medina whose voice was equally sorrowful. "I know how to get to Taramia but it requires us to pass from this life. I cannot bring myself to kill my self, so I am searching for a patriot or a terrorist to kill me. Tell me, are you a patriot or a terrorist?"

"I am neither, and while I killed often when I was younger I fear I have lost my taste for blood."

"That is unfortunate for me, dear Fox. I was hoping you would be my savior. Now, I must go. Good-bye."

Methuselah Medina left Fox and continued on his journey. Only, Methuselah Medina did not notice Fox was following behind him. She transformed into her diminutive size and silently kept pace fifty feet behind Methuselah Medina.

For five more days Methuselah Medina journeyed and still he ran into no one. For five hole days, Fox ate nothing as she could not bring herself to kill anything for food. It was becoming quite difficult to keep up with Methuselah Medina for her strength was falling.

On the sixth day after meeting Fox, Methuselah Medina fell to his knees and cried. His tears wet the earth and from the wet dirt sprung the most verdant grass. It sparkled like the sky on a moonless night, danced like a mating peacock and smelled like ripe mango. Somewhere deep inside his mind a voice told him to eat it, and so he did. It tasted like sugar cane, and he knew it must be from Taramia.

"Oh Lord!" He cried, "Why do you taunt me? I have tasted the land of Taramia and yet you deny me passage from this life. How cruel you must be!"

As he was finishing his prayer, he heard a soft exhale more than fifty feet behind him. He turned and saw Fox. She was dying. He ran to hear and swept her up into his arms.

"Fox! Have you been following me this entire time? Oh! You cannot pass from this land yet for I am still here. But tell me, my dear Fox, what do you see? Do you see Taramia?"

"I do not see Taramia, my beloved Methuselah. I only see war and rugged terrain. It seems there is no respite in death, and I no longer wish to die. But I still cannot kill and only in another's death will I find food."

"Eat this, my dear cherished Fox," and Methuselah Medina grabbed a handful of the verdant grass and put it to her lips. She took one bite and somersaulted out of his arms. She was again her full size with flowing red hair to her waist. She took him in her arms and kissed his cheek.

"Oh, Methuselah Medina, you have saved me! That is the most delicious food I have ever eaten. It is certainly from the land of Taramia, and we most certainly must be on the right path. Please let me continue on this journey as your equal. I wish to walk alongside you."

Methuselah Medina agreed and off they went searching for Taramia.

For months, they traveled and still they never met a terrorist or patriot. They did meet a gray wolf, a blue jay, a bullfrog, a hornet, an alligator, a golden eagle, a great black bear and a tarantula. And each of these creatures joined Methuselah Medina and Fox as equals on their journey for all were tired of their existence on this earth and all dreamt of a land of milk and sugar cane. Whenever they were finally too exhausted to continue and hunger racked their bones, someone would cry and springing from the ground where their tears fell grew the verdant grass of Taramia. This grass sustained them for over a week until sorrow again set in, tears fell, and more grass grew.

Finally, almost a whole year had passed and their traveling party grew to over a hundred. They never met a patriot or a terrorist, the righteous or a heathen. They had traveled over mountains and across great rivers. They had passed volcanoes and skirted tornadoes. Death never visited them. It was as if the gods had blessed them all.

During this time Methuselah Medina began forgetting exactly for what he was searching. He knew it was the land of Taramia, but it seemed that it might not be as far away as once he dreamt. In fact, it was the verdant grass of Taramia that fed every creature of this traveling party, so he believed it was within reach. Somehow that grass clouded memories or made other memories more clear.

One night, which happened to be the anniversary of the start of his journey, Methuselah Medina had the most vivid dream. In it he was walking in the land of Taramia. He had arrived and so too had everyone from his party. In this land, they all were heathens, and they all were righteous. In fact, they all were comrades, and everyone and everything was living in harmony.

He felt joy, the most profound joy he had ever felt, and it made him cry. He didn't want the dream to end, but like all dreams it did end.

Methuselah Medina woke. The tears in his dreams were real tears. They had fallen to the ground, and flowing from where they fell was a river of milk. On the banks of the river grew the verdant grass. He knew immediately they had arrived in Taramia. And he knew they were still on this earth.

It is said that Methuselah Medina and his clan of creatures are still alive in Taramia. It is said you can find Taramia when you realize that patriots and terrorists are nothing more than comrades. It is said that the righteous are heathens and the heathens are righteous. It is said that joy and sorrow are both needed to find it. That is what is said, but like all great tales words hold little meaning. Rather it is the lesson that must be learned. And Methuselah Medina only learned his lesson by living it. The rest is just a dream.

The Peach Thief

2011-04-11T11:40:00.000-07:00

There once was a hungry, wandering traveler who was imprisoned by the King because he believed that she had stolen a peach from his precious peach grove in front of his castle. She was thrown into a dungeon cell with a dirt floor covered in hay and one tiny window that she could only reach when she stood on the tips of her toes and stretched out her arms to full length. She slept on the floor and was fed stale, crusty bread once a day. She was constantly hungry, which wasn't too different than every other day before. Except now, she was trapped in a simple cell versus roving free.

She had a heart as wide as the Great Lakes and as deep as the Grand Canyon. Crumbs always fell as she ate her dry bread, and she gathered all the crumbs and divided them into three small piles. One pile was for the mice who scurried when the moon rose. One pile was for the birds who visited right before dawn. The third pile was buried for the hard working ants digging tunnels beneath the castle.

One afternoon the King summoned the thought-to-be thieving traveler to his court. Everyone from the village was there. There were astrologers and doctors and merchants and peasants and beggars and priests and midwifes and chefs and maids and... -- you get the idea: everyone was there. The rich sat in plush mahogany seats, the merchants sat on wooden benches, and the poor stood behind everyone. The King and his court of princes and advisors all sat on the north side of the room looking powerful and staunch in their crimson robes with indigo collars. The peach thief stood in front of the King in her simple, full black dress and charcoal shirt with big sleeves looking straight at him.

"I do not tolerate thieves in my kingdom," boasted the King. "I have summoned you to my court to show all of my people what befalls thieves."

"Dear King," said she. "I do not dispute your claims. If you believe me to be guilty, I must be guilty. There cannot be any other truth for you are a wise king, and I am a thieving traveler."

"You speak truth, criminal," replied the King proudly. "You are learning quickly and are to be commended for your lessons. Still, you are a thief and you must be punished like all thieves: swiftly, harshly and justly."

"My dear King, your words humble me, and I only ask for a just punishment for my perceived crime. If I may be so bold, may I ask a question, your Excellency?"

"Thief! That is a question, and you are so bold. I do not tolerate boldness in my kingdom. It is what leads to thieves like you stealing my peaches. But if you must ask a question let it be a riddle. I seek to be amused."

"A riddle, your Graciousness, is all I have."

"Begin, but make haste. I will not delay your punishment much longer, nor shall your punishment be less harsh."

The whole court quieted and leaned forward to hear the thief share her riddle.

The thief clasped her hands in what looked like prayer and began.

"There is a land that is confined / by brick wall borders carefully aligned. / It is meant to contain / to protect the reign / of a leader whose justice is deemed divine.

"He sits upon a golden throne / and passes judgment on a traveling crone / whose hunger caused wandering hands / to snatch fallen fruit off the land / only there was no flesh only a hard stone.

"Now, her prisoner meal of stale bread / feeds more mouths than can possibly be fed / mouths above, beneath and within. / All of these mouths are her kin. / How is it possible that she and her kin are not yet dead?"

"That is an easy riddle. She is not dead because she stands in front of me, and I have not ordered her death. Yet."

The crowd clapped in agreement and believed the riddle solved. Then, the peach thief spoke.
"Yes, my King, that is part of the solution. It is not the whole solution."

The King was perplexed and the crowd began to stir. He was afraid he would lose control of his people, so he called loudly to his advisors -- his philosophers and scientists and astrologers and doctors and priests -- and asked them to solve the puzzle.

Theory after theory, solution after solution was shared, and each one was rejected by the thought-to-be thief. The King was getting frustrated and angry with each of his advisors.

"How can she outwit all of my best advisors," he screamed. "You are all useless!

"Thief! I order you to share the answer. Then, I shall order your death."

Everyone quieted again. The peach thief held everyone's attention, and she was quite aware of it. She slowed down and raised her voice so all could hear.

"The answer is quite simple, your Graciousness. They are all alive because of compassion. The King showed his compassion to the crone in the form of a daily meal, which was more bountiful than the pit of the rotten fruit. In turn, the crone repaid his compassion by sharing the left over crumbs with the mice, birds and ants. Compassion, my King, is the only answer."

The King cried and the whole court was silent.

"My dear old Crone, you have taught me a lesson more profound than all of my advisors. I now know your just punishment: you shall join my court; you shall advise my advisors."

"Your Excellency, I thank you for your merciful sentence. I have but one humble request."
"What is it," asked the King.

"I ask that you give the stones from all the rotten, fallen fruit away freely so that others may multiply your compassion."

From that day forward, the kingdom was called "The Land of Compassionate Peaches", and while hunger and poverty and hierarchy still existed, there was never another thief.

The Magic Bread Stone

2011-04-07T11:39:00.000-07:00

There was a magic bread stone that belonged to no one. It appeared in bags, under sinks and next to tents whenever someone was so desperate they prayed to be fed. It was rumored that while it was formed as bread it was really something called First Food, which is the sustenance of knowledge and truth.

The bread stone did not work by itself. The recipient of the stone had to mix flour and water and place it on the stone. Only then could the dough be transformed into the most nourishing bread anyone ever ate. You didn't need to be a baker. You did need some resources to make its magic.

The bread stone was honored for centuries. No one knew from where it came and no one tried to keep it. They counted their blessings when it would appear. In fact, it was so honored that every freshly baked loaf was always shared and not one crumb fell to the ground. It was thought that any crumb that fell to the ground was ten years of misery and misfortune. In fact, it was rumored that Marcos Marco, the sickly man who had lived squarely in the center of the forest in a clearing where nothing grew, let five crumbs fall and was cursed with infertile land and ill health. It was whispered that no one ever visited Marcos Marco fearing his bad luck would rub off on them.

After fifty years, Marcos Marco died. He was buried next to his home with a simple marker that reads, "Here lies Marcos Marco who let crumbs fall." Still, nothing grows around Marcos Marco's grave except for a single white lily that blossoms for a single day on the anniversary of his death.

Over decades the story of Marcos Marco changed and then finally disappeared. As his story faded, so too did prayers, which caused the bread stone to vanish almost completely. There were memories of magic, but no one believed them. Instead, everyone believed in the state. Prayers became forms. Bread became stamps. Stamps became food, but it was never First Food, so people were constantly hungry. In fact, everyone was hungry even when bellies were full.

One Friday afternoon when the sun was low on the horizon and the cool fall air turned into cold winter wind, a wandering traveler clothed in tattered rags and wrapped in a large gray wool cape stubbed her toe on a large stone next to a ramshackle hut whose roof was no more. She almost cursed, but then she saw the most beautiful lily she had ever seen. It made her weep and sleepy. It also made her belly grumble. Suddenly, but not really suddenly, she remembered how hungry she was from traveling for weeks and not having eaten anything for two whole days. She had no more stamps, and she hated forms. Weariness washed over her, and she fell down on Marcos Marco's grave and fell into a deep, dark sleep.

Marcos Marco visited the woman in her dreams. He appeared as the white lily and danced like the breeze on a blustery day: full of vigor, vitality and vivaciousness. She laughed at his movements and was full of joy. Her heart longed to dance with the lily, so she sprung up from her bed, threw off her cape, kicked her heels and pranced like a deer. As they danced the music of the forest erupted. Carried on the songs of birds and crickets and frogs and leaves rustling was the most beautiful story. It was the true story of Marcos Marco.

For generations, the Marco clan was bakers, and they had learned a deep secret about bread: made correctly it could feed more than bellies; it also fed hearts and minds. They feared sharing this secret knowledge with anyone else for they believed it would be corrupted by the powerful and rich, so they kept their mouths shut and their hands busy.

They made their bread and continued to feed those that could afford it and those that humbly asked for it but could not pay. Over many years, they watched their community become more and more miserable and more and more hungry. Rarely, did anyone visit their bakery. It seemed people wanted their bellies full rather than their hearts and minds.

The eldest Marco, Marcia Marco, called to the entire Marco clan and asked them to gather around the hearth.

"Marco clan. It seems the world is changing and so too must we. We must find a new way to deliver our bread to those in need." Her voice was urgent and pleading. Marcia Marco believed the world needed their bread now more than ever. She believed it was the only way humans could not just survive but live. "What shall we do?"

A large woman with petite feet and thin fingers stood. She had married into the Marco clan and was trained as a witch.

"I have a solution but it will come at a great cost," said the witch.

"What is it, witch? Speak and do not hold back. Your craft is welcome here for it is the same as our craft. It speaks truth."

The witch shared her proposal. Upon hearing it, Marcia Marco wept. She knew it would work, but she knew it was at a cost greater than any she had imagined.

"I cannot be the one to decide if we should follow your path as it affects our entire clan. We must vote. Only if all agree shall we adopt your proposal as the cost is great."

Marcia Marco asked all the women to speak first. All the women agreed with the witch's plan. Then, Marcia Marco asked the men to speak. None spoke. Instead, they fell to their knees and bowed their heads. Marcia Marco knew they agreed.

"We accept your plan, witch. We must all prepare for what is to come."

Everyone dispersed back to their homes, gathered whatever ingredients for bread they had in their cabinets and on their shelves and returned to the hearth. The witch and Marcia Marco sat in front of the hearth with their hands clasped in a circle. Between them was the stone on which the Marco clan baked every loaf of bread. They were praying in whispers, chanting in a language no one knew. It was the First Language. Words spilled onto the stone and then disappeared.

When the entire clan was gathered, Marcia asked for a single volunteer. Marcos Marco stepped forward.

"My lad, you are so brave, and you will be remembered," said Marcia Marco. "You shall live beyond your entire clan. Your body shall be stricken with grief and sickness. And this fertile land upon which we live shall become barren. Ours is the easier path. Yours will last 50 more years. You shall be a reminder to all about what happens when First Food is abandoned and discarded."

The ritual that happened after that Marcos Marco did not witness. He was ordered to go to his home and to go to bed. He knew that when he woke, every other Marco would be gone, the land would never grow another grain of wheat, the hearth would be destroyed and a single bread stone would be the only thing besides himself that would remain. He also knew that while he was the keeper of the stone he did not own the stone. Eventually, he too would pass from this world to another. But first he had to teach the lesson of the bread stone.

He woke the next morning and everything was as he knew it would be. Later that morning, a villager came by and asked for some bread. Marcos Marco shared this story with the villager:

#

I have been cursed for I have not honored the bread stone. I let five crumbs drop to the ground, and now I am ill and my land is barren. I cannot make you bread, but if you are desperate and your heart is open, pray to be fed. You shall find the next morning a magic bread stone. Mix some flour and water together and place it on the stone. Leave it for an hour or more and when you come back you shall have the most amazing bread. But heed my advice: never drop a single crumb and share my tale with everyone.

#

And that is how the magic bread stone came to be.

Upon the completion of this song and story, the lily died and the traveler woke. Her heart was hungrier than it had ever been, and she did not notice the hunger in her belly. She prayed to be fed and fell back asleep. When she awoke as the sun was rising, the magic bread stone was next to her.

She knew she needed flour and water, and she knew she would find none on this land. She wrapped the stone in her cape and set off for a village that was only a day away. When she reached the village, she found the bakery. She asked the baker for a cup of flour in exchange for her sweeping the shop. He agreed and at the end of the day after she had swept the entire bakery tidy he gave her a cup of flour.

"Are you sure you do not want bread," he asked.

"No. I do not yearn for your food. I long for First Food," she replied and then she left.

She walked to the well and pulled up the bucket full of water. As she was about to pour no more than a tablespoon into the flour, the waterman stopped her.

"That will cost you a dollar," he told her.

"I do not have a dollar, but I can guard your well this evening and make sure no one steals."

The waterman agreed to this arrangement and went home to his warm bed. The traveler took her one tablespoon of water and mixed it with her one cup of flour. She placed the dry dough on the magic bread stone, put it on the opposite side of the well from which she kept watch and covered it with her cape so she could not see it work its magic.

Dawn came and still she kept watch.

The waterman thanked her for watching the well all night.

"This was my first night's sleep in over a month," he told her. "Are you sure you do not want more water?"

"I am not concerned for this water for if I drink of it I will only become more thirsty. I hunger for First Food, which cannot be found in this well."

She gathered her cape and felt the fresh warm loaf underneath it. She smiled.

"What are you smiling about," the waterman asked.

She pulled the bread out from under her cape and handed him a small piece. "This is First Food, and it is meant to be honored. Make sure no crumb falls to the ground or you shall be cursed for ten years per crumb."

The waterman ate the small piece of bread skeptical that it was more than bread. And lo! It was so much more than just food. His heart danced, his eyes teared, his mouth sang, his feet fluttered, his mind opened.

"Dear traveling woman. It seems it is I who should thank you. This is the best food I have ever tasted. How can I repay you?"

"You can honor me by telling the tale of Marcos Marco to everyone you encounter."

"Who is Marcos Marco?"

And with that question, she shared his story.

It is because of this traveler that the magic bread stone was brought back to life. And it is why, when you are searching for more than just bread you should listen to the stories of travelers dressed in rags. For they shall feed you First Food. But first, you must give them the resources to work their magic. For they are sacred.

With Toenails Painted Orange

2011-03-11T12:04:00.000-08:00

He stands on the balcony looking below him words whorling like a clogged toilet read to flow over an moment. The light dash down the street as the streetwalkers dash down the sidewalk. The sirens of fire call a few blocks away and almost snap him out of his spinning, but he finds their circular rhythm and spins deeper. He is only on the second floor. It will hurt; it won't kill.

You see him on the balcony as you watch from a window higher and across. Blinds partially drawn you know what is about to happen. You've stood on that balcony only ten floor higher. A computer rests on your desk in front of your partially drawn window. You peck a message and click post. Others see, respond, and share. And you continue to stare, observe, report. It is uncomfortable but made easier by the cup of coffee and midnight ramen. Your hand trembles and stops on the latch. All you have to do is opn it and scream. But you pause. You hate yelling.

She is on the sidewalk hidden behind a parked car as the police pass. Her exposed thighs shivering from the coastal fog as it creeps ever eastward. Their sporadic shaking matches her quivering tears. Bare feet with toenails painted orange start moving her west towards the only open convenience store. The silver sequins shimmer her discomfort from a too tight dress meant to accentuate.

He lingers as she pauses at the store door, and you watch him watching her. He runs his hand over his chest feeling the spot that once was round. She vanishes as the fog thickens. You no longer see him. You are fearful of what's to come, so you peck again. Then, a response: Do something. Yet, you can't. You are trapped in that moment three years ago and ten floors up. This time you jump.

You land gracefully unharmed as if the ground were merely a gymnastics floor able to give in to the force of your fall. It is your memory you fell into and you can see her in front of you. You didn't notice her as he watched. There is something familiar in her face. Something about the way she watches the ground that is reminiscent of your current position at the partially drawn window.

The circular sirens ring louder and brighter. They pass your eyelids and his stare. You both startle, and you see him slip. He is falling. You did nothing paralyzed by your own discomfiting memory of contemplation.

He lands as you landed: gracefully. His feet bare with toenails painted orange cross the street. A bell buzzes somewhere in another room. It almost begs action, but you resist turning and getting up. Your coffee is still warm; your ramen still hot. You sip and slurp.

He is out of view somewhere among the shadows below obscured by the late night fog. You cannot shake his falling, so you peck again and a bell responds. It sings its song in your ear, and you respond in its chorus:

The ringing rings of memories, hope, despair
ring loudly in my ear.
It asks me to stand up,
but all I can do is stare.

A message pops on the screen in front of you, "Open the door." The simple command rings louder than the sirens and bell.

You make your way to your door, and when it opens there you are. With toenails painted orange.

BAN6 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

2011-02-28T08:17:00.000-08:00

This is a comment response to The S. Kitchen Fan Erica P's post on The Eatable Life about the BAN6 Conversation at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts which happened on Saturday, February 19, 2011 from 1pm to 4pm. The guest speakers were Novella Carpenter, Leif Hedendal, and Bryant Terry. To get a detailed and accurate summary of the event, please head on over to The Eatable Life.

This is a commentary and reflection.

***
Thanks for this fab review of the event. I liked all three of the speakers as well. I think they all brought in different perspectives of the food movement and industry. I especially liked how Novella talked about her love of animals, and they are dinner. I found her description of the ritual of slaughter fascinating, and have been grappling with what it means to me as a meat eater.

I had a much harder time with the format.

To me, the crux of the conversation was the intersection of food, art, and social justice. Having come to food and art through the vocation of youth development and educational reform, I have a really hard time when "conversations" about these topics don't also embrace a food, art, and social justice approach. The format of the event was constructed using a classical educational approach. There were "experts", the panelists and curator, and "learners", the audience. These two positions need to be filled in a classical educational approach because the role of the expert is to impart their learning on the learner. The learner has little to no role in the area of expertise.

At this event, there was even a hierarchy in what role each particular audience member played. Throughout the event, the curator/moderator asked questions to "the artists". While I was in the audience and listening to the conversation and being asked questions, I took comfort in being called an artist. It made me feel like there was a level of importance in being an audience member, that I may in fact be an artist. I felt like they were also trying a new approach to learning, one that, while not completely embracing a social justice or people's educational approach, was at least moving in that direction.

After the event, I stuck around to talk to Bryant. I noticed as the chairs were being picked up that there were technically two classifications of audience members: ones whose seats read "Artist" and ones whose seats were blank. I haven't felt that dissed in a very long time, and it made me question the entirety of the event. Was this event really *for* me?

It also shed light onto a weird interaction between me and the moderator. During the discussion, I spoke and shared my story of how I came to both food and art. I have mostly worked in low-income, historically marginalized communities. Within those communities, art and food are not a superfluous question. They are questions of both survival and engagement. (I would argue engagement is survival, but that's another debate.) They ONLY way I got young people to the table and understanding anything was through food and art. Parents only came to meetings where food was present. I could only meet with teachers if I brought pizza. And that is solely on the most surface of levels.

The weird interaction came after I stated, "Take a look around and see who is here and who isn't here." (Or something incredibly similar.) I know I did not see a single person under mid-twenties. I can make a fairly educated guess that most had some (if not a lot) of post-secondary education. (I myself flunked out, so I might not be making that educated of a guess.) And all were, while maybe not rich per se, at least either upper-lower or lower-middle class and above. I couldn't imagine a single youth I worked with in my 15+ years of youth development work ever showing up to the event.

My comment was dismissed by the curator, and he quickly moved on. I wondered after I saw the chairs with the "Artist" label on them if part of that reaction was due to the fact that I was not labeled an "artist". I also wondered if I struck a nerve on a topic that the museum has been grappling with.

I know a museum is for a very particular kind of person, one that can navigate it and understand it, which requires a certain level of education. It is also an institution. But as we move forward with the conversation of the intersections of food, art, commodification, and social justice we cannot forget that there is a LARGE segment of the population MISSING from the dialogue. Those people are the same ones that will be the most impacted by any decision (political, aesthetic, cultural, etc.) in these arenas. I think we, the collective we that includes me, can do better at finding ways to engage them. And that starts with some great food and excellent art.

Open Doors and Empty Drawers

2011-02-23T11:49:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure you know me even though we share a bed and I know intimately the mole on your ass that has a long hair that should be plucked. It's not your fault. I've never told you about the wandering eyes that lead wandering hands. I just smile and flirt. That's what I say. At least that is what I say to you. I just want our love as measured by the volume of your snoring. It's the only sound that eases my mind and puts me to sleep. I love sleep. It's dreams I don't care for; their hope is false.

You are waking now, and I am creepily staring. You hate waking up to me hovering over your head. I like counting your gray hairs and freckles. 358. Just a week shy of a year. It's symbolic I tell myself, and you are looking annoyed. You don't want my roving hand, so I turn my eyes and find somewhere else to rove. There. It is on the computer screen I should have closed. It's on your computer. I shouldn't have used it, but it was there last night open and beckoning after you fell asleep. He's still staring back at me paused just before completion. I never get to finish.

I've wanted to tell you for so long, and each time I start I yield. I've wanted that feeling of connectedness that others talk about in relation to their spouses. We touch. We never connect. I miss the feeling of being with someone. Why aren't you with me?

You lay there breathing heavily, eyes blinking sleepily, hand slamming snooze. I'm about to tell you that there is a virtual other, that he comforts and warms me with his electric impulses. I can feel his resistance in the keyboard, and that is so much more real than the depression of your body in this bed. It's about to be over. We are about to become you and me again.

But I am terrified. I don't want you to know me. I am safer behind a screen and blinking cursor. I am stronger not next to you.

There you are:next to me. I can't do it this way. I cannot. I cannot break your heart and shatter your illusion of me. Or I cannot do it while we share this bed.

I rise. You turn over on your side annoyed at my fidgitiness. I do this ever morning. Except today is different. Today, I leave.

Your computer is in front of me, and he is still paused. I press play and instantly he cums. He knows me and sees me for who I am: misery and hopeless dreams. He knows what comes next. It happens every time: he door opens and he walks away. That's how everything ends.

I rewind two minutes and pause. There is a not in my hand. It is for you. It is the only way I know how to show you who I really am.

You are finally awake and out of bed. The back door hangs open. It is cold and rainy and dreary. You notice a hot pink post-it on your computer screen and empty drawers.

It reads, "Press play." And all you can do is pause.

He-Man Versus the Devo Poison Oak People

2011-02-23T11:47:00.001-08:00

I woke up this morning with a headache today stemming from a spot in between my left shoulder blade and my spine. It made breathing and remembering difficult almost painful but only slightly. It was like the dull ache and burning itch of poison oak, which reminds me of my dream; the one I hoped the headache would drown out. Obviously, the pain isn't great enough to make me forget.

I was standing on a cliff looking at a large island in the rough sea that kept being hidden by coastal fog. Only, I wasn't me. I was floating above me, and my body was in the form of He-Man, Master of the Universe. My greased muscles shone like the sun that was beginning to set: bronze. I was a less precious metal.

I don't know how I got to that cliff of sandstone. I was just there and had a vague memory of a machete and gigantic wild plants that chased me over uneven ground. I think they had human teeth. They also had new wave haircuts. I despised them; they were trying to be too hip. That was some of the only clarity.

Another clear thought was: Joel Osteen and Tammy Faye Baker. They were keynote speakers about the power of visualization and self-determination. Evidently, anything is possible if you only have ambition and faith. I have neither. I like it that way; it make living surprisingly easy. I am content with my minimum wage job and lack of insurance precisely because I don' give a shit.

But...He-Man cared, and he wanted to listen to the keynote speakers. He believed in "the POWER OF GRAYSKULL!", which he thought, based solely on its conceptual designs, was the epitome of both ambition and faith. It's how Prince Adam became He-Man: he believe. Plus, he had a mantra.

The speech was to take place on the island. Only, the sea separated us. And a cliff. And the fact that I, who was He-Man and floating above him, couldn't care less about Joel Osteen. Tammy Faye, on the other hand, was a different story. I wanted to know her beauty secrets. How exactly does one get that much mascara on one's eyelashes? It is still a mystery to me, and I've tried fake eyelashes, Mac mascara, and that stupid eyelash "grower" that Brooke Shields sells. I think it is called Activia or Boniva or Truvia or something ...via. Then again, I could be confusing it with solutions to irritable bowel syndrome, which I think is a "side" effect of that lash "grower". My bowels were definitely irritated, but that has nothing to do with eyelashes.

I am digressing form my dream. I, He-Man, was standing on a cliff looking at the island in the middle of the choppy sea when the plants from that hidden memory burst forth through the line of palm trees that stood twenty-seven feet away from the edge of the cliff. I had only a moment to decide what to do. That's when I noticed the plant people with the Devo outfits were poison oak. I could tell by the leaves of three and the slightly reddish-brown hue to their supposedly green leaves.

I had two options: fight or flight. Flight meant jumping off the cliff, falling at least six stories, and most likely dieing on impact. I jumped. Or rather He-Man jumped. I still floated there above him.

Only, he didn't fall. He flew upward and in a bizarre moment of lucidity I really was He-Man. I was no longer floating above him.

Then, I woke up with a headache.

Now, I am popping three Advil hoping it will subside and that I can forget my dream. I just wish I could have learned Tammy Faye's beauty secrets before I woke up. God damn Devo poison oak people ruining my strange dream!

A Plastic Coffee Cup

2011-02-23T11:47:00.000-08:00

She has a coffee in her hand. It is melting the plastic cup it is in and blistering her hand. Soon, it will be all over the counter. She notices none of it. She's lost. I can tell. I'm sitting above her staring at her blank eyes and tapping feet.

I think she wants burning hands. she brought the plastic cup with her and demanded the coffee be poured in it, which makes me question my observation: she notices none of it. This makes me ponder whether any of my observations are real or accurate or truth. It seems all things do come undone if you observe long enough and know how to ask questions. I wonder if the same thing can be said of rising and convergence. I also wonder if dunces can form a confederacy. But that has nothing to do with her. Just my love of literature.

Now she's left and the counter is covered in her coffee. I'm still above. I'm still looking down. And I'm still observing. Maybe I should act and help clean it up. I watched it all unfold and did noting before, so something after may be in order. But I'm no good at action. It is why I write and love literature.

Living Free Under Giant Umbrellas

2011-02-08T11:50:00.000-08:00

The early morning sky, the one whose moon has already set and whose sun has yet to rise, the one peppered with planes flashing red, white, and blue, the one whose taxis weave through carless traffic, the one that I'd rather sleep through reminds me of days spent hopeless and aimless and listless on forgotten allies littered with empty needles and crusty tissues and ripped open tin foil squares. I'm staring at the stars in a different city and a different time but cannot escape reminiscing through memories that beg manifestation. I shouldn't be remembering. I should be grateful for the roof and the mattress and the coffee maker brewing some organic Peruvian, but I can never escape the trappings of no one space to call my home and sleepless nights under giant umbrellas as the pitter patter of rain puddles in the crevices of broken asphalt under my ass. It is damp here too, but it is not wet.

These images fade as the sunless night lightens calling forth the magentas and violets and midnight blues of approaching dawn, and they are gone as quickly as that midnight blue fades to pale yellow. I am sitting on my porch on a wooden swing the shape of a bench I once slept on in Golden Gate Park. It was specially made, and now is the only place I hope to find comfort. It is much more comfortable that the mattress with its hospital corners and down comforter that still smells new. I prefer the sweet scent of unwashed days and clothes worn for weeks. This place is so much more constricting than the grumbling tummy of dumpster meals.

He's still sleeping and does not know of my longing. It is only mine and the one thing he can never have. He's been to conditioned by air conditioning. He will never know the constraint imposed by controlled environments and windows and doors and the automatic dripping of the Krups coffee maker. And still I love him despite my anger at being swept away from my houseless home. He's kind, and I need that more than another night wondering where another meal will be. Still he will never understand this is as much a jail as any cell as I will never comprehend his need for an electric toothbrush or an immersion blender.

I swing here on the porch, and the sun has fully risen. He is awake and pouring me coffee and carefully measuring the cream. He is putting two squares of sugar into the bottom of my cup and will be bringing it momentarily. I love him. I love that he cares enough to know my taste in coffee. And while this horizon is of distant mountains rather than the unending sea, I love that I am here with him and bounded by another constraint: marriage. Luckily, it is not legal, so my mind can wander uninhibited.

The trappings of personal history flash away as the sun hides behind the storm clouds in the East. My coffee is in my hands and sugar is upon my tongue. He's holding me as I cry. It is this moment -- the one of tenderness -- that make me feel free despite this suburban prison. And I wouldn't trade this 30 seconds for ten more years of living free.

Of Grace and Obligation

2011-01-27T08:26:00.000-08:00

Death is like a natural disaster -- no matter how much planning and preparation is done once it hits everything changes. You cannot prepare for the flood or numbing of emotions. You don't know exactly how the laws will work themselves out. You can't anticipate how others will react. You just have to go along for the ride and see what comes.

I didn't know how much my grandfather's passing would challenge me. He was a man I always adored. He was on of my childhood heroes -- tall, strong, and always there with a helping hand. He was also everything I was not -- a staunch Republican, an avid sports fan, nimble with his fingers, cautious. He had a philosophy of live and let live as long as he didn't need to see or hear it.

A few hours earlier on the day he passed, I booked a ticket to come see him in Arizona hoping I could say goodbye before his final exhale. I didn't make it. He died in hospice quickly at the age of 80. He never wanted to live in hospice, and he was terrified of losing his reason, but there he was in hospice doped up because his mind had completely deteriorated. It was a beautiful thing that he only had a few days of that kind of living.

I kept my flight. I wanted to be here for my granny and lend the same helping hand my grandfather would have lent me. It was the best way to honor his life. I wasn't prepared for the internal conflict that came.

I inherited my grandfather's strong will. I did not inherit his ability to still my tongue. I have had to learn how to quiet both my lips and need to argue, and I haven't been very successful in those lessons. Slowly, I have made progress, and the greatest lesson has come from being here in Sun City West supporting my granny through this transition. I see what he saw in her -- beauty, faith, fortitude, quiet rebellion, dedication. I amazed at her ability to meet obligation with grace.

My granny didn't want a memorial service here in Arizona. She preferred to only have services back in Minnesota this summer. He will rest there in a crypt in Resurrection Cemetery. It is the place of our Soderberg clan's birth, and, minus myself and my granny, where the rest of our clan still reside. But what you want isn't always what others need. Others wanted to say goodbye here.

My mom arrived in Arizona a few days before me. She was one of the people, despite her claiming otherwise, that needed closure. She didn't get to say goodbye, and it pained her immeasurably. She wanted to hold his hand and give him a final hug.

I received a phone call the Tuesday before my planned arrival asking if I would do one of the readings at mass. I agreed knowing how much it would meant to my mom and granny. Immediately, after hanging up the phone, I grew uncomfortable. I was raised in a family whose Catholic heritage stretches back generations. While I identify as catholic, I am not Catholic. This was going to be difficult.

I arrived on Thursday. The memorial mass was Saturday. Two days of restlessness ensued, and a story was shared about the struggle to get the readings and songs my mom and granny wanted. I did the reading in my best church voice as gracefully as possible. I can't share more. It doesn't feel right, and it seems to soon. Needless to say, my difficulties paled in comparison to those of my mom and granny.

We had a reception at my granny's house after the mass. I was in charge of the kitchen, so my granny and mom could be with guests. I hustled making coffee and setting everything out. I was amazed at how impatient some of the guests were. The coffee couldn't brew quickly enough, and when they rushed me to pour some of the coffee from the unfinished pot complained that it wasn't hot enough. I noticed all of the paper plates were gone while I was finishing up setting out some more cookies. I was going to get them momentarily, but that wasn't quick enough. Everyone knew I was the grandson, but many folks treated me like the catering help.

A couple of times I got testy telling people to back off and get out of the kitchen. At one point, I had to excuse myself to the bathroom to have a silent meltdown. I definitely wasn't prepared for the pushiness of retired folks.

Then, I saw my granny and mom. They were also entertaining guests. They were gracious and welcoming, and I started learning the art of grace and obligation. While this service and reception were about my grandfather, they were not for my grandfather. They were for everyone else. It had nothing to do with us. The best way forward was honoring my grandpa the way he would want to be honored. I smiled and said thank-you.

I'm not sure this is how I want to live my life. I believe that emotions shouldn't be tucked underneath everything in order to be stoic. I'm not sure I believe in the obligations of others. If I did, I'm not sure I ever would have come out.n What I did learn is that when you do show up for others it is important to honored them the way they want to be honored. This doesn't mean compromising on who you are. It does mean finding the grace by which to do both at the same time.

I've learned a lot during my time here in Arizona with my granny and mom, and while my grandpa is no longer here with us he is still teaching me. And to me, that is what is heaven. It isn't a place. It is these moments of transcendence, these moments when contradictions become harmonious.

Cheers grandpa! I look forward to the many lessons you have yet to teach.

Of Families of Choice and Origin

2011-01-19T08:27:00.000-08:00

We gathered on a Wednesday night to celebrate and remember my grandfather. He passed away late at night the Tuesday before. He lived in Arizona. I am in San Francisco. I received the news from my mother, his daughter, at about 10pm. She lives in Minnesota, the state in which I grew up. She was weeping, and I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around her. I had no words and actions are impossible over the phone.

The news didn't hit me immediately. His death was sudden, yet not unanticipated. He had Alzheimer's and was slowly slipping away. He started slipping even faster around Christmas, and with a blink he was gone. I didn't get to say good-bye, and in some ways I am grateful. I get to remember him as he was not how he died.

Wednesday started the same as every other day. I got dressed, packed my backpack, and head to the cafe. My brother and I talked on the phone during my short walk to Progressive Grounds. "The funeral will be in the spring or summer", he told me. I have to wait until then for the final closure and resting.

I plopped down at a table and opened my computer. I needed to send a few emails, edit a couple
of recipes, and promote an event or two. I stared blankly at the screen wondering why the emails didn't write themselves. It might have helped if I had my email open. Facebook stared back at me and with it status updates about the Arizona shooting, saving American bees, upcoming drag shows, and the occasional music video. The music videos I could handle, and while watching one posted by my friend Shon, a memory flooded everything.

I was playing in my grandparents family room, distinctively different from the living room that was off limits. I could see the seventies' decor with those earthen-colored woven curtains that matched the brick fireplace. There was a crate of records and a record player too. I was rummaging through them trying to find something to play.

Two stood out in my memory: Snoopy versus the Red Baron and Hank Williams, Senior. I could hear the scratches from the record spinning and the twang of Hank's guitar as if it was playing in my ear buds. I went to YouTube and found "Beyond the Sunset" and pressed "share" on Facebook.

Moments later my hands were shaking and my mind was spinning. It wasn't the loss of my grandfather that was hitting me. It was being thousands of miles away from my family of origin. I knew at some point during the day my brothers and sister would make the trek to touch bases with my mom and dad. I wouldn't. I could only call, which isn't the same as being there. I needed some family time.

I am blessed with both a family of origin and a family of choice. I am also blessed with some mad skills in the kitchen and fondness for the foods of my Swedish and German heritage: meat and potatoes. I knew the remedy to family time was family time.

I sent a text to a few folks inviting them to dinner and memories. I knew exactly what I was going to cook: my grandfather's favorite meal -- pot roast, carrots and potatoes, and vanilla ice cream with Hershey's chocolate syrup.

The time between sending the text invitation and starting cooking was uneasy. My husband beared with me as I aimlessly wandered Safeway unable to make decisions. My nap was cut short by my racing mind. Memories of my grandfather kept popping up.

I remember him teaching me hot to drive a four-wheel ATV. I remember the tears in his eyes at my wedding to my husband. I remember playing cards and dominoes for hours on end. I remember him fostering my love of theater by taking me to see shows at the Old Log Theater every holiday. I remember him frying rosettes every Christmas. I cried, and I'm crying now as I write this and remember him.

Then, I started cooking. I shoved cloves of garlic into the pot roast and rubbed spices all over it. I cut the potatoes and carrots and tossed them with Lipton's Onion Soup Mix. As I lost my self in the minutiae of chopping, I found peace.

Two hours later there was a knock on the door. My first family member arrived. Then, another. And another. We were all together sharing my grandfather's favorite meal.

As I sit on Market Street with my warm coffee and morning bun writing this down, I am struck by how important family truly is. Family, to me, are folks in your life that show up when needed. Showing up can be a phone call, text message, Facebook note, or it can b gathering in your living room with a plate full of food. Need can be a death, a graduation, or those moments when nothing major is happening other than a silent breakdown. Family are the people that truly know you. They see you in all your imperfections and love you.

I am also struck by how meals breed family. While not everyone in my family of choice knew my grandfather, so much of his story was told in the meal we shared. Everyone gathered had a flavor of his life in each bite. His heritage, as silly as it sounds, lives on in vanilla ice cream with Hershey's chocolate syrup. I will never be able to eat that dish without thinking of him. Share meals are also how I have found and deepened my family here.

I am grateful that I don't have just one family. It makes being away from my family of origin during uneasy times easier. I can't imagine not having family; living would be unbearable. I couldn't be who I am fully without it. The S. Kitchen wouldn't exist if family didn't exist.

My dream for 2011 is growing and continuing to deepen my family by showing up when needed and sharing a meal. I need to continue fostering cuisine, conversation, and camaraderie. For once we've share cuisine and a conversation, we have started building camaraderie. And that is just a fancy word for family.

The Groggery of Demarcation

2010-12-21T11:52:00.000-08:00

At first the line was invisible; its existence was only known in the creases of my brain reinforced by the six planes of my studio apartment. It was comforting knowing it was there like the comfort of having my bed also act as my couch. As it was invisible, I could ignore it, and, like most invisible things, its silence and non-presence made it manifest.

It all started with some spaghetti sauce. I inadvertently knocked the sauce pot's handle with my careless elbow. The sauce flew everywhere, all over the apartment making a huge mess. As I cleaned on bended knees, I left one long sauce line down the center of my apartment essentially making two rooms. That was only the beginning.

I lived with that line for months as if a friend was on holiday. It became my companion coming with me as a whisper whenever I left my home. It pointed out differences with each step leaving in my shadow an acute awareness of uniqueness. The man over there with the similarly long black hair is lighter skinned than me, which I always noted, and that lightness wasn't quite white, which I hadn't noticed. The woman, yes we are differently gendered, has a manner of walking, of placing her feet carefully one in front of the other, that speaks of control, definitely a similarity, and also of intention, definitely a difference. The child with the gray eyes who races down the street chasing after an escaped ball runs carelessly bounding and galumphing and unaware of the cars weaving around her -- not s single similarity. I saw this child daily. Never before had I compared myself to her. There hadn't been a desire.

Then, one Thursday, right before my shift at The Groggery, a tall thin straight shape approached me. Cloaked by shadows, I couldn't see their face. It held out a small piece of purple chalk on what I assumed to be a hand. The line in my head recognized the chalk and grabbed it. Then, that tall thin straight shape dispersed into the shroud behind it. I put the chalk in my coat pocket.

At The Groggery, I slammed a shot of tequila unnerved by the perplexing figure and unsure why I took the chalk. Then, another. And another. And finally another. Four shots in twenty minutes and still no customers, so I did another and locked the door. It was time for the stronger spirits stored in a locked cabinet in the back.

Something about the chalk bothered me. All I could think about was Harold and the Purple Crayon. He had imagination. I just had my line. I hated Harold. He was different than me. I had to leave my mark.

I pulled the chalk out of my pocket and drew a straight line from the bar to the door at the back. The line continued up the door. Then, I opened the door and continued the line on the red brick floor until it reached the cabinet door, the door with the lock I didn't have the key for. I wanted in. It was another line between me and something else. "Break it," whispered my line, and I drew a line down the middle of the lock. And...it snapped. Right there in front of me the lock fell off the cabinet into two separate pieces.

The bottle was long and slender like a Riesling wine bottle. Its neck delicate almost as if it was meant to be snapped in half. The liquid a neon violet, similar to the neon blue of Hypnotiq, beckoned drinking. I drew a line down the middle. A loud crack, and it split in two. The spirits flowed out of the cabinet and all over the brick floor. Too late for drinking out of a cup, I lapped it up like a cat.

The booze whirled through my head curving my line. I saw new shapes and prospects and alternatives divide my brain. No longer was it singular. Yet even as they multiplied and morphed and mutated they were all derivations of the first line, the invisible line. There were boxes and circles and spirals and winding lines that formed figures. There were landscapes and horizons and twisting roads. There was an entire world, and I saw for the first time how everything is a line: that same invisible line. Yet my mind or my body or my humanity rejected similarity. While there were lines, there was also space, and without that I wouldn't have seen those figure or horizons. Dizzy and confounded, I slept. Then, I dreamt.

I stood at the edge of a horizon staring into a void a line firmly beneath my feet.

Then, it moved. It rose from under my feet stretching infinitely over the void. It was the same tall thin straight shape that gave me the purple chalk. It obstructed everything. At once, it completely surrounded me encasing me in its borders, making it impossible to discern myself from it. I wondered where I began and what made me me. I couldn't feel my body, but my mind...it was independent, autonomous. I knew it wasn't the line. Yet, I was the line. There were no distinctions, no demarcations in any physical way.

But there was thought, Without borders -- clear definitions, limitations, expectations -- how do I know the difference between us? How do I separate myself from the landscape that's enveloped me? What is the real difference between positive and negative space?

A shiver.

Is that a thought just made manifest? No...There in the line surrounding me. That... It is that beautiful purple chalk: finite, solid, bound. It is distinctly not me, distinctly not the line.

Somewhere else, my body slept on the red brick, my body sprawled over the line I drew, the neon violet wetting my face.

But here...the purple chalk beckons. The line soothes. One must give way to the other. It must. Or........?

It all starts with an invisible line in the creases of my brain.

And it ends here: with purple chalk in my hand and a purple line surrounding me. I draw it. It draws me.

And my body...? It has dissolved into the neon violet, and it now sits in a slender bottle whose delicate neck is easily snapped locked in a cabinet in The Groggery waiting for a simple line of purple chalk.

Why Doesn't [_______] Have A Bigger Queer Following?

2010-12-10T08:31:00.000-08:00

This is an edited response I wrote commenting on "Why doesn't [blank] have a bigger queer following?" posted on The New Gay. If you don't know The New Gay, you should definitely check them out. They have some great articles that are actively exploring the nuances and edges of being gay/queer.

I am sharing this response because it directly relates my life and even more importantly, my life's work. If you have ever wondered how I have gotten such a diverse group of people together to share, it is important to know one thing: it has taken work; lots and lots of work spanning a very long time. And the second thing you should know is that it isn't just about me hosting an event; it is also about showing up as a guest at other's events.

So now for the response and a brief glance into how the community with which I surround myself is what it is.

***

I came out in 1994 at the ripe ol’ age of 18. I came out while I was in seminary studying to be a priest. It was an interesting place to come out. And it shaped my conception of being gay/queer.

In the seminary, I was constantly asked for sex in the wee hours of the morning only to be called a faggot as a I walked down to morning prayer. I caught priests in public bathrooms cruising for sex unaware that I recognized them out of their robes and uniforms. I was constantly berated for my personal views.

I left the seminary after one semester. I still stayed at my Catholic university, but now as a “regular” student. I was the only out queer person on a campus of about 10,000 people. It forced me to look beyond the university to find support, so I started gong out to Macalester College and the University of Minnesota and queer cafes to try and find a community and a culture I could belong to.

Immediately, I was ostracized: I was still Catholic at a Catholic university. I got a lot of “Wow. You are so brave. It must be difficult for you there.” Followed immediately by, “I won’t come visit you there. Why don’t we meet somewhere else?” These comments dismissed the reality I was living. As long as I conformed to their notions of queer and queer spaces, I would get support. Ask for support in the spaces I reside in, and it didn’t exist.

My experiences of the “community at large” was one where I was still outside. I was still seen as an other. So I had to start looking for other places for community. I knew it wouldn’t be in “queer spaces” that I would find it.

I found that community in a small group of social change activists of color at my university. It was an eye opening experience that pushed my own conceptions of being to new levels. I had to look at my patterns of behavior to unearth deep seeded racism and sexism in order to become a part of this group. And I did it. In return, this amazing group of people looked at their patterns of behavior to unearth their deep seeded homophobia in order to connect with me. This network of support helped me stay in college for another year and a half. Ultimately, I had to leave/was forced to leave (same thing really now that I have had some distance). And our small group of friends and colleagues are all across the USA doing important social justice work some 16 years later.

After I left college, I did AmeriCorps. I had a choice of placements, and I ended up working for Minneapolis Unified School District running youth leadership, after school, and family support programs at the age of 20. I was one of the youngest people doing this work as well as the only out person at a public elementary school.

Once again, I had to find support somewhere. I thought that support would come in the form of queer housemates. And it did for a second, but as with all things in life, shit happens and one roommate and myself ended up hating each other. (I did have great support from one lesbian roommate, and I just want to make note of that.) I also thought it would come from the gay boys I met out in the clubs I snuck into. They were great for a casual friendship, but not for anything deep or meaningful. I had to find support somewhere other than queer bars and cafes.

Support came from other AmeriCorps members. It came from older adults who saw my struggles and wanted to support my path. It came from my college friends. And it came from queers I met at queer events (not bars or cafes).

The connection from this last grouping, queers from queer events, however, had little to do with queerness, as directly related to sexual and gender identity. Yes, there was a common identity that linked us, but it went way beyond just identity politics. This was a group that was dedicated to righting societal injustices on multiple levels: policy, art, race, class, religion, indigenous genocide, immigration, HIV/AIDS, health, pop culture, music, design, performance, and sexual and gender identity and the fluidity between all of these passions, interests, talents, and identities.

After my stint in AmeriCorps, I was recruited to Antioch College in Ohio. I decided to take a leap of faith because I wanted to experience what it would be like to be in a truly supportive environment even if it was a small one. Additionally, I was excited by the possibility of being with like minded individuals beyond sexual and gender orientations.

By the time I ended up at Antioch, my perspective on life had totally changed. I was more comfortable in diverse spaces than homogeneous spaces. I had already gone through the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond’s Undoing Racism retreat and the United States Student Association’s Grassroots Organizing Weekend, so I had a radical perspective on anti-racist and organizing work. I believed (and still believe) in supporting from behind rather than always being in front. I was also a returning student rather than a student just starting out college. And as a result of these factors, I quickly learned Antioch was not going to be a space for me.

Once again, the supportive queer environment that I had hoped for was not there. Yes, I was no longer the only out gay man on campus. However, the loneliness of being “the only one” was replaced with anger at being forced to compete with the other four or five gay men on who was the “most gay”. You had to prove how oppressed you were in order to find your place. I didn’t play along.

The friends I made at Antioch all ended up being students of color. These were the friends with whom I’d share meals and study. These were the friends that stayed up late bitching about everyone else on campus. These were also the friends that share the most similar economic background: blue collar or poor.

I had little to no queer friends besides one lesbian who had a car. We’d end up going out to Dayton or Columbus or Cincinnati to go dancing and find sex. It became almost a nightly event to leave campus in order to find a queer community. And the only community we found and got connected to was a community that loved dancing and drinking. It is a marvelous aspect of our community. It is also not all of it.

Again, I set off in search of the “gay community”: I moved to San Francisco. I was certain it was here thanks to conversations with an ex-boyfriend who had moved to San Francisco and sang its praises. Again, I was wrong. It was not the land I thought it would be, and I was a cute, 21 year-old gay boy who didn’t mind go go dancing or being paid for sex.

The community of queers I found was one of drug and alcohol fueled fuck-upery. It was a divine retreat, oasis, and refuge from the struggle of living in an expensive city. It was also not a “community” in the sense of truly supporting one another, finding connections between stories, or fellowship. It was all about dancing, drugs, partying, and alcohol.

These things are definitely needed, and I believe are more important than we sometimes realize. It is how I initially connected to the queer community, and without it I am not sure exactly where I would be today. I am not even sure I would be alive. The release that comes from these things is intangible. It allows all of the worries to go away or at least be put on hold momentarily. It is also not something that can be sustained indefinitely. So, again, I had to find a community of support.

That support came from a very unlikely place, especially for a new transplant to San Francisco: from native San Franciscans of color.

A few years after moving to San Francisco, I got a job working at a Beacon Center, which is a community center located in a public middle school, as the Education Director. This role put me in direct contact with a whole slew of people who grew up in this city. And I found that we had a lot in common. We shared values of diversity and pluralism of social justice and social change of the spirituality of identity and politics. We found that even in the moments when we all seemed so completely different from each other (me in my Marilyn Manson drag and my dear friend Maria with her two young daughters and my colleague Will who had done time and was doing gang prevention) there were threads that connected us, and even if we couldn’t see them we knew we had to support each other if we wanted a better future for the youth and families we were serving.

It is from this base of friends and colleagues that I found my network of support: an eclectic crew of folks that to anyone outside would wonder how we all were connected. And it required a whole bunch of work on all ends to build this network. It required me going outside of my comfort zone. I had to take on other issues than just queer issues if I wanted to keep and sustain these friendships. I had to listen to parents and youth and hear their stories of struggle. And I couldn’t just listen to them. I had to find ways my story intersected theirs so that I could become a better advocate and use my access and power in a manner that honored their stories and supported their development (and not the development policy makers, administrators, and funders said they needed).

It is also from this base that I found more queers and a queer community I am proud to call myself a part of. But this isn’t the queer community promoted through mainstream media or culture. This is not the queer community of the bars. This is not the queer community I thought it would be. It is not a simple reductivist view of gender and sexual identity. It is a complex web that understand that while sexual and gender identity shapes some of our personal world view/perspective there is a whole hell of a lot more that also shapes that view and creates connections between people and communities.

I know that this ability to create support beyond gender and sexual identity is because of the hard work and activism of those queers that came before me. I also can’t help but look at our history and see nuance in what happened before me. Yes, there are queers that made headway for queer rights. There are also queers in the feminist movement, the civil rights movement, the international human rights movement, and more. There are also straights in the queer rights movement. I sometimes feel that by not looking this broadly we lose sight that queer doesn’t ever mean one thing. Nor is queer something that solely bridges people.

As an example, I applied for a queer youth agency in San Francisco after at 5 years of working with youth in a variety of settings. I made it in for an interview. During the interview, I was asked if I had ever worked with queer youth. I mentioned that I had worked in public schools for five years, and that as a result of this work I had worked with all youth including queer youth. I was told that was inadequate experience because it wasn’t with a targeted queer youth population. I was told I didn’t understand the experiences of queer young people. I thanked them for the interview and left knowing I wouldn’t get the job. And this had nothing to do with my skill in working with young people. It had to do with a perception of who queer kids are being reinforced by a queer organization in a queer city. And I knew most of the young people I worked with who were queer wouldn’t go to that queer organization because queer wasn’t their “top” priority. Getting a job was. And when that organization started increasing their job training programs more of the youth I worked with started going to that organization.

What I have learned throughout all of this is that we are a lot more complex than we, humans, are portrayed in media, news, culture, and art. And that our portrayals tell us nothing about how we connect on an interpersonal level. There are competing self interests that come and go depending on immediacy. Sometimes those things are factors that are easily seen/heard — gender, race, first language spoken, and perceived sexuality. Sometimes those things are factors that are unseen/unheard — employment status, mental health, personal values and identity. And sometimes these factors collide with what we believe or have lived. If we embrace that collision we find new identities, new ways of being, and new connections. If we resist that collision, we become disconnected and isolated. We are all searching for the communities where we feel most at “home”, whatever that really means.

I appreciate this article and your search for “Why doesn’t [blank] have a bigger queer following?”. I am excited to read what you find. And I think it may have something to do with nuance. For we are at a unique point in history where the nuance of identity matters drastically. Then again, nuance has always mattered. It’s just that theories and history books and news cycles tend to gloss over those nuances and paint with broad brush strokes. And what gets painted is never the same as it was or what gets interpreted.

I look forward to what you paint.

Finding My Center

2010-11-30T08:35:00.000-08:00

This past fall, I started on a journey to explore rejuvenation and self care through the collaborative work of The S. Kitchen and Youth Worker Collective. It has been an amazing journey over the last five months that brought together over 30 people to help define what it is, connect personal definitions to a larger narrative, and build a network of folks practicing rejuvenation and self care. I am honored to be among such an clever, intelligent, and heartfelt family.

I am, by nature, a workaholic. I dive in to everything I do and give more of my self than I sometimes think is physically possible. It is a cycle that has ruined relationships, given me many restless nights thanks to insomnia and heartburn, and made me feel like I am crazy. It is an aspect of my life that I want to change.

I justified my workaholism because I was doing social change/justice work. I took on the role of a martyr always putting my self on a shelf in order to do more for others. I would come home from a long day working in a middle school mediating fights, supervising in-school tutoring, running after school programs, setting up mental health referral systems, and talking to parents and open up my computer to do the email I couldn't do at work because I didn't have an internet connection. I would wake up the next morning at 6:30 and be out the door by 7:00 and not come home until after 8:00pm.

I moved on to a part-time job but still put in over 60 hours a week trying to get the organization off the ground. I told myself I loved it, and I did. I loved being out in the community meeting people and hearing their stories. I loved doing important and creative work. I loved supporting those that received little support. I lost a lot of my self in this work. I also found that I was perpetuating a type of behavior I was hoping to alleviate: capitalistic ways of being that thrive on constant "doing" and "consuming". I knew that if I wanted to truly support the change I wanted to see -- more compassionate living and being in community with fellow comrades -- something needed to change.

I was laid off from my job in July of 2010 due to funding cuts, so I took this opportunity to change my being. I decided that I wasn't going to continue "doing" as usual that instead I would slow down and take a little time to find where I am. I decided that I would keep engaged in the same projects I was involved in, but the way I would show up would change. I knew that if I wanted to really make a transformation I needed to transform in the realms I already reside in rather than find a whole new realm to occupy. If I just moved, I would most likely end up in old patterns, and that isn't what I wanted.

Luckily, everything I was involved in was also going through a change thanks in large part to economics and unknown directions. This meant there were many ways to reshape intentionality, slowness, and purpose. It also meant that I would have a community of folks that would be sharing this journey with me. For that, I am eternally grateful.

In this process of slowing down and listening, I heard more and more from folks that rejuvenation and self care is important and crucial to living. I heard it from sectors across the board -- youth development, theater, arts education, small business, health, consultants, faith-based organizations. I started hearing that rejuvenation and self care is both singular and beyond the singular. I knew that there was possibly a there there (in the famous speak of business). I just needed to take my time and explore it more thoroughly.

Youth Worker Collective, an organization of which I have been a part for almost 7 years, has a 5+-year legacy of providing Days of Rejuvenation and Self Care for youth workers across the Bay Area. These days were sparked by a Singhashri Gazmuri and a partnership with the San Francisco Buddhist Center, grew stronger from a partnership with Niroga Institute, and then finally became their own thanks in large part to the wonderful work of Victoria Welle, Margaret Schulze, Sangita Kumar, Andrea Juarez, Jonathan Owens, Liane Louie, and myself. Over the course of two years these Days rooted themselves in multiple faith (and non-faith) perspectives, integrated arts education principles, started including an exploration of resistance, and addressed how the personal is organizational and vice versa. These Days turned into FREE curriculum that others can take and use. (Email me at queerlycomplex@gmail.com if you would like a copy!)

Youth Worker Collective was where I worked and from where I was laid off. We had to change the way we did our work now that we no longer had paid staff, so we reevaluated everything that we were doing and started focusing on what we could accomplish. Given our long legacy of Days of Rejuvenation and Self Care, we decided to focus there. It was a simpler starting point than any other. Looking over our work, we realized we didn't have a definition. That seemed like one of the best places to start.

Tina Mahle and I met over dinner to plan a course of action. I am not going to go into the full detail of what we developed. If you want to read more about that, please click here. Instead, I want to focus on how I changed as a result of going on this journey.

I have grown tremendously. This experiment I call my life is changing everything. For the first time, I feel grounded. I feel like I cannot be swayed. This doesn't mean that I can't bend or compromise. Rather, I feel like I know more about what I can and can't compromise or bend on. I know that I believe, truly believe, that only way we are going to change this world is by being that change we wish to see right here and right now. I know that the competitive nature of non-profit fundraising is hurting our ability to achieve our missions. I know that going slow in a society based on capitalism is counter-cultural and that it make others uncomfortable. I know that this isn't easy.

These past five months have been wonderful and challenging. I have little money in my pocketbook to do anything other than have an occasional night out, pay rent and bills, and put food on the table. At times, I find myself sitting at home anxiety coursing through my body wondering if I have made the right choice and eager to step up and do more. I want to pack my days full with meetings and other "stuff". I call friends freaked out and needing comfort. I have to resist this urge to just fill, fill, fill and do, do, do. And when the anxiety parts, after I have allowed it to just be, I find myself renewed. I find that I don't need to cure it. This is liberating and reflective of how I want my self and my work to show up in the world: being is sometimes the best course and not everything needs fixing.

In a culture that needs a quick fix or just throws a band-aide over a festering wound or is always seeking the newest fad, the most revolutionary thing to do is let it be. I know that this path I am on will lead me to greater possibilities. I know that even though it is occasionally rocky right now in this time and space, it will be different in the future. It is always different for we don't know where the future leads. By simply being, I can respond. I can listen to the nuances and the tiny shifts made over time and adjust my self accordingly. When I am lost in doing, I can't be this response for I cannot hear or feel it.

I am excited to keep on this path. I am glad to have family that is going along on this journey. I believe a tide is turning: people are searching for solutions to societal problems raised by our ever increasing consumerism. The time is now to become that solution. And in the words of Lao Tzu, the solution is to "become the center". For the solution will not be found externally. It can only be found in each one of us.

I am happy to be finding and living my truth, and I am happy to be sharing that truth alongside my family both of choice and of origin. For together as each of us realizes our own personal truths and realize our own center, we are changing the world. And the most beautiful thing about this experiment is that it is rooted in both the personal and collective. For I wouldn't have realized my truth/center without the support of those around me.

Xiomara and the Tortoise

2010-11-28T11:53:00.000-08:00

I am really excited about OutLook Theater Project's newest endeavor: The God Project. Spirituality, religion, and faith fascinate me. So too does the lines of sexual and gender identity. I am thrilled we are exploring these borders, edges, boundaries, and identities. It gives me hope. We can reframe the conversation.

All of OutLook's ensemble members -- Lynn Johnson, Rebecca Schultz, and I -- were tasked with writing out our personal perspective on religion/faith/spirituality and its intersection with sexual and gender identity. We wanted to share with you, our fabulous fans and readers, what is going through our heads as we explore these intersections and the dynamism they contain. Each one of us has a very different point of view, and we want this project grounded in that pluralism. This isn't about promoting one thing, idea, faith or philosophy. It is about listening, seeking connections, and finding truths. It is about both, in theater speak, window and mirror moments -- times when we shed a light or reflect back that which we see, hear, and feel.

It is crucial that we as queer people reclaim the dialogue of faith, spirituality, and religion. Inherently, the struggles we face give us a unique perspective. We live between -- between basic civil rights and no rights, between acceptance and rejection, between mainstream and counter cultures, between families of origin and of choice -- which means that we are given an opportunity to see things differently. It means nuance. And these nuance matter: they form the basis of pluralism.

To add to that nuance, I am sharing my perspective.

I can never do anything the way it is prescribed. We were supposed to write personal perspectives. I tried. I really did. But as I sat in the cafe meditating on what to write, I found myself scribing the fable below. It is called Xiomara and the Tortoise: A Mythos of Existence. I believe it sheds more light on my beliefs and faith than anything non-fictional I could have written.

Hopefully, it provides some window and mirror moments.

***

Xiomara walked the wet edge between high and low tide with bare feet. She loved the feeling of the cold sand and broken shells between her toes. She'd twist her heels back and forth until her feet sank deep into the sand and were completely covered. Then, she'd kick spraying sand and bits of sand dollars and seaweed everywhere. Sometimes, when the sun was low and the cold ocean air whipped her curly black hair around her head, she'd dig her feet even deeper until the balls of her feet felt something hard underneath. She'd pretend that it was the hard earth, that she'd dug her way to its bedrock. She loved even more the feeling of solidness beneath the cold and the wet and the broken.

One winter night -- the night of the full moon before solstice -- she straddled twilight with her feet wide apart and deep beneath the sands. She found that patch of solid and waited for the sun to set and the moon to rise. She stood there in prayer -- a quiet meditation on all that has been and is yet to come -- immobile as if a stop watch paused. The sun did not sink. The moon did not rise.

Ten minutes or ten years passed and still nothing moved. Xiomara lost in prayer waited for something to stir, to spark a memory hidden deeper than her feet. And there it was in a wiggle of her small toe on her right foot. It was the remembrance of something greater or possibly beyond. It was the hint of visions and dreams of hopes lost to consumption. It was the traditions of ancestors trapped in blood. It was entirely of her and entirely not hers.

She felt those remembrances and hints and traditions move her skyward. She was rising from the sands and transcending the setting sun and rising moon. The coldness and the wetness and the brokenness was a solid, warm, dry. She was standing on the back of a giant tortoise who flew into the clouds.

"My dearest Xiomara," said the tortoise in a voice that spoke not of gender but of age. "I have heard the prayers you do not know you prayed. I know the hopes whispered by the oceans and hidden by the sands. I know why you walk that edge and flick sand skyward. I have been watching and waiting. I am the solidness you have always felt."

Xiomara spoke not in words but in gestures as she danced upon its back. Her arms waved slowly and gently above her head as her fingers spread wide like a paper fan about to break. Her hips rolled in all directions less fluid than a belly dancer but not as sharp as a rumba. Her feet were like a ballerina's: pointed and soft.

The tortoise responded humming a melody wandering keys. The song reverberated through its body sending shivers up legs and out fingertips. Xiomara quickened her tempo until frenzy gave way to collapse. Her body laid prone on its back as it continued its ascent to the heavens.

"I am taking you to my home, to the land beyond history and the country greater than time. I want to show you, my dearest Xiomara, the one of whom I have grown so fond, the possibilities of nothing. I believe you are ready. For you know how to wait; you know how to be between."

They were almost at the home of the tortoise. It was there it would reveal its final truth to Xiomara.

During their ascension as Xiomara laid prone on its back and as the stars faded into black and the black gave way to nothing, the being known as Xiomara slowly evaporated. Each chromosome became obsolete. Each memory became a silhouette. And left behind was a small -- smaller than the tiniest quark and more imperceptible than abstraction -- piece of some thing.

The tortoise too consumed by its own desire to reveal truth didn't notice her evaporation nor the some thing on its back. It had lived too long amongst the realm of earth -- of things tangible -- that it had forgotten the laws of its home. It was not supposed to bring some thing back with it. It was the only thing allowed existence in nothing.

As the tiniest speck of blackness disappeared, the some thing collided with nothing obliterating the tortoise. Its thousands of years vanished. And so too did the tortoise's truth.

Born of that collision was a new tortoise. It was the only thing in the nothing. It didn't know of Earth or of Xiomara. But every once in a while, it would have a faint dream of sand between toes and the space between high and low tide. It would get a shiver through its body that resembled a dance it once had upon its back, and it would yearn.

That yearning became some thing, which produced a new collision obliterating the tortoise and birthing a new one.

The Unfinish Line

2010-11-03T11:55:00.000-07:00

He never looks behind fearful of shortened shadows stretching time. One step, one foot, one moment closer to the unfinish line. She travels sidewalks and paces roads. The unending labyrinth of unplanned lives twists cityscapes of gnarled pines. This hopeful meandering and unwatched history leaves marks and scars wandering offering no memory.

He is searching, lonely, loving, and weary too aware of others with their blank blinks peering.

What is this? This trinket of old stories halted.

It stops the meandering and the wandering scars unearthing underneath it a love from afar.

One. One. One. One. One step. One foot. One moment closer to the unfinish line.

Its five pointed points pluck plush melodies carrying tunes of vision of billions of cups of tea. The green of the leaves leaves bitterness from too long a steep reminiscent of steep mountainsides packed with short trees. It is here that she is misplaced among the peoples of lands displaced. It is here winds scatter the crescendoing clatter of corporate communism masquerading as democracy.

One. One. One. One. One step. One foot. One moment closer to the unfinish line.

The love from afar dully dims distance and demagoguery. He fears exposure with chest splayed wide: her lungs of moisture; his hearts rough hide -- lay bare, lay bare, lay bare -- like the forgotten ideals of symbols from yesteryear.

One. One. One. One. One step. One foot. One moment closer to the unfinish line.

A billion eyelids blink blank rhythms of the busiest business accelerating economy. He wants to flee their peering and jeering and corporateering. But everywhere she darts their blank blinks follow an arrhythmical accord.

How long must she meander and wander and quiver until he looks behind and finds history moored by the trappings of her traditions ignored?

One. One. One. One. One step. One foot. One moment closer to the unfinish line.

The love from afar meets the five pointed star errupting and convulsing a dissonant chord. The eyes blink shut. His neck unhinges. Her lungs of moisture thicken. The raw hided heart once so tough begins its process of actualization.

It is here among the crooked pines of cityscapes unending that the east and west of globalization meets the unending hunger of commodification.

She stops. He drops. Her chest explodes. He is exposed to the rounded chorus of exported meditation.

A single lid opens and shoots out its pupil riding the rhythms of its transfiguration.

One. One. One. One. One step. One foot. One moment closer to the unfinish line.

It is almost done. It is already here. Yet no one can see or hear or feel the thread of history stretched taught by shortened shadows from yesteryear.

The ideals gone. The symbols erased. All but them laid splayed like a sacrifice to corporate gods who's price yet paid leave nothing more than yesterdays of nothingness and emptiness and all the trees that will be razed.

One. One. One. One. One step. One foot. One moment closer to the unfinish line.

This hope we have in markets divine will drive our path towards desolate time of landscapes flattened by plummeting peaks and valleys bordered by Greek democracy leveled by capitalistic theocracy.

There we are with blank blinks closed and only one pupil exposed. It isn't our hero nor is it our Nero. It's simply an example of our collective acumen adding up to a sum of absolute zero.

One. One. One. One. One step. One foot. One moment closer to the unfinish line.

One. One. One. One. One step. One foot. One moment closer.

One. One. One. One. One step. One foot.

One. One. One. One. One step.

One. One. One. One.

the unfinish line

The Flight of Grasps

2010-10-29T11:56:00.000-07:00

He catches the stratosphere with a simple flick of his toe. He soars watching the hilled landscape peppered with two story houses pop, pop, pop. Tiny explosions of confinement and individuality leave scars. There is one on his left shoulder blade from an infected sweat gland whose rotting stench as the surgeon sliced overwhelmed comfort. He is leaving this place called home hoping to dance among the isolation of vacuumed space. He wants to be once upon a time, far, far away.

She watches him leave with that simple flick unable to grasp his departure. She doesn't want him here any longer; she knows of the place once upon a time, far, far away and never told him. It is not here. She visited as a child on a boat racing across the ocean filled with Confusian hopes of traditions preserved in new worlds. It is only but a memory, fleeting like the Gobi sands. She gave up that dream to pursue tomorrow's profits and future wealth.

He leaves. She stays.

They shall never meet again.

A boy of 13 builds forts in crooked trees whose branches touch the grass. The boy loves the pink of polluted sunsets as the sun hides behind the ocean's horizon. He's too young and not yet educated so he can wonder at that pink in a way a child on the threshold of new knowledge enjoys possibility: the facts have not ruined the experience.

He's all grown up and that pink is just pollution. He knows that his only hope of once upon a time is to find hat one special fort dug between the roots of one particular crooked tree. But it is no longer there. It has been razed like so many things in this new world obsessed with progression and consumption. The reverence of past things is only made possible by preservation societies more worried about nostalgia than history. They do not care about childhood forts, and they only care for endangered nature. His tree is common like him. There is never any fear of the common becoming endangered.

They shall never meet again.

A young girl of seven rides waves with her mother as they cross the ocean leaving behind revolt and revolution for the promise of unimagined suburban isolation. She dreams of tomorrows filled with running free and wind racing through eyelashes unaware of the ocean spray as it wets her face. This ship of passage marks months of memories of tiny spaces and rationed food. She will never come back the way she came. Instead, she will travel business class with champagne in flutes and extra-wide seats. The dreams made possible only by wanting will be gone, and she will completely forget the vision of the glorious once upon a time, far, far away that rode on the edge of the storm that almost dashed her waves of dreams.

She's still grasping at nothing after he floats away wanting to feel the tangibility of possibility. That ship is gone replaced with an airplane and a more easily controlled environment. She no longer rushes to decks to feel the spray upon her face. The little girl who imagined is now a woman who years.

They shall never meet again.

He cannot sustain his flight or fancies. The weight of too many responsibilities grounds dreams of far, far away. He was almost there beyond the blackness of absolute space, and he momentarily saw the shining nothing of nowhere. Then a pop, pop, pop. Then a decent. Then the ground underneath his belly.

He tries to flick his way back to the stratosphere but it is more like a spasm of latent epilepsy. Tired, distraught, caught by the sand and leaves and twigs covering his overalls and hairy arms he no longer moves. He sleeps on the beach on a night of the new moon. He dreams.

She too is tired. She wants to sleep and find the shining nothing of nowhere. The empty clutched hand falls. He eyelids drop. The world around her vanishes, and she is asleep on her front lawn.

In the land of unconscious imaginings, they meet.

The desperation drove them away is nothing but the eclipsed sun. the moon in its sliver contains the memories needed to find once upon a time. But eye are blinded by the blackness of light, and hearts closed cannot be opened even here among the land of the impossible.

She looks at him and licks his cheek. She remembers his salt and he remembers her wetness. This was a moment early and unencumbered by cultures clash. This is what was love. So too is his flight. So too is her grasp. So too is their slumber.

They wake.

He is at the beach with the crashing ocean spraying his face. And he remembers.

She is in her front yard underneath a crooked tree with branches touching the grass. And she remembers.

They are both once upon a time, far, far away. And they smile.

But they shall never meet again.

And they will never meet again.

They never meet again.

Foreign Beaches Lined with Roofless Warehouses

2010-10-11T11:58:00.000-07:00

There was a spark upon meeting that ignited a decade old denial. I had simply forgotten love. It was that simple. After all past shenanigans and dalliances and fancies I'd lost interest in the warmth of hands upon cheeks and the roughness of ropes on wrists. I hadn't wanted the memory of heartbreak over the Singaporean surprise: he's moving; I'm staying; end of story.

He sits across the wooden square table painted a deep rich black -- the same color as his bottomless pupils -- blinking a rhythm of another memory. Another memory I'd rather remain repressed. The black night of no moon and starlessness caused by city glare framed by the roofless warehouse. I am there squarely off center. Another lover creates obsessively in the corner hidden by shadows caused by corners obstructing streetlights. He doesn't see me, and I don't care to strain my eyes to see him. I was as black as the man's pupils who are staring at me now. That blackness is darker than that night, and I now know why I was never seen: I simply didn't exist outside of his corner.

He's smiling, and I see the silver tooth of past decay, and another possible derailment rides its silver. Carlights point straight at me , and I stand helplessly as he gets in his silver Toyota. He is leaving me here at the beach of unwashed love. He can't handle the tidal waves of passion made possible by unconditionality. So he speeds away as I run into the ocean hoping the undertow will carry me to China or maybe Singapore or at least some place as foreign as the emotions I feel.

I don't want these memories. I locked them so long ago in a box underneath my bed containing the witless notes of break-up and love. I scribbled them in college-ruled notebooks and burned them in the Weber grill ten years ago. Ten years. And I haven't loved since.

Now, he is across from me and that fire is back, and I feel the warmth of my cheek and the cold salty ocean in my mouth as I am revived by a stranger who saved me from my drowning. Could this be all of those moments in one? Will I end up in Singapore or on the beach or in a roofless warehouse? Or is there something else awaiting me?

He's asking me where I am at. He thinks I've been lost. And maybe I am. But I don't want to lose him. At least not yet. So I reply, "I'm here with you sitting at this black table that matches your pupils wondering where we are going."

And he replies, "To foreign beaches lined with roofless warehouses."

The Art of Waiting

2010-10-11T11:57:00.000-07:00

I cannot stand the sun bearing down on me, burning my skin, squinting my eyes. It is intolerable and inescapable -- a constant reminder of passage. All I want is unobstructed vision. I can feel an itch in the corner of my left eye; it tears, and I cry. The sun did this. I hate it.

Sitting on a terrace at Yerba Buena with a hint of mint upon my lips, time is inexorable. I can move, but I don't like movement. I prefer to sit on a seat with time unseen, close my eyes among the crowded bus, and count. One. Two. Three. Four. ... Six hundred and fifty eight. ... Two thousand one hundred and twelve. When it stops, I stop. And wait some more. Then, after the waiting has left, I move or take my action. Sometimes I'm immobile for days. Waiting fo that to you.

It all started when I lost my time thanks to the malfunctioning technology left in pockets and on nightstands. It just decided to stop working, and I had no say. I now navigate by the placement of the sun in the sky. It is why I hat it so much: it has become my de facto watch, and I have transferred all my disdain for time to it. It is the only thing that marks passage. It reminds me that I'm waiting.

I've missed dates and others' expectations thanks to its disappearance. I am okay with that even though it is ostracizing. Maybe time left because I needed it to. Maybe it left because it was tired of waiting for me. Now, with more time on my hands I see a little more clearly except when the sun obstructs and tears. I hate the sun.

I can't remember why or how I came here. I can't recall how long I've waited. The only mark of time is the arc of the sun and my blistering skin. I don't remember a cool nigh laced with fog or soggy jeans on an uncomfortable cold concrete bench. I don't remember being asked to move along by some under paid security with a plastic badge. But that doesn't mean it hasn't happened. That's the joy of waiting: forgetfulness. Maybe that is the meaning of nothingness.

I can tell you are bored. I know you didn't know I could hear and see you. Waiting has brought me here. I've become aware of so much more than just this one plane. Did you know the other you is just as delicate? Did you know the other you also moves blindly? Most likely no. You haven't waited. You're only reading/listening. You couldn't hear/see me if you waited. Instead, this page/screen/space would be nothing, and you'd never remember these words. Instead, you are moving, darting, dashing, gallivanting. You are an explorer who knows what she is looking for, which make you nothing more than a passive observer. Waiting is never observing.

But I'm digressing by observation. I must get back to me and deny the tings you see. I must not give you any more clues because I don't want to meet you here. This is my corner made possible by failure. It is heavenly here. There is no such thing as accountability; for whom are you accountable when you wait? You just are; and that simplicity releases everything.

I am still at Yerba Buena and mint tea has been poured. I must have been waiting for it. But now it can wait for me. It will still be hot in my memory even when cold upong my tongue. That is if I can remember. The blistering skin will help me forget.

Now, I sip. And you? You are left to wonder whether it is hot or cold.

The Blankness of the Hummingbird

2010-10-06T11:59:00.000-07:00

The fog of both sky and sound fills my eyes and ears seeping in to the crevices of my skull. Its presence clouds memories both far and near obstructing time as I scribble and draw. I need to capture it as I try to capture all things: with open palms. It is almost more of a swat, a clap, a loud disturbance that catches most off guard. I like being caught off guard. It is called art.

He waits for me simply over there against the white wall his naked body covered by a white sheet erect. Solid, sturdy, with hard skin and soft fingernails he is my possession. He wanted to be mine, and I wanted him too. Only, I never wanted him to be mine. I only wanted to taste his sodium as it was expelled through pores. He wanted more. So much more. I don't have that capacity. I only have space in this four walled room for my own thoughts, my art, my presence. He wanted to become all things possible. He was inspired by paintings of lines, squiggly lines, overlapping confusing perception until images imagined emerged from the small patches of white canvas unpainted. He wanted to be that space. I wrapped him in a sheet, put him against the wall, and he has stood there ever since. It has been almost two weeks.

The open glass door lets in the fog and threatens to damage my canvas. He shudders a shiver of the wed cold spasming down his body until he is erect once more. He loves that wall more than me. He loves it because I've placed him there, but I think it it turning into his obsession. Shaking muscles have given way to stiff, unbending rigor mortis. He isn't dead technically. His heart still beats, and I hear his thoughts. All else is dead or dying. You can tell by the loose skin from starvation. Like I said, he has been standing there almost two weeks. He is free to leave. Only he doesn't. He is obsessed with that wall almost as much as I am obsessed with witnessing his death. I love it when characters die.

I've invited others to witness this art. Everyone has said no. They don't like the confrontation of mortality or boundaries. They believe their existence is eternal and unique. As an artist, I see nothing unique. Everything is repetition. Death is the ultimate repetition; it happens every second or fraction thereof. There is nothing original. We are all just copies of what came before, and I find that incredibly boring, mundane, almost as if it were just another speck of dirt that should be discarded rather than examined. I am doing this only because he wanted it. I am laying my squiggles over him.

This page I am looking at is filling with imaginings. The carelessness I use to create these lines is matched by his rigidity. I don't know how he stands there, and I am afraid to pull the sheet off him and examine him closely. I only know his flabby skin because he whispers his pain silently, and I hear it as I dream. He is a bird -- a smallish hummingbird -- who drinks nectar from my ears. He flits and darts in a manner similar to his decay. And then we have our conversation; our conversion. He tells me of the future when the landscape matches my paintings and colors; when everything lays on top of everyhing; when all finally intersects and becomes a single, straight line stretching infinitely in all directions. This is the future I paint. These are the memories most clear.

Then, I wake, and he is unmoved. We offer each other our elegiac lamentations in tears, and I watch as the sheet wets. The small ovals are the only sign of his life. He asked me last night to caress him, to touch him so he can remember feeling. The sheet has dulled touch. I can't oblige. I, too, am afraid of death. I don't want to feel it between my fingers, and I disappoint.

Instead, I paint what I think is touch. The ridges of paint are like mountains to my fingerprints. I can feel the peaks -- they scrape at dead skin -- and again I am fearful. What am I creating? who is this man underneath this sheet that I haven't looked at since his arrival? I don't even remember his face;. He is a hummingbird and squiggly lines. That is the only form I know. Revealing his self is too much; it overwhelms all fibers and organic and synthesized. And this fog must part. It is suppressing memory, and I need clarity. Yet it fills this room casting white on all. The sound of its presence mutes all else. Even my thoughts are obscured.

This page that houses borders is blank. The fog erased the lines, and my model is unseen. My hand as it draws cannot be seen. All is wet. We all cry at future death and mourn the loss of our history. I can feel these collective tears. I can hear the collective cries. All is blank. All.

The warmth of possibility and sun are evaporating this fog. Each particle of water disappears, and with each disappearance a new shade of blankness revealed. I can no longer distinguish any thing. I feel heat. But from where is it emanating? And on what piece of self do I feel it? Is that my hand or his? Is that my voice or is it the explosion of a molecule? Am I still in my studio or am I flying in the sky? I cannot tell. All are possible.

Then, as if in a dream, a hummingbird materializes. It sings its clicks. And I know, "This is my art."

And I am no longer. Only a hummingbird remains. And blankness. Eternal and unending blankness.

The Cigarette Butt

2010-10-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

They come to the playground ready to dig in the dirt and swing on the swings. Each brought something form home to play with. There was a bucked, a plastic shovel, a bright red Matchbox firetruck, a brand new Nintendo DS, a gum wrapper, a purple piece of stretchy material, and a discarded cigarette butt. Jill wanted everyone to share their toys. Paul, the one with the firetruck, didn't want to share his. Carrie and her friend Taylor didn't care; their bucket and shovel were discarded in the sand. The owner of the Nintendo DS sat on a swing engrossed in her Picross game. Sherry, the one with the gum wrapper, folded it into a miniature airplane, which Paul wanted because it was cooler than his firetruck. That left Halston with the cigarette butt. He just stood at the edge of the playground with the tiny butt hanging out of his mouth. He faked inhaled. As he blew our the imaginary smoke he said, "Fuck this!", threw the cigarette butt on the ground, put it "out" with his shoe, grabbed the bucket and shovel and ran off.

In My Dreamless Sleep

2010-09-28T12:00:00.000-07:00

I cannot understand the flow of understanding. It seems to be always out of grasp, and every time I run my fingers in its dark crevices I seem to remember the forgetfulness of dreams. I don't know why I don't know. It takes me time to find that peace I lost while running through tomorrow. Over the hills of delirium and anxiety, I pass the river. It is here that I lost it. It is here that I watched it float like that peace on the river. It is not ever coming back. I can only wonder in my dreamless sleep.

A Discarded Scene

2010-09-22T12:01:00.000-07:00

The beads of brown and wood danced at the edge mirroring the circles below and the light above. I couldn't help but be trapped in its shadow. I wanted to touch the pen and feel its gentle weight in my hand. How similar was it to this Pilot? What was the quality of its ink? There was even a crumpled, discarded blankness on which to compose the potential storied landscape.

The post card waves goodbye and farewell, and I do hope it does fare well. I am doubting that the tipped shot glass rocking a tune of movement on the otherwise still table is musical. I think it has more to do with a beckoning to touch. Yet instructions compel constraint and restraint. It is an exercise my dear reader. We have ten minutes.

You too are here with me. Can you see the scene only a few feet away? All of the shadows cast long and deep. It is a prayer bracelet that has lost its elastic, and a hilled city lined with California colored homes.

There you are. I can see you staring out of the ship departing. You want your farewell recalled as an epic voyage. You are fleeing this table as I sit here transcribing your Bon Voyage.

My time is done, and so too have you departed.

Anachronistic Aphorisms

2010-09-14T12:02:00.000-07:00

I recently read "Someone Else's Theme" from Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, a Russian writer from the 1920s. In it a wandering homeless writer gives away philosophies, themes and aphorisms for money and food. As the story unfolds you realize how brilliant and hopeless he is, and empathy towards his situation begs more aphorisms. So...This is for Saul Straight. I hope you find some use for them.

*****
The spiral of time spun downwards towards the roots of the Methuselah tree hoping to find its origin. Sadly, there was no beginning.

*****
He stood underneath the awning out of the rain fearful of wetness and melting, but there was a hole in the canary canvas and a drip dropped on his nose. He screamed terrified knowing that he would never move again. He was a seed and this was where he would blossom. Until the porter picked his dandelion ways.

*****
Traveling was an end in and of itself although Tracey was unable to see this while in motion. When she stopped, everything died. Including her desire to live.

*****
The forgetful sunshine hazy from lazy afternoons shrouded in fog forgot to shine. All was dark. Except this young child who held a single candle under a basket. The sun said to her, "Why are you hiding your light?" And she replied, "Why are you such an ass?"

*****
Hungry from starvation and untold countless meals of water and salt sweat poured from his shaking body splayed in the middle of the busy intersection. Cars passed. Except on. It ran over him, and he was no longer hungry.

*****
The transportation agency was responsible for "ensuring a pleasant ride for all riders, including and especially tourists". So it decided to close all routes that did not have tourist riders. That left one line. And it still ran late.

*****
He hopped on his bike as the pedals spun in place motionless as if someone had stopped the stopwatch hanging around his neck. Then, God yelled, "Go!" And he fell off his bike as quickly as he had hopped on and the stopwatch actually stopped.

*****
Her treatment consisted of a few incisions, a pill or two, and a handful of wafers that did not taste dissimilar to Communion. Each morning she had one treatment and another each late afternoon. They made her feel almost moral. Until the thread snapped.

*****
The jeans ripped at the knee with black stains near the crotch hung over the chair discarded carelessly like a napkin on the ground. Its position was uncomfortable and the stains stunk. The next day it awoke in a dumpster. It couldn't tell what smelled worse.

Joey: The Art of Creation

2010-09-02T12:05:00.000-07:00

The young girl the same one that yesterday had a bloody nose bled again. It wouldn't stop. She did not cry like some childish school girl. She was not fearful like a bullied boy. She was almost serene bordering on peaceful. It poured. She watched it as if it wasn't hers. This was her paint.

She spent time wandering the hallways of this museum that space between galleries that everyone else hurried through. It was here that she stood as it gushed from her wrist. The white walls were her canvas. She saw the most beautiful of paintings on these walls -- all a monochrome almost sepia color. She need them to exist, so she raised her arm and brushed blood red with fingers unearthing magnificent lines edged with pure painterly form.

The guards were absent so too were the patrons, so she was alone with her vision and life free to create if only for a moment. It was a freedom she never had outside of these walls. Little Joey as she was the littlest of the Joeys, all duplicates of each other, knew nothing. Her brain had been boxed at birth. She loved instead, and it does reside in her heart. They forgot to box that. Love flowed from her wrists down her hands dripping on the floor in large droplets as she painted and painted and painted.

There were no memories, so she never would know her creator/mother, First Joey. She would never remember that she was almost exactly like First Joey. She always forgot that there was a mechanical box attached to the back of her skull right where it connected to the spine. She didn't know there was a reason she was left alone in the hallway. She just felt. And she felt the most free when no where in particular.

The paint was drying up, and Little Joey was not finished: her heart still pumped. She licked her other wrist feeling for the tenderest spot. Found she bit hard and it popped. More paint. More love. More creation. This wall was no longer blank, and she grew more uncomfortable. It was almost too much like the galleries of her confinement, but it must be finished. She painted through her discomfort.

It was finished that painting, and so too was this Little Joey. Upon its final beat, her heart burst from her chest as if some bomb had reached zero. The once white hallway now earthen. There was only one witness to the sacrifice of creation. She looked just like Little Joey: black -- the color of vacuumed space -- cropped at the chin, equally black eyes with only a hint of starry sparkle, mahogany skin smoothed by carefully controlled environments. Only there was no mechanical box on her skull, and she was not First Joey.

New Joey, born of Little Joey, watched her mother/creator's death from the doorway of cedar. She did not cry or weep or even whimper. There was a mechanical box, smaller than Little Joey's, on her breast. Her left hand scratched it as if there was supposed to be something else there. It wasn't. It had been boxed.

New Joey didn't move. In fact she couldn't move, her mind loved the doorway; it reminded her of something square. It was preferable to the expanse of hallways and the unknown. She was always immobile in the unknown, which meant she had yet to move from this doorway in which she was placed.

New Joey saw all of Little Joey's life pass away. While no emotion passed through her, a new thought came to be: I should copy the life of dearest Little Joey. Her tongue found the sweet spot and she bit. Blood flowed. It was her tool.

Mechanically, she drew. Her lines were static as if drawn by rulers, protractors, and compasses. They were edged with a mathematician's precision. They outlined the doorway in shapes similar to Little Joey's.

Still her heart beat. New Joey licked her other wrist. Pop. More tools. More lines. And then the same bomb burst.

There was only one witness to the sacrifice of creation. She looked just like New Joey: violet pants of stretchy jean, fingernails trimmed by biting, a silver necklace composed of an alpha numeric chain. Only there was a mechanical box on both her wrists. She was Neoteric Joey, born before the final heartbeat of New Joey, and she resided in this gallery.

Her time was spent observing each crack in the wall, each edge of tile, each imperfection in frame. She saw only New Joey's life bleed out out of the corner of her starless eyes. She wept, cried, whimpered, voice escaping lips in its rawest form: silence. Her head throbbed in time with her aching heart. Her creator/mother no longer alive left a void as if heart and brain were boxed. Only they weren't They remained, and Neoteric Joey went mad.

She licked her wrist and tasted its silver hardness. She searched for the tenderness of flesh easily bitten and found nothing. So she bit her metal and scratched her neck. She needed her paint and tool. She was desperate for creation whether painterly or mathematical. There was none.

Above First Joey watched. It was time. This was her curated moment.

The doors swung open, and patrons rushed. They were greeted with unbiased murderous creation. Each patron as they moved from hallway to door to gallery grew more uneased. There were no mechanical boxes on bodies. There was no containment of any sort. Horror sunk hearts immobilizing electric responses between brain and feet.

Neoteric Joey, still searching for paint and tool, grabbed her first patron and licked his wrist. There was the soft space of being. She bit. It flowed. He eased his horror and sang to his knees. There was paint and tool. She grabbed the next patron, licked, and bit. And the next. And the next. And the next. Until all patrons became this work of art, these spaces between tiles and imperfected frames.

Then, Neoteric Joey, surrounded by an unending stream of possibility, broke free of the confines of her boxed reality. Bathed in sepia and tasting of minerals, she started a line in the exact center of this square.

It continued through the doorway and into the hallway. It spilled down stairs and out onto the sidewalk. It crossed streets and divided parks. It traveled the entire world.

First Joey, watching from her curator's booth, smiled. Her work of art knew no bounds. She could leave. As her hand touched the handle, a click echoed through the entire museum. Locked, she was trapped.

A small tinny voice spoke from an unknown metallic box high in a corner of the curator's booth.

"You must bear witness to your creation."

First Joey recognized the voice. It was hers but not.

"This is Neoteric Joey, and I am your creator/mother. Feel your body. This body you believe to be your own."

First Joey ripped off all her clothing needing to feel each piece of flesh chilled by possible mechanics. And there it was again and again and again: skull, chest, wrists. All were boxed.

There was one last whisper from Neoteric Joey as the horror of (non)being washed through First Joey.

"Three...Two...One...Z"

The bomb exploded.

And the art of creation vanished.

Pressing Share

2010-09-02T12:02:00.000-07:00

There was a moment when all I wanted to do was to push "Share" on Facebook with the words, "Fuck you, Billy" in the comments section, and for a brief moment the cursor hovered over that button with all my anger contained in the tip of my index finger. Then, I saw it all spiral outward. He would become angry. Another message would be posted. And what was a simple hurt feelings over being forgotten about on the sidewalk as I waited for our date would turn in to a clash of clans with friends choosing sides and gossip spreading like the San Diego fires.

I did press "Share"; then, I immediately pressed "Delete". However, nothing is truly lost in life or on the web. It is simply hidden or misplaced.

Billy saw his message. I was grateful he didn't share his comments. It was as if Smokey the Bear had talked sense into someone. I could learn something here. But I am an American. Most likely, I will need to learn it again.

The Taoism of Ensemble

2010-08-27T08:58:00.000-07:00

I am a member of OutLook Theater Project. I got here on a winding road of increasing leadership that started as a production assistant. Like almost all things I'm involved in, I mold my self to the opportunity. Most of the time this means putting pieces of my self on shelves, charging ahead full steam, and taking on a "holder" role. I good in these positions.

However, the "holder" is not sustainable. It always inevitably leads to resentment, a mismatch of expectations and reality, and anxiety. Holding is tiring work, especially when what you are holding is as hard to grasp as water, as shifty as sand. I don't want that role, and I need to find a way so I don't play that part.

OutLook is in transition. We finished our first major work which took two and a half years to produce. A collective sigh was released at the end of This Many People, our original play about LGBTQ elders. There was a sense of accomplishment, pride, and celebration. We had done it!

And then there was, "What's next?" and our personal lives. The combination of reclaiming our own person as swell as uncertainty at our collective future meant we needed to plan, to actively work things out. The challenge was our personal lives were full, so we had to wait more than two months to come back together. This is not ideal when you have had success and want to keep momentum going.

In the space between our ending and our planning, an opportunity emerged with the Council of Churches of Santa Clara County. I had recently become unemployed, so I had some extra time to contribute to the project. I stepped up and decided to coordinate the event: a booth at San Jose Pride exploring the intersections of spirituality, sexuality, faith, and gender.

Coordination is a tricky thing. It enables the "holder" in me. My process of creation always involves listening to as many people as possible and finding connection between work, vision, passions, and art. I feel a tremendous amount of responsibility whenever I hear someone. I want to ensure they feel included in whatever emerges even if they don't want to be a part of it. Sometimes, it can be immobilizing. Always it produces anxiety.

After listening to a number of different people, I wrote up a plan for our booth. It was actually quite easy to compose because so many people had so many wonderful ideas. I shot it out to all involved and waited for feedback. I needed to know if what I proposed made sense, if it captured nuance, if it was as pluralistic as possible. Silence. For two weeks, silence. Our event date was swiftly approached. My anxiety grew: was this the right plan; did I offend someone; are people really committed to achieving this vision? I was fine coordinating, but I knew I couldn't do this alone. It wouldn't be pluralistic if I did.

As part of our OutLooks future planning process, we assigned ourselves homework during our two months of "down time". One of the assignments was to define ensemble as we are an ensemble theater company. I work best in groups. I like the accountability and inspiration of others. While ensemble is a newish word for me, I much prefer collective, I know ensemble and collective are on the same die as coop, coalition, and collaboration.

I set to the task of defining the word in three distinct ways. First, the project with the Council of Churches was my experience in ensemble. I knew for my definition to hold meaning to me I had to feel it somewhere in my body. The second was to read, read, read. I opened The Second Book of the Tao. I reread sections of The Essential Gandhi. I continued reading Memories of the Future. I started reading The Collaborative Habit. I opened the dictionary and looked up definitions. I knew others would have better words than I. I just needed to find them. Third, I needed to mine my life. I needed to thoroughly dig into the recesses and find my history and memory of ensemble.

Combined, these three things transformed me. I am more my self now than when I started this journey.

The silence I received after sending out my proposal bothered me deeply. I felt like I was not part of an ensemble. My memory and body raced, and I was swept back to times when I "saved" programs by doing the job my employees failed to do rather then me holding them accountable. I was that sad little boy who stood on stage wanting to be part of the theater but was still harassed within the confines of what I hoped was a safe space. I was the "young one" at the conference planing table being silenced by elders because they "knew better". I was hurt, and in that hurt a black anxiety grew. It was only moments away form rearing its ugly head. Something had to be done.

A couple of days later, after hours of processing with my husband and best friend and growing uneasiness in my belly, I crafted an email drawing lines in sand and questioning whether or not we could achieve our goal of a booth at San Jose Pride. Immediately, there was response. People were shocked there was a question of commitment. This was definitely a go: money had been spent on the booth.

I still felt uneasy. I needed a solution that was realistic. With only a few weeks to San Jose Pride, my original proposal for a two day booth would not be successful. Nor was I willing to put more of my self forward if others weren't going to give in equal measure. I was reacting with a tit for tat. That, too, did not feel good or right. How could this be an ensemble if I was retreating to the stance of a frightened snake ready to bite? Only poison could come from this, or so I thought.

After a few brief phone calls and some internal readjustment on my end, a compromise was reached: we would only do a Sunday booth. This meant less resources and less time. It meant more focus. Once this solution was agreed upon, another email was sent confirming details. Again, I jumped to wanting feedback. I wanted to make sure what I captured was accurate and confirmed our agreements. Again silence. Again anxiety.

For two days, I dragged my books around with me pulling them out and reading and rereading passages. I was hoping the wisdom of others would change my perspective. I went and sat at Ocean Beach on a foggy cold morning bundled head to toe. Quotes started popping out at me, and I madly copied them in my notebook. Two in particular struck at me and caught me in the nape of the neck. The first is from Memories of the Future. "A correctly constructed talent is a constantly maintained balance between what one is given and what one gives back." The second is from The Second Book of the Tao. "The Master uses his skill to harmonize with both sides, and rests in the Tao, which makes all things equal." They swam through my blood stream and infected my heart. They planted themselves in my heels and sprouted out my finger tips. Then, I read, "You save the world when you save your self." (From The Second Book of the Tao.) Chills, and not the chills from the wind rushing off the ocean, rippled my body. Change was coming. I still didn't know what that change would be, but I knew it was almost here. It hit me on my journey home from the beach.

I sat on the bus anxiety coursing through me. There was something brewing in me, and I also knew I needed to take action to keep the booth on track. There was tension all over and within me. It manifest in palpitating heartbeats and shaking hands. I needed to let it all go. My body was telling me so. I reached into my pocket to grab my phone. I was going to send an email right now, so I could get a response. It worked the first time, and it would surely work again. As I ran my thumb over the keyboard, my heart changed, and I pulled out my hand leaving the phone in my pocket. My hand was still shaking.

I looked around the bus conscious of how packed it was. Then, I did something I have never done: I decided to meditate right there in my seat. I straightened my posture, inhaled deeply, and exhaled slowly. The hard plastic beneath my ass creaked its response, "You are in a public place." I acknowledged it by closing my eyes and quietly saying, "You will wake up at your stop refreshed."

Then, I listened. I listened to the shaking hand and fluttering heart. I heard the argument of the person next to me in full detail. I noticed the automated voice announcing stops. As I listened, a blackness enveloped me. It wrapped me in a warm calmness whose roots were in both anxiety and hope. I didn't need to deny my nerves and fears. I let them be what they were. Everything else took care of itself. This primacy transformed my view of self and ensemble. I opened my eyes. We were at my destination. I stood refreshed and exited the bus.

As I walked the block home, I realized what my response to the boot, to ensemble, to my anxiety was: silence. Simply, silence.

As mentioned earlier, I was asked to define ensemble. Based on my experience with the Council of Churches project, reading -- endlessly reading -- and mining my life, I have realized two things. One, It means listening to it all and letting silence be a response. Two, it means we have as much internal work to do as collective work to do.

For we all have our anxieties, fears, nerves, and patterns and they are beautiful and make us whole. It is not all about inspiration and vision. It is about presence. For that I must be present in my self. Then, and only then, can I be part of an ensemble.

As for the booth, it was a smashing success! Everyone contributed. Everyone. All held equal weight. I just needed to get out of the way so others could find their balance.

The Manifesto of Jason W

2010-08-17T09:36:00.000-07:00

This post was inspired by my work with OutLook Theater Project. As part of our annual retreat, OutLook asked it company members, "What do you want out of OutLook?" I started journalling my response. Then, I realized this is what I need out of anything I am involved in. So it has become a sort of manifesto in what I want to accomplish in my life and how I want to accomplish it.

Read on dear readers, and I hope you enjoy The Manifesto of Jason W.

*****
I love the written word. I love performance. I love rhetoric. I love media. I love narrative. I love storytelling. I love community. I am not an actor.

I want a vehicle to translate literature I write into multi-media performances that transform non-traditional venues into spaces of creativity, fun, community, inquiry, and inspiration. I want to be bold and large in the creation of these works innovatively applying performance into life. I want to explore experimental techniques and deepen my inquiry skills. I do not want boxed art.

I am willing to give my whole self including my vast administrative skills in return for input into creative direction and pay for grant-related work. I am able to donate five hours per month specifically related to large picture planning and development. I am looking to be part of a team where each member holds equal weight and responsibility. I am not looking for inequitable power distribution.

I need regularly scheduled meetings to ensure accountability of work getting done. I need a dedicated pool of people who step up and step back in equal measure and have ideas, support the work of others, and seek connections between ideas to create depth and breadth. I need fun, exploration, creativity, passion, communication, and commitment. I need to feel and know that those doing the work are also seeking ways to connect that work beyond a singular organization finding opportunities to strengthen, grown and transform the queer community and identity. I need a balance of selfishness and selflessness. I do not need flakiness.

When paid, I want the pay to be an equitable, strategic investment. I want pay parity across the board for any and all work done. I want budget transparency. I want a not for profit model that actually pays people what they are worth. I want to leave the field and society at large in innovative ways to create performance and to build a model of economic revenue that invests that revenue back into the community. I do not want business as usual or to buy in to the non profit industrial machine.

I believe we can achieve all of this. I believe that doing so will take work. I believe that a strengths-based approach is a foundational model we can build upon, and that we must also address the work that needs to be done even when no one at the table wants to do of has the current skill set. I believe accomplishing all of this will take years. I do not believe it is impossible.

I recognize that to realize all of this means putting some things at the forefront and other things on the back burner. I recognize that we are a group with multiple voices and perspectives, and we may not share the same vision. I recognize that there will be compromise. I recognize that feelings will get hurt. I recognize there will be challenges. I will not recognize that al of these things cannot be overcome.

Love Won

2010-08-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was historic: love won. It was also a missed opportunity. Instead of celebrating audaciously, partying recklessly, dancing madly, and loving loudly, Gay Inc. organized a bland rally and march in the most boring of places: the Castro. There were beautiful moments -- a lesbian Jewish wedding for one -- and gorgeous people and an air of victory, but it wasn't celebratory. I'm concerned.

We struggle day after day to live, survive, and love. Our political wins as a community are rare and microscopic. We have yet to advance any major civil rights legislation on the national level. We still get gay bashers legally showing up at our funerals. Time and again we face adversity after adversity and we still show up, challenge norms, and push boundaries. We are a resilient people.

To put is simply: we won! We won on so many levels that the only thing to do is celebrate; to rejoice with our whole beings and show the world what the victory of love looks like; to inspire those who have fought for years and those just joining the fight; to transform our anger at injustice into a fete of freedom. It is not the time for politician political grandstanding, organizations demanding donations, or protesting as usual. We need a party!

Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling yesterday structurally paved the way forward for our legal battle on the federal front. It is a lengthy 138-page document that strikes down Proposition 8 on two fronts: a violation of equal protection and due process clauses. This alone it victorious. It is also only the tip of the iceberg. Embedded into his judgment are 80 statements of facts on gender and sexual orientation. These facts systematically and legally debunk all of the conservative Christian arguments against homosexuality. Judge Walker even calls out the validity of the research on which these arguments have been made. These statements of facts can and will be used in almost all of our legal battles moving forward. That we now have legal language that disproves the Religious Right, not just researched facts, is the most historic piece of yesterday's ruling. Like I said: we won!

I tried listening to figureheads up on the platform at the intersection of Castro and Market streets yesterday. I strained my ears as the speakers quietly projected speeches about how "the fight isn't over" of "this is only the beginning". I wanted to be engaged, but these tired phrases and blase' colloquialisms mean nothing. Yes, I know the fight isn't over. No, it isn't the beginning -- in fact, it is far from the beginning. I want radical celebration. I want screaming, hugging, dancing, joy. I want pride.

I ran into friends at the rally and march. We hugged, hung out for a minute, and bitched. I wasn't the only one wanting something different than what Gay Inc. organized. At some point, a friend said something close to, "When I found out, I had to go into the SF MOMA store to find someone I knew to celebrate with. Sure, she was straight, but I needed my hug." I felt the same way, and I was standing next to my husband. Yet here we were standing in the middle of hundreds of queers all looking like lemmings waiting for permission to party. Is this the legacy of the gay machine: that we need permission?

Each of us holds responsibility for not jumping into the middle of Castro and dancing or turning to our neighbor and hugging him/her. I could have walked in to Twin Peaks and said something to compel the patrons of the packed bar to get out in the streets instead of sipping cocktails. I didn't do any of these things. Instead, I stayed in my comfort zone of personal judgment. I stayed a passive participant holding a sign handed to me by Equality California. I was waiting for permission instead of making my own. I could have done better. I could have done more.

Gay Inc. can also do better. The Castro, which a noble and historic staging ground, isn't the heart of the queer movement any longer. Queers are integrated into communities of all sorts around the Bay Area and beyond. We live in Bayview/Hunter's Point, the Mission, the Sunset, West Oakland, Richmond, Daly City, Vallejo. We are black, Chinese, blue collar, nurses, poor, homeless, Christian, unemployed, wealthy, potheads, Salvadoran, sober, Buddhist, Jewish, young, elders, positive, artists, police, business owners, radicals, conservatives, monogamists, polygamists, and everything in between. We need a celebration that honors this incredible and beautiful diversity and pluralism. We need rallies at 16th and Mission, Stonestown mall, Union Square, Grace Cathederal, on Ocean Avenue in front of Voice of the Pentecost. We need music and art. We need to use our strengths. We need the drag queens dressed to the nines and the dykes on bikes and the punks with signs filled with cursing. We need a massive outlet for our expression. A rally with the same old speakers rattling off tired talking points is something we do not need.

Let's, for a moment, review some of the significance of this victory:

1.) Judge Vaughn Walker was appointed by President Ronald Reagan not by some "liberal activist".

2.) Ted Olson and David Boies, plaintiffs in the Proposition 8 case, were on opposite sides of Bush versus Gore.

3.) "Sexual orientation is commonly discussed as a characteristic of the individual.Sexual orientation is fundamental to a person’s identity and is a distinguishing characteristic that defines gays and lesbians as a discrete group.Proponents’ assertion that sexual orientation cannot be defined is contrary to the weight of the evidence." -- From Judge Walker's Rulings.

4.) "Individuals do not generally choose their sexual orientation. No credible evidence supports a finding that an individual may, through conscious decision, therapeutic intervention or
any other method, change his or her sexual orientation." -- From Judge Walker's Rulings

5.) Proposition 8 was ruled unconstitutional against the federal constitution.

Regardless of its appeal or the its potential result, these few facts matter and they matter in core, fundamental ways.

First, this issue has gone beyond Republican and Democrat. While lead Republicans in the House and Senate are vehemently anti-gay and anti-transgender, their base is shifting. The Tea Party is holding a certain base of Republicans hostage, but there are also liberators in unexpected places like Roy Ashburn, Meghann McCain, and Laura Bush. Democrats while talking out of both sides of their mouths -- "Personally I believe marriage is only between a man and a woman, but I support repealing DOMA -- are finding their own words being used against them by both liberals and conservatives. The real of who is for and against gay marriage and gay rights is no longer the same as that of the 1990s. It is a younger, more connected, and more savvy realm. We need to party in this realm.

Second, we now have a legal precedent upon which to build a case of gay and transgender civil rights beyond gay marriage. Judge Walker's statements of facts about the evolution of marriage, definition of sexual orientation, and gender constructs and roles show how much the United States of American has changed. And it does so legally. Color me crazy, but a legal document that acknowledges, "Gays and lesbians have been victims of a long history of discrimination" and "Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians." means that we have progressed as a society -- Religious Right, Tea Part, Fox, and NOM be damned!

This is radical! I want our radical response!!

Yesterday's rally and march missed that opportunity. We played it safe still fearful of outside perception and media coverage that could taint our image. We held ourselves to constructs of what it means to protest. In some ways, the winning of this case solidifies our buy-in into mainstream constructs of being. That is why our response to this win is so significant: we cannot just reenforce the status quo. We must be brave, brilliant, and creative. We must not conform. We must dance and sing and dress up and make noise. We must celebrate!

I celebrate this win with all of my being. It is the most radical thing I can think of to do. I feel victory in the tips of my toes. I weep at the struggle it took to get us here and the struggle it will continue to be. I write this piece not really for readers but for my self. I have to make sense of this and celebrate; audaciously celebrate.

I know this isn't the end. I know we still have hard, significant work ahead of us. I also know that if we don't celebrate our victories we won't have anything to celebrate. For it is in these moments when we must inspire, connect and love. That is the queer thing to do.

So...If you see me in the community, expect a hug, a kiss, a shimmy. For we won! We fucking won!

Sally's Savory Snack

2010-08-02T12:07:00.000-07:00

Here is Herbert. He's not your ordinary frog. He doesn't hop from place to place, neither is he slimy nor is he green. Nor does he eat flies. In fact, Herbert is more of a person than a frog. Except he has a long tongue, and he croaks. This last fact has cause numerous problems when out in public. The first fact is fabulous for cunniligus. The ladies love Herbert.

Herbert is down trodden. His best friend, Quasi the Snake, is leaving to find a sunnier patch of land. The cold foggy hills aren't warm enough for his blood. He's become lethargic, slowly snaking his ways across the ground never arriving on time. Quasi's become the butt of everyone's jokes thanks to his hissing s's and ability to swallow anything whole. It is said Quasi will put anything in his mouth at least once. He won't. It's just a nasty rumor. Quasi needs to leave, and Herbert is besides himself. He loves Quasi.

Sally, a portly porcupine, is throwing a party for Quasi. There are balloons, which she somehow managed to blow up without popping, and a cake made from rats. No one is eating it. No one likes rats including Quasi, but Sally heard snakes ate rates so she made a rat cake in his honor.

Sally is pissed that Quasi isn't eating her cake. She labored and labored and labored over it. She even cut off the tails to spell out, "Happy Birthday, Quasi!" Only this isn't his birthday party. It is his going away party. Whoops!

Sally makes many mistakes like this. Quasi always shrugs his shoulders and says, "Well...at least I have a cake! Thanks Sally!!" He is a laid back kind of snake. Maybe the fog has seeped into his brain.
No one really likes each other at this party except Herbert and Quasi. They all came because Sally asked and you never say no to Sally. Otherwise you'll find a quill sticking out of you somewhere. Sally is dangerous and has a temper. Two qualities you don't want in a porcupine.

Everyone is standing by himself staring blankly at the ceiling. There is Oxford the Giraffe whose bent neck and knobbed kneed is making him incredibly uncomfortable especially since he also wore his oversized wool coat. Kirby the Clown is really out of place. He is the only one wearing make up of any kind, and it is clown make up at that. The only other person with rings that large around her eyes is Temperance the Raccoon who is chain-smoking at the window but blowing the smoke into the middle of the room because she knows how much Sally hates cigarettes. Then, there is Percival the Pigeon who is sitting in the rafters shitting everywhere hoping he lands a bulls-eye on Quasi because they had a falling out over the deliciousness of squab meat: Percival loves it; Quasi thinks Percival practices cannibalism.

That is about everyone: Herbert, Quasi, Sally, Oxford, Kirby, Temperance, and Percival. Oh...and Terry the Ant, but you can miss him because he is so small and he loves hiding. He is hiding right now underneath the cake. Sally used a lot of sugar to disguise the gamey taste of rat, and Terry is slowly enjoying his sugar rush crystal by crystal. Terry is the only one enjoying himself, and that's cause he is doped up.

Sally says, "Alrighty everyone. It is time for a game!!" in her ever increasing in both volume and pitch squeaky voice. It sounds almost as if she is dragging her prickly body against a chalkboard.

Temperance lights another cigarette, "I'm not playing. I fucking hate games. You know that Sally," and blows smoke into Sally's eyes. Suddenly, Temperance has a quill sticking out of her nose. "Alright, alright. All fucking right, Sally. I'll fucking play. You don't have to stick me."

Sally doesn't apologize. "We are playing Spin the Bottle." She runs to the kitchen and returns with a bottle of Heinz 57 and places it in the center of the room.

Herbert leans over to Quasi who is casually spread across the white carpet and trying desperately not to relieve himself on its soft polyester fibers. "Hey Quasi. I'm going to miss you terribly. The only reason I come to Sally's parties is because I know you'll be here. That and I don't want to be pricked. Is there any way I can come with you?"

Quasi isn't paying attention. He really has to pee, and thinks it rude to leave a yellow stain on Sally's clean carpet. He is actually making his way to the bathroom. Only Quasi has become so slow you don't even see him move. It took him almost five days to get to Sally's, and he lives across the street. Luckily, he guessed Sally was going to have a part and started making his way over to her place early. Sally only announced the party two days ago. If Quasi hadn't guessed correctly, he would be somewhere in the middle of the street right now. Needless to say, Quasi is seriously concentrating.

"So...here is how we are going to play the game," says Sally, but no one is paying attention.

"Oh poop," says Percival in his low grumbly voice that cracks with each consonant, and a white liquid mess lands next to Quasi. "Shit! How the hell did I miss?"

Percival has horrible aim. He is always trying to poop on something and he always misses. He is a very vengeful pigeon, which could be a problem if he had better aim.

Sally continues with her instructions. It includes some vague reference to Little Britain, Sally's favorite show.

It is now five minutes later. No one thought Spin the Bottle could be so complicates, but then again no one has played Spin the Bottle with Sally. Sally has a way of complicating everything. The balloons, for example, are filled with glitter, which Sally did by placing each piece of glitter individually into each balloon. Any smart person would use a funnel and pour glitter into the balloons. It is faster and easier to clean. But Sally is a porcupine and not a person. She is also not too bright.

The bottle spins, and Kirby spun it. It stops and points to Oxford. "Ok. Ok. Ok. Ok. Ok. Ok. Soooo.....now you have to say, 'I love you more than....' and fill in the blank with something truly disgusting. Whoever you are saying it to can't smile or laugh. I do just love Little Britain. Have any of you seen it? Really you...."

"Shut UP!" Yells Temperance. "Shut. The. Fuck. UP! We all know the directions. You've already explained the stupid ass instructions." She pulls out another cigarette forgetting one is already lit in her right hand, lights it, and inhales. The room fills with smoke, and everyone coughs.

"I love you more than the scabies I got at some three year old's birthday party," says Kirby.

Oxford replies, "Ok," without a smile or even a hint of laughter.

"It is still your turn," says Sally. "Spin it again. Spin it again!"

Kirby spins the bottle and it points to an empty seat. He thinks his turn is over and wipes sweat from his brown while also removing his eyebrows. He now just looks like a hobo you'd never want to meet.

"That space is for Percival," shouts Sally squeakily.

"Fuck," says Kirby. "I was hoping my turn was over. Alright... I love you more than... more than... more than the wax job I got on my prick and balls for the clown porn shoot I did last year!"

Percival poops. It lands on Quasi. "Bingo!" Yells Percival with a hint of laughter.

"I made you laugh! I'm done." And Kirby leaves the center of the group.

Temperance lights another cigarette. Now, she has three cigarettes lit. She hates this game and wants to leave. She is hoping for a heart attach from the nicotine. Then, she can go quietly and without a fight. Anything is better than confronting Sally.

"Your turn. Your turn. Your turn, Percival! Get down here and spin this bottle." Sally doesn't care that no one wants to play. She is used to people hating her. She kind of hates herself too. But what can she do? She's the only one she has.

Percival swoops down from the ceiling. He is still laughing at the shit on Quasi's back. He is proud of himself. Finally, something went right.

The bottle spins. It stops at Quasi.

"I love you more than the shit on your back," says Percival.

Everyone laughs except Quasi.

"That was just too good, " says Sally. "You're turn Quasi."

Quasi starts his slow way to the bottle. He still need to pee. He still wants to leave. He is still moving very, very, very, very, very slowly. Slower than a snail.

"Hurry up!" Yells Temperance smoke billowing from her snout.

"For fuck sake. I am faster than you," says Terry high on his crystals as he races back and forth across the table. "Look at me. Look at me. I'm maybe 1/100 of your size and I've made it back and forth on this table ten times!! You haven't even moved an inch you slow ass snake."

"Leave him alone! This is his part..." begins Herbert jumping to Quasi's defense, but he is interrupted by a quill in his eye and Sally bleating, "This is my party for Quasi. This is NOT Quasi's party."

Quasi is still making his way to the bottle. Temperance is still smoking, but now only has two cigarettes. Kirby catches his reflection in a mirror Sally keeps above the fireplace and sees that his eyebrows are gone. He sobs like only a clown without eyebrows can sob: expressionlessly.
Sally dashes to the bottle and spins it. It stops at Herbert. He is excited. He wants to know how much Quasi loves him.

Quasi is too occupied by needing to pee. He is thinking only about waterfalls, streams, dripping faucets, flushing toilets, and washing machines. He doesn't love any of those things. He is lost at what to say. He pauses.

"Do I need to remind you that it is your turn, Quasi," Sally interrupts.

"Ah...." says Quasi.

Herbert is hopping up and down.

"I love you more than..." Waterfalls? Streams? Dripping faucets? Flushing toilets? Washing machines? He just can't decide. He just wants to pee.

"I love you more than..." and he releases himself right there on Sally's perfectly white polyester carpet. A large yellow stain grows.

"What the fuck, Quasi?" Sally is furious.

Oxford, Temperance, Percival, Kirby, and Terry are laughing. Herbert is looking lovingly at Quasi. Quasi has an idea.

"I love you more than...a full stomach!" He hisses as his tongue extends, his jaw unhinges, and he swallows Herbert whole.

Everyone goes silent and looks at Quasi. He only says, "He wanted to go with me."

Everyone laughs including Quasi.

"You lose, Herbert!" Concludes Sally.

Then, the party ends. And Quasi starts to leave slowly.

Unfortunately, being full makes Quasi even slower. It has been a week, and he has yet to make it out Sally's front door. Being the porcupine that Sally is, she decides that Quasi will make a lovely snack for her next party, which is happening tonight.

She chops off his head, and he barely makes a sound. Then, she marinates, dices, and cooks him up.

"Bon appétit!" She says to her guests as she places the platter in the middle of the table.
And Oxford, Kirby, Terry, Percival, and Temperance enjoy Sally's Savory Snack.

The lesson: a slow snake makes a great snack.

Become Wheat: A Letter to Non-Profit Development and Executive Directors

2010-07-30T08:39:00.000-07:00

I’m done with guilt. I’m done with those stupid appeal letters with over-simplified solutions to complex problems. I’m done with being told I’m more fortunate than. I’m done with bombastic language about overstated impact. I’m done with trying to be manipulated for a singular organization’s financial gain. I’m done.

For the last two months, appeal letters have clogged my inbox and my mailbox. It seems I’m on everyone’s list from the Sierra Club to the Commonwealth Club to the Contemporary Jewish Museum to LYRIC to the Food Bank to…. The list is quite numerous. I’m on these lists because I care or I signed up or someone sold my contact information to an organization that thought I would care. For the most part, I do are. I just can’t afford to monetarily give, so I open the letters, do a quick read through, and toss it in the recycling bin. It is a complete waste of paper, and I end up disconnected from the majority of these organizations after reading the letter. As a connector, this worries me.

Finding connections between things is easy for me. Give me two random thoughts and I will find a path between them. It is what I do, and what I have done for many years. This skill has helped me tremendously in my career. It has resulted in hundreds of thousands, if not millions by now, of dollars of in-kind services and products. It has created a web of people and organizations working together to improve their communities. It is about collectivity and shared purpose. It is something I wish more organizations utilized in their appeals.

I want to be informed and involved. I want to see collective action taken by diverse groups of people and organizations. I want to be a part of something larger than myself. I know I am not alone. I know numerous artists, educators, youth workers, community members, business owners that also want to be connected, informed, and involved.

The majority of these people have limited incomes and already work for community benefit organizations and companies like me. They have passion, skills, ideas, and innovation in spades. They do not have money. What little money they do have goes towards food, bills, shelter, and/or social activities. They are already giving more value than they are taking in. Only asking for money, or more precisely having money be the central ask in an appeal letter, is a missed opportunity.

My work over the last ten years has specifically focused on sector, field, and movement building in the field of youth work/development. My jobs, be it paid or volunteer, have focused on creating identities, integrating arts education practices into every day learning, and bringing people together for equitable exchange of ideas and resources. Every time I bring people together, I am amazed at how open and willing people are to share. There certainly isn’t a lack of resources. Instead, it is quite the opposite: there is a deluge so large it overwhelms. This is in stark contrast to the messages promoted by appeal letters focused on scarcity.

This dynamic tension isn’t helping workers, policy makers, clients, employers, or communities achieve their missions or visions for a better world. Instead, it is pitting programs, organizations, and people against each other in a race to see who can collect the most resources rather than figure out the best solution to community issues. If everyone is looking out for their own bottom line, who is left taking a broader look and ensuring larger community aims are being achieved?

Take for example organization Alpha (made up name). I received an appeal letter from Alpha telling me, “Arts education is under attack. Children and youth have less opportunity for arts education than once they did.” Alpha continued with facts and figures as to how much the arts have been cut from education. They shared a compelling story about a child finding her voice because of their program, and they asked, “What would happen if Angelica didn’t benefit from our organization?” It was a fairly typical appeal letter.

A couple of days later, I received an appeal letter from organization Beta. They, too, are an arts organization providing services to low-income communities throughout San Francisco Bay Area. They, too, used a similar story, this time about Tran, and cited similar statistics. If I didn’t personally know these two organizations and if both organizations names were removed from the appeal letter, they could have been the same letter. Both organizations are even working towards the same shared vision: more exposure to the arts as a means to community building, academic success, and increased voice.

I tossed both letters in the recycling bin because they canceled each other out. My thought process was this:

If increased exposure to the arts is the goal of both Alpha and Beta;
And if Alpha and Beta are providing similar, not the same, services to schools;
And if Alpha and Beta are both economically struggling as their letters imply;
And if Alpha and Beta have the same target population;
And if Alpha and Beta know each other (something I know but was not in the appeal letter)

THEN:

Why are they not working together more closely to realize the goal of increased exposure to the arts?
Which organization is really more worthy of my money?
So what if one folds? There is at least one other organization doing pretty much the same work.

This is coming from someone educated, who understands politics as related to youth programming and the arts, knows the funding landscape, and cares about the future of the arts and education, and even I am saying “So what?” There is a very large problem here.

There is also an opportunity. Everyone is struggling. Everyone. And even if it is unpopulist to say, even the wealthy are struggling. We are entering a new era of economics, value, media, arts, and community that has yet to unfold or solidify beneath our feet. This instability is shaking everyone, and it provides a solution within itself.

I am reminded of the story of wheat in the Bible. The lesson is simple: a single grain of wheat will break in the wind or as the ground shakes; plant a field of wheat and even storms cannot break the stalks. The wheat becomes malleable, gently swaying in unison, leveraging each strand for support. This metaphor needs to be applied to fundraising, capacity building, and social change. Together we are stronger and will not be swayed.

This means we must change our approach to organizational development and fundraising. We must no longer set up a false choice of fund us or else…. We must actively support others’ endeavors. We must acknowledge what we don’t do well. We must seek and make connections between things, ideas, organization, and people. We must become malleable.

In the last five years or so, more and more research has been done related to dispersive power, decentralized systems, circular leadership, and network theory. None of it is new. Most the research, be it Linked: How Everything is Connected to Everything by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi or The Spider and the Starfish by Ori Braffman and Rod A. Beckstrom or The Collaborative Heart by Twyla Tharp or The Clock of the Long Now by Stuart Brand or Tribes by Seth Godin are reflective of spiritual texts like the Bible, Koran, Tao Te Ching, the writings of Gandhi (not the religions founded on those texts). They reinforce lessons of personal accountability, collective action, long-term thinking, cause and effect. They teach love, welcoming, understanding, compassion. They remind us that there is something beyond our selves. “The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” (aka separation) is only possible because of others. What are tribes but groups of people uniting around a common idea? Collaboration and community are essential ingredients to success that is both sustainable and transformative.

To make this functional, organizational leaders must reject current systems, habits, and conceptions of being. The hypothetical “wealthy donor” isn’t going to save you even if she/he gives millions of dollars. A new era is dawning and organizational leaders must reconceptualize power and dispersion. Those within organizations are assets beyond their job function. They are connected people who care about the community, clients, and success of programming and products. Old and current donors are more than their financial contribution. They are influences: they spread messages and stories of organizational impact to their friends, family, and colleagues. Foundations and funders are portals to other organizations that share similar goals, visions, values, and missions. The resources are there.

Next year, I am hopeful a new kind of appeal letter reaches my mailbox and inbox. It is a letter sharing stories of collaboration and collectiveness. It is a letter that asks its readers for insights, advice, connections, and resources. It is a letter from more than one organization.

I can see it now:

Dear Jason:

A new era is here. Last year, we shared Angelica and Tran’s stories. This year, we are sharing ours. It is a story of hope, unity, and community. And it is beyond our organizations. It is the story of the arts.

Alpha and Beta are pleased to inform you we are working together to increase our impact, spread our reach, and ensure every child that wants to participate in the arts does participate in the arts.

We want you to join us as we continue to ensure arts are proved to every single youth. It is a long road ahead, and we need support. Please consider:
Meeting with a staff member to learn about our programs, share your ideas, and help us find resources;
Sharing your story of how the arts has changed you, your friends, your children on our blog;
Or donating to either Alpha or Beta.
Your donation, whether monetary or non-monetary, whether to Alpha or Beta, will help ensure every child has an opportunity in the arts.

In Community,

Alpha and Beta and all of our staff, volunteers, participants, and members

"You're So Young"

2010-06-11T15:37:00.000-07:00

"You're so young," reached my ears, and I wanted to burst out, "Fuck you!" I wanted to scream until my vocal chords burst. At least then I would physically be silent rather than socially. Instead, I smiled and treated it as a compliment.

I walked home anger boiling, tired of hearing that phrase. It reached my ears many times a year. It always seems more an insult than a compliment meant as a phrase to put someone in place. Or at least that's how its been used frequently in my life. I don't believe it was meant that way. But meaning sometimes has little to do with feeling. I felt hurt.

Toxicity grew. It stayed under my skin causing patch red itchiness, which I scratched until it scabbed. I snapped back to policy meetings where I was the tokenized young adult representative asked for violence prevention ideas only to be told that I was too naive; too young. I remembers workforce development teams where, as the youngest person at 30, my suggestions wouldn't work because they were "too out of the box" even though I had over five years of experience. I was sixteen again advocating for a letter in theater against the principals advice of "You're just a kid. You can't make it happen." Each one compounded the other. I was on fire. I was tired. I went to bed.

Tossing, turning, throwing blankets crowded dreams. A dark restlessness grew wanting an explosion. I woke early sad and went to work. Tuning in meant hopefully tuning out. It didn't work.

I left the apartment hoping wandering would replace restlessness. It, too, didn't work. "You're so young" kept repeating. "You're so young. You're so young. You're so young."

I know it was meant as a compliment. It was a comment from a elder meant more for them than for me. I just didn't hear it that way.

Maybe I need to listen better. Maybe I need to grow up. Maybe I need not replace my reaction with a metered response. Maybe I just need to be happy about being the youngest.

Soon, I won't be.

A Collar and Eyeliner

2010-06-11T15:18:00.000-07:00

"The Lord be with you," Father O'Leary mumbled from the pulpit. He knew the automatic response and only need wait for its monotone reply. He didn't want it to come. He wanted his sheep not to be led, but ritual breeds complacency, and Catholics love their ritual. He finally was questioning its purpose. Standing in front of his congregation wasn't the ideal place for chaos, doubt, or skepticism, so he wiggled his shoulders trying to shake it from his body hoping no one would notice as they blindly kept their faith. Notice they did, but they just thought it was Father O'Leary trying to keep himself awake. He had been known to fall asleep at mass on occasion.

Barry sat at the back of church. Black ringed his eyes, a left over from the night before, and cast shadows of hope. He wanted to believe. He wanted to be among the parishioners; he wanted communion. He wanted the warmth of nostalgia and childhood memories. He longed for the black and white simplicity of sin. His life, complicated by disease and an undying belief in compassion, waxed gray. He needed a little separation.

The mass continued its dull progression. Father O'Leary droned dispassionately. His homily was a meditation on boredom that bored the congregation to the verge of dreams and disillusionment. His lack of conviction almost produced his hope: there was a young man with black around his eyes that continually dropped the song book creating a reverberation of dissonance that echoed throughout the chapel; its loud thud caught on subconscious thoughts of conformity and habituation. It became like a metronome metering the monotony of Father's monologue. It sunk deep to the point of omnipresence: everywhere and nowhere at the same time. But then the weight of ritual and prayer overwhelmed, and everyone, including Father O'Leary and Barry moved on to the Apostle's Creed.

Professing devotion to a singular being wasn't something that Barry could do. He'd seen too much to believe in one truth above all else, yet that was precisely what brought him to church. He so wanted to believe in something other than his senses and reason. He liked the concept of blind faith, the ultimate release of one's self to something otherworldly. He just couldn't accept its reality or disconnect from true responsibility. If one could repent to be forgiven, why ever bother with doing the right thing at all? He placed the song book back in its wooden placeholder and stood to leave. This wan't what he really needed. It's what he thought he needed. As he began to leave, an itchiness grew.

Everyone rose in unison with Barry. His metered book dropping wove a web between him and the rest of the congregation. It spun deep into the nether regions of free will and critical thought. He held them captive beyond the grasp of Father O'Leary's doctrine and liturgy. Being sheep, they didn't notice it wasn't time to stand. Rather it was time to kneel, to press knees on hard planks of stained wood, to be uncomfortable, to remember suffering as a component of faith. It was modern self-flagellation.

Father O'Leary watched his parishioners stand. He was momentarily baffled and scared. Had they heard his dark thoughts of doubt? Did they know how bored he was of ritual? Were they rejecting their faith? And he had a moment of clarity made manifest by the man with the black eyeliner making his way towards the exit: he loved his power; he needed his parishioners. A crack in composure brought a point of panic and a scream let loose snapped the invisible strings connecting his congregation to Barry.

It sounded more like a whistle or a soprano's high note. It was more melodic than a scream, but underneath the melody was untethered emotion: a feeling of despair, disjointedness, disbelief. It was eerily intimate. It was that which Barry was searching for, and when it tickled the tiny hairs in his ears he abruptly stopped, turned, and stared at Father O'Leary.

The congregation stood between these two men locked in limbo. They buzzed like fireflies trapped in a jar aimlessly wandering, searching for an exit, unaware of what kept them trapped. Without their guide, their leader, their father they were left directionless and hopeless. They were waiting, like those trapped fireflies, for their last breath of air until their light was extinguished.

Father O'Leary stood motionless in front of the pulpit. He watched his fireflies like the child who trapped them: detached and slightly titillated at the decreasing oxygen and increasing lethargy. He now knew the true power he yielded, and he hoped it would respark his faith.

"My dear congregation," Father O'Leary lulled in his best imitation of his best Sunday voice. "You are my children. You are the reason I am here. You must not leave."

Barry turned again to leave. This wasn't his place any longer. He had left it behind when he put on his mascara at nineteen, and it still wasn't his place. It was a mistake coming back. He should have known this, but his body ached for relief and simplicity. His body wanted a final healing before its final release. The disease was growing. He could feel it multiplying underneath his skin causing incredible pain and discomfort and sensitivity to touch. Father O'Leary's message meant nothing to him. He wasn't a child and didn't want to be treated as one. At least not in these final moments. He wanted peace.

The congregation, conflicted, didn't know which way to face. Half stared blankly at Father O'Leary. Half faced Barry's back. They were still trapped somewhere between devotion and disbelief.

"Stop!" Father O'Leary demanded, and something broke inside of him. "Stop!" He yelled again as tears streamed down his face. "Sto..." and he couldn't even finish the word because he found himself falling to the wooden floor.

Barry heard the pain. It was more real than the aches in joints or burning red rash that covered his body. He wanted, no needed, to comfort that pain. Something told him this was his healing. He rushed to Father O'Leary's side.

"My dear child," Father O'Leary began.

"I am no child," replied Barry.

"Forgive me. Please forgive me. I have failed you."

"I can offer no forgiveness, Father. Only solace."

The disease quickened its deadly progression. The red itchy rash bubbled and blistered. Joints popped. A fever burned and boiled blood.

Father O'Leary just cried. Cried and cried.

The entire congregation witnessed Barry clutch Father O'Leary in his arms and kiss his forehead. They watched as Barry's body turned fire red and blood flowed from his eyes. They beheld Father O'Leary's body go limp. They bore witness to the passage of life and the relinquishment of power, doubt, and belief.

They were free.

Shadows and Footsteps

2010-05-18T11:30:00.000-07:00

There from behind the shadow of a memory almost forgotten it stares at him calling him towards itself beckoning him to just be. He approached cautiously familiar and reminded of time unknown. The soft footstep on the dirt below echoes through the pines and dampened sunlight. It reaches his ears as a whispered verse: "We must hunger after our deliverance." (--Gandhi)

Immediately, his belly rumbles and reverberates its response, "I do not wish to be delivered." The stranger in the shadows disagrees. The sunlight as it dances behind the fog disagrees. The pines as the wind rustles its needles disagrees.

"Now!" Says the footstep as it gathers dust and dirt forming a small ball skirting across the ground.

He clasps his hands over his mouth signaling his disagreement and fear. The dusty dirt ball halts its progression and lays itself to rest. The footstep retracts back to the shadows, and the stranger is gone.

He is so alone he cries. He wishes he was braver. He wishes he had strength. He wishes for his deliverance. But all is gone.

So he leaves too.

A Yielding Start

2010-05-14T12:10:00.001-07:00

Just start and the rest will come. I know this now. It is not something I have always known. I used to be distrustful. I used to wander aimlessly with arms flinging and flailing hoping for a life vest or boat to rescue me; something other than myself to rescue me. It comes, but only sometimes, so I have learned to let go, trust, open up, lend a hand, show up. It doesn't mean I have stopped flinging or flailing. It just means I have found comfort there. The same comfort I find in solid ground and a firm direction. Or the same comfort I find sleeping next to my husband.

Again, I am at a crossroads, a point leading in multiple directions with varied outcomes. I have recently been here. I have actually been here many times in the last few years. each time I feel out trying to find a way. Then, a step or two. I may circle back, feel again, and take a new step. I may stay where I am at too. It all depends on circumstance and intuition. Rarely, it relies on fact. Those are messy and always changing.

I have never found a dead end. Finding one would require me to believe in death, and I am still too catholic to believe end equals death. It is more of a cul-de-sac or a holding patter, something that can be perceived as final or terminus but isn't I guess the Catholics would call it Purgatory, but there is too much negative connotation to that word. Calling it that implies a hellish type of atonement upon arrival. I prefer my atonement while in transit. It allows for a certain amount of course correction.

This crossroads is slightly different. All the others included a certain frame or reference point, some guide post that at least marked space or time or location or some other defining feature. I have ripped out, torn down, and destroyed the guide post that once was here. I mutilated it to the point of unrecognizable, undefinable, unreadable. It happened so slowly that I only realized it was destroyed once I looked for it. Then, it was too late to hope for it to be there. So, instead, I stand firmly waiting for my foot to lead itself or another passerby or just resting in this moment. I don't yet need to move. And if I am not compelled, then why move?

I am excited to see how the next few days, weeks, months, years, decades spread outward, contract inward, spiral. I have a feeling, somewhere between the back of my eyes and in the depths of my belly, that I will be here for a while. I will become momentarily an observer yielding to the tides and currents rather than shaping them. I will travel with the least resistance possible making my self obscure and hopefully obsolete. I shall shrink and expand.

All I have to do is start. Again and again start. The rest will find its way.

Of Accordions and Monsters: A Poetic Pause

2010-05-13T18:55:00.000-07:00

Julius stood on the platform, his shoulder length black hair rocking thanks to exuberance and wind, waiting for his train. It was supposed to be here twenty-two minutes ago. The monitor said he had another seventeen minutes.

Other travelers stood on the platform too. Each in their own world unaware of anyone else. Darkness grew making visible large white circles from lights above. Everyone avoided the light. It was as if light and person repelled each other as two positive ends of a magnet repel each other: there was no physical way one would come in contact with the other.

At home, Julius' auntie paced. She only let him leave because they perfectly planned everything. She was reluctant to let her thirteen-year-old travel to his audition alone. There were too many monsters. She knew. She still kept one in her drawer she picked up at eleven. It only came out now when she was stressed. She ran to her room, pulled it out, and lit up. "Where is he?" She worried.

Seventeen minutes became thirty-four. Darkness became black. Repulsion became stronger. Exuberance became anxiety.

Julius didn't notice time pass or darkness become black. He was remembering his audition, the spot light, his rendition of "China Girl" that no one else got. The director asked, "Why 'China Girl'?" "My auntie likes it," he replied. He liked it too, but thirteen-year-olds aren't supposed to like old people music.

Ash fell into the crowded ash tray. Her monster unleashed, Julius' auntie hacked violently. Time ticked on her digital clock next to her bed. "Forty-six minutes," she said. "Forty-six minutes." Counting continued. Another drag drawn.

More travelers appeared on the platform. It was as if being in darkness multiplied them. They were amoeba splitting, creating new beings. They were viruses.

Julius had now been waiting over an hour. Still no train. Still stuck. He knew he should call his auntie, but that meant finding a phone. He didn't want to weave between people looking for a phone booth. He didn't want to ask for help. He was grown and could take care of himself. His auntie only need wait.

A circle of light on the far edge of the platform sparkled. Julius noticed it. He saw it dance and flutter. He wanted to dance as it danced. He wanted to be in the spot light just as he'd been in the spot light on stage. An itch scratched now pleaded for more scratching. He started humming "China Girl". The light responded rhythmically swaying its beat. Somewhere above the platform an accordion echoed it antiphon. Julius quieted straining to hear poetry and verse.

Alone among many
Light repels dark
Step into the spot light
Let me make my mark

There on the platform
Trapped in time
You sway and hum
I'm waiting for your rhyme

Dance with me gingerly
Step into my spot light
It's time dear, Julius
Do not fear the night

Her eyes blinked close. There was a lullaby somewhere in a dream. It was one of those childhood lullabies that sound so sweet by lyrically menace. She didn't want it. She didn't want to be lulled to sleep. She was waiting for Julius. Her monster burnt her finger, and she snapped awake. The digital clock read 11:49. It was too late. He should be home. She contemplated driving to the train station, but her monster roared. She lit another and began counting again.

The travelers were numerous. They crowded the blackness. They pushed its expanse threatening to burst light. They were agitated, angry, ablaze.

The accordion kept singing its nighttime song. Julius searched for its origins not with eyes but with hear and ears. Eyelids closed he felt. Its high timbre shook shoulders. The click of keys tickled toes. Th back and forth fanning propelled his pelvis. Julius moved towards the dancing circle at the edge of the platform.

The clock read 11:59. Julius' auntie, too aware of midnight hauntings, cried. She wanted him home. She wanted safety and protection. She wanted innocence and naiveté.

Julius stood at the edge of light. The music sprung from the lightbulb above. He knew that without sight. He knew everything as only children know everything. He lifted his foot steady for his next step.

The travelers buzzed. The monitor read "Arriving". A low distant grumble reverberated down the platform. Julius' auntie fell into a dark sleep. Together, it pushed little Julius. He stumbled and stepped into the light.

The accordion stopped. Travelers boarded. An ember fell from auntie's monster igniting bed and bedroom.

Julius held. It was his spot light. It was his verse. It was his.

And he had no clue what to do next.

Dispensaries, Discrepancies, and Discrimination

2010-05-12T13:27:00.001-07:00

Marijuana is making its rounds around the web. And it seems like there is more and more movement to try and make it legal and stop the harassment of police at dispensaries.

Here are a few articles worth noting:

SF Weekly's Blog posted "Cops Claim Pot Clubs are Crime Magnets, Won't Provide Evidence To Back It Up" today (Wednesday, May 12, 2010).

The gist of the article is in the headlines. SFPD claims that the medical marijuana dispensaries on Ocean Avenue bring crime to the neighborhood. As someone deeply familiar with Ocean Avenue and the OMI, really?

My dear friend is a community organizer of the OMI. She sits on the Ocean Avenue Revitalization Collaborative, and she is actively involved in creating the OMI's cultural legacy. She has been doing this work since she was born, and she was born in the OMI over 50 years ago. I've worked with her for years, many of which have been supporting her work in the OMI. Never have I heard this issue mentioned. And trust me, I hear ALL the gossip of Ocean Avenue. Currently, the most pressing issue is whether or not Ocean Avenue wants to become a Community Benefit District.

What concerns me about this article is the start of an unsubstantiated assault on medical marijuana dispensaries in San Francisco by SFPD, specifically by Police Chief Gascon. I have lived in San Francisco for over 12 years doing community work all of those years. One thing I have learned in that time is San Francisco is overwhelmingly pro-marijuana.

This assault on legal establishments makes me cringe. It seems only a short step until more local laws are infringed upon.

Need a reminder? San Francisco is, on paper, a Sanctuary City. However, defining what made San Francisco a Sanctuary City, it used to mean city agencies not cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is changing. The new ICE Secure Communities initiative is a prime example. Secure Communities mandates that any time someone is booked by local or state law enforcement their fingerprints be compared to biometrics in the US Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Securities databases. It ties the hands of San Francisco to enforce its own Sanctuary City Policy. (Want more information? Click here and here.)

Then, I came across "Why Ending Marijuana Prohibition Is a Racial Justice Issue" an article in Race in America, a part of Change.org.

Here are a couple of key quotes:

Of the 1.8 million drug arrests made last year, 750,000 were for nothing more than possession of a small amount of marijuana. That represents more than 40% of all drug arrests. The best available national evidence indicates that roughly the same proportion of blacks and whites use marijuana — but that black people are roughly three times more likely to be arrested for possessing marijuana. [...]

What's difficult to understand is how and why the number of people arrested annually for marijuana possession has roughly doubled during the past 20 years — even as support for ending marijuana prohibition has also doubled during the same period of time. [...]

In California, 61,400 people were arrested for marijuana possession in 2008, a 300% increase since 1990. In California, black people made up less than 7% of the state population but 22% of people arrested for all marijuana offenses and 33% of all marijuana felony arrests in 2008. More black people are arrested in California for marijuana felonies than whites, although there are six times more whites in the state population — and huge numbers of white people involved in growing and selling marijuana.

This is alarming and makes even a stronger case for why SFPD and Police Chief Gascon should stop assaulting legal establishments, especially establishments in historically black and brown neighborhoods. Ocean View was one of the few places after World War II where black/African American families could afford to purchase a home. During the 1960s, more black/African American families moved to the neighborhood. There is cultural and historical significance to Ocean View. Picking on the dispensaries on Ocean Avenue is an assault on black and brown people.

We do need to solve the problems of crime and violence. Discriminating against people of color and legal dispensaries doesn't do this. Instead, it reinforces the tension between SFPD and communities of color, and it continues the cycle of distrust.

Maybe, instead, we could learn something from the dispensaries. I know I have never seen a more diverse group of people communing between four walls. Never. It is amazing to behold. They may be more of the solution than the problem than we even know.

Here's to hoping and toking.

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson on Cobert Report: Legalize Pot!

2010-05-11T08:43:00.000-07:00

I just had to share this. It comes from The Colbert Report. Former New Mexico Governor, Gary Johnson, was on the show last night (May 10, 2010) talking about the pros of legalizing marijuana. Now, I have done a lot of reading and research on the push to legalize marijuana. Mostly, they are pot or marijuana advocates that are academics, users, researchers, and celebrities. Sometimes, you get a local politician. Rarely, do you find a (former) governor, let alone a Republican governor who also supports gay marriage, getting into the public arena espousing why marijuana should be legal, or at least decriminalized. He is articulate and succinct, something I tend to lack. So I will let him tell you why it should be legal. But then again, if you are already on this site, I am preaching to the converted.

You definitely want to check it out.

And help spread the word! It is really simple. Who better than a Republican to deliver a message other Republicans might be able to hear? (Notice I said might. This won't work for tea baggers.) So send this on to that crazy aunt or conservative grandparent or that friend that just might need a little push. Who knows? They might just actually change their mind.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Gary Johnson
www.colbertnation.com

Held Breath, Exhaled Home

2010-05-10T18:12:00.000-07:00

He was reflective, contemplative, alone on a bench surrounded by budding trees and block-long concrete apartment complexes. His scarf wrapped tightly and pipe in hand, he inhaled and held. He wanted to exhale as the bikes zipped past unseen and the u-bahn unloaded below. Pupils dilating, he saw the microscopic growth of possible flowers blooming. Lungs expanding, he tasted the air laden with rain. He didn't want it to end, so still he held.

The old woman with her paper shopping bag and her yapping dog silk draped over her head walked past. There was no recognizable acknowledgement. There was nothing. He wanted something. He wanted to be seen if only momentarily. He exhaled. Still nothing. She was gone.

He sat on that bench alone as the night grew and the sliver of moon ascended. He finished his bowl with two drawn breaths. Then, he stood, and the world changed. He was no longer alone in the park. He was one of the masses trapped between where he was and where he was going. He liked it there. Almost more than on that bench.

He stalled. He held. Then, he went home.

The Specter and the Volcano

2010-05-10T17:53:00.000-07:00

The specter visited Miri not when it was night nor in dark spaces. It visited her when the clouds blanketing the sky cast monochrome; that unique time when everything and everyone fade into backgrounds; when there is no distinguishing between object, subject, thing, being. It made itself known by minimal movements deftly defying gravity. Miri liked its visits. She prayed for cloudy days.

On the other side of the world, a volcano beckoned and billowed. Its low soft grumble invaded dreams across nations. People stirred, tossed, flung arms and legs as if a spasm burst from bellies. Miri's dreams were quiet. Her specter already warned her about its friend. "Soon, I will never leave," it said one Tuesday afternoon. "I shall walk among you thanks to my friend, volcano. We will never part, dear Miri. We shall be as one. You must remember until that time comes."

Miri woke each morning eagerly rushing to her computer hoping for news about volcanic activity, disappointed when none was found. Time ticked forward, and Miri's anamnesis waned. Her childhood friend became an adult hallucination that faded with each ray of sunlight or moonglow. Each visit was more fugacious leaving less and less on which to hold. The hope of permanent union became smaller than a poppy seed.

And the world moved forward too. Quickly. The pace of lazy afternoons cavorting with friends was replaced with instantaneous internet connections demanding continuous response. Casual business lunches spent listening and inquiring shifted to conference calls about bottom lines and increased efficiency. Time became smaller and more incremental: measurements meant to lengthen only shortened. Faster and faster everything spun. It was so accelerated dreams were lost.

Still the volcano beckoned and billowed.

Miri sat in her cube -- ear buds plugging external sounds and eyes mesmerized by green flashing cursors -- as outside clouds bubbled. A soft pitter patter cascaded down windows only a few feet away. Lights crackled and thunder clapped. Miri was static; lost between the virtual and the real. She didn't notice the gray wash everything. She didn't feel the tiny flick of her specter caress her cold, pale cheek. Hope, even the tiny poppy seed-sized hope, had shrunk. And so too did the specter vanish from recognition.

No one noticed it. No one. Everyone experienced it. The moment the volcano spewed its ash everything halted. Airports closed. Computers turned off. Phones hung up. Cars stalled. Business ceased. The back and forth buzz of clatter and commotion silenced. Monochrome covered all.

In the universal gray, shadows danced.

Miri's screen went black and her music stopped. She felt a warm itch on her cheek and scratched. Something tickled its response. She had the vague idea of a cloudy Tuesday afternoon and a hint of remembrance. Annoyance at interruption almost eclipsed childhood hopes, but hopes are tricky things: while shrunk beyond ocular perspicacity they never truly cease. They infect your body waiting to be recalled, only their awakening is more violent, catastrophic, cathartic. They are like chicken pox becoming shingles.

The itch on Miri's cheek mushroomed and soon enveloped her whole body. She was on fire, flush red, a stark contract to her cinereal surroundings. Her body burned quickly and noiselessly. Her curly black hair now a charcoal burnt scalp. Her once freckled skin a crusty scab. Her sunny sundress soot beneath her broken feet.

In that moment of combustion, she remembered; a door opened; the specter entered. They became one. And right before their communion one emotion pervaded everything: hope.

On the other side of the world, a volcano wailed, "The time of the specter is here."

The only thing that moved was Miri.

Berliner's Spine Popped

2010-05-05T11:28:00.000-07:00

He approached me casually in German asking something of me I couldn't understand and yet obviously flirting. That is a language beyond words. The gentle bodily intonations that spark and catch on receivers unseen and universal. I smiled.

He spoke again in English. This time more animated expressing back pain from manual labor. His whit tufts of hair perfectly matched his loud red shirt and scuzzy black pants as he asked for my help. I obliged smilingly and stood.

He turned me around and ordered me to stay, arms firmly planted at my sides. We stood back to back. He pushed his arms through mine as he chuckled slightly and pushed on my back. I hoisted him. Spine popped. He smiled. Danke.

He spoke of art and pot and wooden pipes perfect for smoking and wanting to share. It smelled of tobacco and dried longing. I opened my hand and received. We both smiled.

He left the cafe and hopped on his bike. As he bent over to unlock the lock, I was greed by striped underwear and thick white legs gazing at me from a gigantic tear. Unaware he smiled. Aware I smiled. Together we understood.

Whistleblowing Review

2010-04-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

He said he would finally give me a review after three years of no reviews on my final day of work. I was excited to finally know what he thought of my performance. I was nervous too. I hadn't had a review because he was afraid of me. I scare people in authority or in supervisory roles. I see though their lies and misdirections.

I sat at the conference table taping my last receipts as I waited for him to arrive. His boss joked about not being reimbursed because I was too late in submitting them. We didn't have a joking kind of relationship. He took and misappropriated grant funds on two grants they received based on my work. I shot him a glance of "Back the fuck off". He nervously giggled and said he was kidding.

He was twenty minutes late. Not a great start. We went into the small office for the closing interview. I anticipated what would be said of me. I was a pain in his ass and a whistleblower.

"I didn't have time to get to your review," he said.

He knew about my departure for a month. I don't know why I expected him to do his job. I had been picking up pieces of his work for two years. It is why I blew the whistle. Only the whistle was never heard. He was a "nice" guy. People liked him. That outweighed him forgetting to file a restraining order against a former employee that threatened to come to work and kill me because "I was a fucking faggot and was going to burn in hell."

I stood up and said, "If you don't have my review then there is no point to this meeting." I excused myself and left.

He got a promotion after that. They really liked him. He knew how to take care of the problem employees: quietly push them out.

I saw him a year ago at a meeting. He looked the same: clueless and white. I smiled. While my road had been and was rocky and undulating, I had conviction and ethics. I didn't need his approval. For if he approved, it meant I too was clueless and white. White? Sure. But clueless? Well...maybe sometimes. But that is a different story.

Fact Lost, Emotions Burst

2010-04-06T10:00:00.001-07:00

We sat around a table square in shape and posture. It wasn't about exchange. It was about proof and facts. I screamed inside confined by walls unseen and demanded by power. It was too much. I silenced myself fearing voice would sway confidence.

They were looking for a victim. They were looking to shed blame onto someone else. My silence proved and opening. "Delay, delay, delay," they said.

I burst. I exploded. And with it screams of emotion spilled. Fact was lost.

I was furloughed the next day.

Labyrinthine Corridors Snaking

2010-04-06T10:00:00.000-07:00

We went to the sex club looking like two trannies, but one of us was a bio-girl. She was my girlfriend, and we were looking for some casual open sex. It was time to try something new.

We wandered the labyrinthine corridors snaking our way through dungeons with men bent over being fucked by strap-ons, MTFs making out in corners, and women cuffed to walls being spanked with riding whips. Each turn offered a different encounter. We kept walking.

We stopped at a cushioned bench beckoning us to recline. She unsnapped her red and black bustier revealing her perfectly shaped c-cup breasts. He nipples teased calling for a flick and a lick. We began. A crowd grew.

It was exhilarating and titillating making out in front of a handful of men. Pants unzipped and semi-hard cocks were pulled out. We wanted more, so she pointed to one of the men and batted her lashes. He read her signal correctly and approached pants still closed. She reached out and grabbed. he obliged letting her unbutton his jeans and stroke his growing hard on.

The vodka swirled in my head. The fuzziness expanding matched my blond frizzy wig falling off my head. My fishnets caught on one of the silver sequins on her heels causing a ripple of holes up my leg. The ripple found its way between us as I reached out for his cock. She presented it to my lips, and he backed away, zipped up, and proceeded on.

The crowd dwindled. They wanted only her. They wanted the illusion of possibility and exoticism. They couldn't hand the touch of a drag queen. The always present stubble was a too tactile reminder I had a dick.

No Regrets

2010-04-05T13:20:00.001-07:00

I find little to nothing in my life I regret. Regret would mean I was wrong. I've made mistakes, but I am not wrong. I've hurt others. I've made poor choices. I've taken risks resulting in tragic outcomes. These are moments like all other moments in my life. They hold no more or less weight or sway than the lovely decision to marry my husband or the exciting decision to publish my writing. In fact, these point shape who I am. I constantly look back on them and learn new lessons.

Take the seminary for example, something that could be a regret or at least regretful. While in it, my lesson was cut it of, let it go, break up with your faith if you want to live. After seminary, it was do whatever you can to disrupt the church including speaking ill of it and brining safer sex conversations into its walls. It was a reaction of pain, one I hoped to inflict in equal measure to the hurt I felt. There was no limit. Now, it is reflective still tinged with pain and anger but beyond it was well. It is a detachment that allows me to have conversations of faith without loud outbursts.

Regret is like being stuck in an emotional loop. It re-traumatizes you because your experience of the event never changes. Yes, the facts of the event don't change. I went to seminary for one semester, which can be imperially proven. But the story changes.

That is liberation. That is something beyond the initial experience. That is something others can never manipulate. That is why I don't regret anything or almost anything. If I did, I would lose my liberation.

And that is something I would regret.

Shifting Sands of Sinking and Elevation

2010-04-05T13:11:00.000-07:00

There are moments of utter clarity that mark time in a manner relative. Those moments shine like a beacon pointing to a truth yet unknown. It is a constant shifting, a movement of sand beneath the feet that cause sinking and elevation in equal measure. These are the moments I love. These are the times I am free. It doesn't mater whether it is a step backwards or forwards because both steps lead to the same outcome. That is destiny. Easily redirected. Never changed.

A Vacation to Proposal

2010-04-05T10:46:00.000-07:00

We made our way from San Francisco to Seattle to visit his best friend. It was our first vacation together. A road trip was a risky venture, but would prove whether or not we could actually get along. You can lean a lot sharing such close quarters.

We drove past Mt. Shasta up to Crater Lake in Oregon. We found a seedy motel in an abandoned mining town. I think we heard mice in the walls. We had a hamburger in the only restaurant open that wasn't fast food. We kept reaching out to hold hands or trying to kiss, but pulled back realizing where we were and unsure of safety. It was night and hard to get our bearings.

Then, we headed to Mount Hood and Portland. We spent a day and night taking in the blue-collar city filled with brick buildings. The architecture reminded me of my family and unions. From Portland, it was a straight shot to Seattle. Along the way, we found this kitschy diner off the freeway that loved collectible ceramics. We just had to have this hideous cat with polka dots all over it. It was meant as a gift, but now resides on a kitchen shelf.

The trip was going smoothly. I found myself falling more and more in love with each passing day. He was tender and considerate as well as determined to ho things he liked and also willing to trudge though the snow to find a creek off the freeway when I just had to take in nature. He was a fabulous travel partner. He was a fabulous partner.

We went out drinking one night in Seattle. All of us were laughing and joking and singing along to the music being played. Or at least I was singing along. I couldn't keep my hands off him, which made him uncomfortable and skittish. He just looked at me and kissed me. more drinks. More laughter. More affection.

We stumbled back to out friend's apartment. His friend was gracious and gave us his bed. We spooned and had restless drunken sleep. We both woke early in the morning still drunk. I leaned over and whispered, "Will you marry me?" He told me to ask him later when I wasn't still drunk.

It was a great first vacation. We drove back to San Francisco in record time stopping only close to the Oregon border at a hotel on the beach. We drove down dirt paths through redwood trees at sunset. We kissed and held hands and gazed into each other's eyes. We did all the stereotypical romantic things. I wanted to marry him He still wanted to wait until after the trip to decide.

I started searching for a ring immediately when we got back. I looked everywhere but couldn't find one. Then, I walked in to a little boutique on 16th Street specializing in all things skulls, and there in one of its cases was a custom silver skull ring. I bought it grinning ear to ear.

I walked home nervous. It had only been about two weeks since we were back. I didn't know if it was too soon. I threw up a little bit on 18th Street getting closer to home. I almost threw up again on 20th Street.

I knocked on the door and got on one knee. He opened it and turned red. In my hand was a small black box. He opened it and said yes.

Back Alley Brothers

2010-04-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

He wanted both of us. My e had yet to kick in, and I was hesitant. I also never had had sex with my friend although everyone thought we had. My friend was eager and willing. He was in perfect balance with his drugs and alcohol.

I downed a few shots of tequila as the music beckoned dancing and 80s nostalgia. My friend sold our story of two gay brothers that laid with each other biblically. Our admirer admired us even more asking how much he'd have to pay for our attention.

It wasn't new territory to me. It was for my friend. He was a slut not a whore. I was both. So my friend brushed aside price settling with "If both of us like you, there is no cost."

He paid for a few beers hoping to loosen me up knowing I was what was getting between him and his threesome. It didn't work. I was still wound up unable to comprehend having sex with my friend. He is attractive. He just was my "brother".

The old fit man followed us to the next bar with promises that there would be some reward. I wanted nothing to do with him sexually, but I loved teasing. He was frustrated and hard showing it in his agitated voice and through his 501s. My friend chuckled and grabbed.

We were outside next to the bar in a small alley with the fog-lined air blowing hard. He unzipped his pants demanding a blow job saying it was owed to him; he waited long enough. My friend started obliging. I turned and waled away. He only wanted both of us, so he pushed my friend off and zipped up.

My friend and I brushed the story aside as drunken antics, but it started us down a path. One that ultimately resulted in a break-up. He realized I wouldn't want him sexually. I realized he wanted me sexually. Those unspoken desires divide friends, and result in other things better left unsaid.

Justice Rarely Found

2010-03-31T07:53:00.000-07:00

We went to see a show at one of the venues on Market Street on evening. We exited somewhat disappointed by enjoying the evening none the less when we saw a white yuppie-ish woman pushing a black homeless woman over. The cops descended on the conflict like pigeons to breadcrumbs. They immediately went after the black woman.

I looked at my friend debating what to do with only hunched eyebrows and slightly squinted eyes. Her return gaze said "Keep to yourself". The brief look was all I needed to enter the middle of the conflict. When she said no, I always said go.

"Excuse me, but I am a witness. I saw what happened," I interjected to the police. An officer, not the one cuffing the homeless woman, approached with an air of annoyance and the body language of "Back the fuck off." I persisted.

"The white woman," and here the supposed "victim" started shifting on her feet, eyes darting between me and the woman she pushes, "started it all."

"Excuse me sir, but we don't need any help right now."

I was befuddled. My only interactions with police until that point was casual. I was in my early twenties, and I tended to only see the side of the police meant for white folks: "law enforcer", "hero", "authority". I hadn't yet witnessed the "selective enforcer", "racist", or "authoritarian". That was the land of literature, movies, news articles, and research papers.

"But she," and I pointed to the white woman, "started it. She pushed the other woman."

"If you don't back up right now, you too will be arrested." His voice deepened and grew gruff and blunt with no hint of truth-seeking.

"But she started it. What don't you understand about that?"

The white blond woman started crying. My friend pulled my arm begging me to leave; she had seen this side of the police before and knew it was time to go. The officer started to grab my other arm. I pulled away thanks to my defiance towards authority entering dangerous territory. I was about to ask for a badge number and the station he worked out of when my friend hailed a taxi and demanded to leave.

As I entered the cab, I noticed the homeless woman with her face on the ground crying, an officer's knee in her back. The white woman was telling another police officer she'd like to press harassment charges. I felt helpless, distance growing between me and the incident.

I wanted justice terribly. I wanted to lend a voice where I could. But I realized that justice, especially institutional justice, is rarely given or found. Rather, we find justice in those small moments of voice even when they aren't heard. And institutional justice? It resides only in the lands of Batman and fiction.

Characters around Town

2010-03-30T13:16:00.000-07:00

These are a bunch of small character profiles inspired by people around San Francisco. You never know when or where they might pop up.

***
Her short bangs and brown-black hair pulled into braided pigtails made each wrinkle and line smooth as she smiled at me from the cashier. Her brown eyes twinkled a karmic recognition of which we were both unaware. The black inked roses searched her backpack with care and urgency trying to find that notebook containing secrets and stories about to be typed. She sat and began with loose wrists.

***
The tourists speaking German sit in the alcove eating their bagels and licking cream cheese off their fingers as they smile for flash photography.

***
He looked exactly like Santino from Project Runway although it wasn't him because he exchanged pleasantries with the barista in a style devoid of ego. And his prayer beads weren't fashionable.

***
His Russel Brand hair matched his girlfriend's Amy Winehouse bun although her hair was bleach blond. They seemed a perfect pair including studs on jackets and boots. Obviously, as they stumbled and sat on wet chairs outside, they were recovering from the previous evening. It must've been fun. Their backwards glances oozed both headache and debauchery.

***
The green, blue, and black plaid golf cap with a black yard pom pom squarely on top didn't match her black t-shirt with neon lime and turquoise print. Such things shouldn't be let out of closets let alone homes. She at least made up for her horrible hipster attire with black plastic almost jellies with cut out skulls at the toes. They led her departure.

***
Those too tight charcoal gray pants looked more likely to be found at a yoga studio than on a professional woman with her Kate Spade bag, blond wet hair, and periwinkle pashmina getting a cup of coffee before her downtown job. Let's hope her colleagues don't point out her camel toe.

Friends, Lovers, Fiances, Enemies, Fiances, and Then...

2010-03-30T12:33:00.000-07:00

She was wrapped in a towel and freshly showered when I first met her. I was unexpected and met with a nervous giggle that escaped pursed lips. My grandparents were there helping carry luggage as I coughed green and and ran to throw up. She excused herself as we made our way to my new bedroom. The sagging mattress tossed on an industrial metal frame was one of two beds in the large wooden room. It was to be mine although not quite yet.

She reemerged clothed, and my grandparents asked her for a hotel room and a hospital. We departed with a "Thank-you" towards Lombard Street.

I returned a few days later feeling slightly less sick and more consciously aware of the screaming and chair throwing. She wasn't there to greet me. Instead, I was welcomed dryly by the director from his first floor office. His dog yapping should have been a warning cry; I should have heard its pain and story. But my headache made intuition impossible, so I stayed.

Eight months of screams, bites, feces, transformations, trauma, and love occurred. It was abusive and kept me contained fearful of quiet and stillness. I also gained a close, close friend as only abuse and trauma can create: the woman in the towel.

We both stopped working at the same time and became roommates. Then, we became lovers. It was unexpected, familiar, and beautiful. It was also cyclically unhealthy.

After six plus years of being friends, lovers, fiances, enemies, and fiances again, we ended it. She ended it. I accepted it.

For all its abusive start, cyclical middle, and rocky finish, she showed me love. It prepared us for what was next. For her, grad school and a job in economic development. For me, falling in love all over again.

This time I learned: cruising dark alleys is no more riskier than meeting in a group home.

Dear Lydia, A Pro-Healthcare Reform Message

2010-03-23T18:04:00.000-07:00

I received an email from my friend Shon. He was being harassed because someone didn't like his support of healthcare reform. He IMed me and asked me to send her a letter telling her why I support it. Below is the letter. (Her name has been changed.)

***
Dear Lydia:

You sent a message to a friend of mine commenting on his support for healthcare reform. I, too, support healthcare reform, and I would like to share my story.

I have been a working stiff since I was 11 when I started babysitting. My family is like a lot of middle American families, we struggle to get by. My mom worked various jobs as a cashier, Catholic school secretary, running an in-home day care, and as a biller for a medical billing company. Now she works as an administrative assistant for a hospice. None of those jobs offered health insurance (including her current one). Luckily, my dad worked for a grocery store in produce and his union provided insurance. (Now, he is a janitor in a school, and still provides the health insurance.) So we all had coverage.

Then, I grew up and was no longer covered by my father's insurance. I ended up working different jobs trying to find my way. I worked mostly in youth service or education jobs and was only lucky enough to get insurance when my employer provided it. When an employer didn't provide it, I went without. It wasn't because I didn't want health insurance. It was because I couldn't afford it. Not only couldn't I afford it, but I had serious back problems in high school, am clinically diagnosed with ADHD, and have a heart murmur. All of these so-called "issues" (aka pre-consisting conditions) increase the price of my premiums.

I have been lucky. I haven't needed serious medical attention since losing my health insurance again last July 2009. Recently, I developed a cold along with a very serious fever of 101.4. I panicked. I didn't know what I was going to do. I could go to the emergency room, but that didn't seem worthy of a trip to the emergency room or seem to me to qualify for the financial burden of an emergency room visit. I waited and my fever reduced but stayed at 99.4 for three more days. I had to see the doctor. If noting else to rule something more serious out.

I live in San Francisco, and we have a public health system here. Instead of running to the emergency room or to urgent care, I decided to see if I qualified for the program first. I make about $3000 a month before taxes. Luckily, I squeaked in as a qualifying participant. After a little explanation of cost (it will cost me $450 every three months plus $20 for urgent care visits and $10 costs for doctors visits and $200 for any overnight admittance to the hospital regardless of how long I stay or what services I receive), I went home for the evening because I was exhausted.

I returned the next day for urgent care. I waited. I waited a fairly long time (from the time I entered until I left it was about 6 hours). I saw a nurse practitioner; I got a chest x-ray because they thought it might be pneumonia (it wasn't); I got my prescriptions. I left with only having to pay $37 out of pocket for everything including the medications.

Before becoming uninsured, I had Kaiser. I developed a similar sickness and had to go to Kaiser's urgent care. I had to pay a $30 co-pay, and $20 for prescriptions. I waited in the waiting room for two hours. Once I was admitted, I waited in my room for another hour. I only saw a nurse practitioner. I never got a chest x-ray. My employer covered the monthly healthcare bill of $300 per month.

When comparing these two systems, I actually prefer the San Francisco option. It is just as simple or just as complicated depending on how you look at it. It provides the same level of coverage, arguably better. I got well in the same amount of time. And it costs less.

This is what healthcare reform is about. It is about ensuring that all Americans have access to healthcare. It is about making it affordable. It is about making sure that someone with a simple case of the flu or a cold doesn't get worse and drain the system. It is about reform.

I believe this isn't the complete answer, but I believe that doing nothing is way, way worse. I know that this will help a majority of Americans. Including you.

Peace,
Jason

A Youth-Led District 6 Candidate Forum

2010-03-20T22:44:00.000-07:00

Dear Community:

I hope this post finds you well. I am reaching out to you because this is an important year for elections in San Francisco's District 6. I am passionate about making sure youth and voters are educated on all the possible candidates, and where they stand regarding issues important to young people. And I am seeking your support for a youth-led candidate forum.

I have a strong background in helping run and manage youth-led candidate forums (as well as over 20+ years in youth development). It started in 2000 when I worked for the OMI/Excelsior Beacon Center, and it was the first year for district elections in San Francisco. I partnered with Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth’s John Avalos (now District 11 Supervisor) and Balboa High School’s Matt Alexander (now co-Principal of June Jordan) to bring the first and only youth-led candidate forum that year. In 2003, I worked as part of the Beacon Initiative’s team of youth workers that supported young people in successfully running and organizing a fabulous youth-led mayoral candidate forum. In both of these efforts, youth ran many, if not all, of the aspects of the forums from inviting candidates to researching and asking questions to greeting guests. Now, I want to bring something similar to the district I live in, District 6.

I have been a resident of District 6 for almost 10 out of the 12+ years I have lived in San Francisco. In that time, I have seen this district change, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. It is a swiftly developing neighborhood with lots of children and youth that are often unseen because of the neighborhoods in which they live. I believe that a youth-led candidate forum can put children and youth front and center in this District 6 election, and I believe that this is crucial for the healthy development and growth for our District and San Francisco at large.

I learned a lot helping run two youth-led forums. First, I learned that while having a youth-led forum is an excellent idea it is only empowering and truly beneficial if both youth and voters turn out for the forum. Second, shared vision and accountability across multiple youth-serving organizations of and for the event is essential for success, including organizations committing to youth leading all aspects of the event from logistics to issue identification to facilitating and running the event. Third, a single coordinator who helps facilitate accountability ensures all collaborators and young people have a positive, educational, and empowering experience.

I posting this here because I need help to make this come to life. I need voters, youth workers, and youth-serving organizations to work together to make this event a huge success. I am hoping to pull together a team of youth, youth workers (the professionals who work with or for youth) and voters that want to help craft the vision and share accountability for the successful execution of this event in early May through a kick-off meeting at which organizations and people can learn more and get involved. The bulk of the work will be from June to September with the event (tentatively) at the beginning of October. The number of people that participate will dictate the scope and scale of the event.

To be clear, I am organizing this without compensation and as a voting resident of District 6 because I believe youth voice is crucial to this election. As such, I am seeking people that share this vision and value youth leadership. I currently do not work for a youth-service/development organization and to achieve this vision I need your support.

If you are interested in being a part of this historic and important event, please let me know in the comments below or at by emailing me at jason@ywcollective.org. Additionally, please let me know if you have any other comments, questions, ideas, or feedback. I am definitely interested in hearing from you.

Peace,
Jason

Dinner with Mai

2010-03-10T08:44:00.000-08:00

I received an email asking for some advice and support. A couple of back and forths and we settled on dinner. I'd cook.

I set to the task of crafting a menu trying to think about what would be the tastiest dish to create. I wanted something spicy, a little zesty, and most definitely comforting. I knew that the conversation would have all of those components, and I wanted them reflected in the food. There is nothing like tasting some deliciousness on your tastebuds to inspire conversation. There is nothing like food to get you to think differently. I knew exactly what we needed for out of the box thinking: cajun catfish, black beans and rice, escarole, and warm bread. The flavors were bound to mix together nicely and open nostrils if not minds.

I was behind in my cooking. I am always behind in my cooking. I love the process. I love getting lost in the chopping, designing, sauteing, mincing, selecting, washing, shaping, and producing. There is something about losing oneself into the mundane and ordinary tasks that transforms self and food alike. There is nothing else like it. Nothing.

When Mai arrived, I was sprinkling the catfish with my secret cajun seasoning. (Note: While I try and post most of my secrets, this mixture will not be making it to The S. Kitchen site. A girl's got to have some mystery, otherwise they'll gossip that she's easy.) My hands a mess I welcomed her from behind the counter. She grabbed a spot on our lovely olive couch, and I moved on to dicing onions.

I will not bore you with details of the conversation not only for your sake but also for Mai's. (Confidentiality, my dear.) But there are some major themes that seem to be popping up in conversations I'm having with many in middle management (like Mai) and lower in youth-serving, youth-led, youth-empowerment, youth-... organizations: power isn't distributed, voice isn't heard.

I don't work too much with executive directors or upper management. My experience has been that they don't too often listen and/or are too disconnected from the actual day to day operations of supporting clients. Some hide behind needing to make "tough decisions" as to why they don't keep engaged; it provides a comfortable space from which to make those decisions, decisions that will impact large numbers of people and affect power dynamics within organizations. Additionally, upper management always is looked to. They are the supposed "experts" of their organization and, as such, are called to decision-making, policy, and funders tables. Tables that also need the voice of middle management, frontline staff, and youth (aka clients).

I have nothing against upper management or executive directors. While I have seen and been directed by a number that had/have no clue how to supervise or manage or listen, I have also seen amazing leadership from innovative people and organizations. I do believe that balance must be found in whom we listen to and how we listen to them.

I put the catfish into the cast iron skillet filled with butter and listened to it sizzle. It was blackening and frying releasing the aromas of lemon zest, garlic, paprika, and oregano into the air. The salty spice tickled nose hairs signaling comfort, sustenance, and nourishment. The casual atmosphere fostered more dialogue, even greater ideas, and potentially hope.

There is a lot that is quickly changing beneath us. The economy, while signally a rise via the stock market, really isn't rising, nor will those on the bottom see that rise any time soon. In fact, as the profits rise so too are the numbers on the bottom. The disparity is growing. Listening to Mai and other middle managers, I am hearing that as disparity rises in our economy disparity of power dynamics within the non-profit (specifically youth organizations) sector is also rising. We are bearing the brunt of us versus them politics. And we are reinforcing it.

The conversation between Mai and me started with lots of open-ended probing questions as I stood in the kitchen preparing our meal. It was rooted in the pace of meal preparation: lovingly slow. It was about exchange and nourishment. It resulted in new ideas and connections. It will bring new opportunities for shared work, values, and process.

We need more of these spaces as we address the issues of our economy. We need places where openness and sharing thrive regardless of brand, identity, organization, issue, or politics. I see many of these efforts springing up around me, and I am engaging with them. But something is missing to me in these projects: true openness. From my perspective, sharing and open have become a "brand" that people are trying to promote and sell. It isn't a brand. It is a way of life. It is leaving your own bull shit and power and sometimes even your identity at the door. It is scary, risky, and potentially fatal to ones comfort and control.

This dinner wasn't about promoting one organization or person. It was about actively finding solutions to the challenges middle managers have in accomplishing ever increasing outcomes with ever decreasing resources. It took place in a home not an office. It involved people and not organizations. And as we gobbled down the catfish and black beans and rice and sauteed escarole and warm bread, we did what we have done since the dawn of humans: we nourished our "selves".

A quote of Margaret Mead's is "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens [people, in my opinion] can change the world. (r) Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." And a tasty, rejuvenating meal goes a long way in bringing that group together.

Click here for the Black Beans and Rice recipe.

The Red Dot(s): Three Forms of Crystal to Get to The Great HIGHway

2010-03-09T14:12:00.000-08:00

There was too much speed last night between the street racing and the methamphetamine. But I'm not exactly sure the drag racing actually happened although I do have a ruby I stole from some guys earring. I did end up hands and knees on the floor scrubbing with Target-brand Pinesol. That was much, much later after all the lines blurred and disappeared. It was also after a red dot in the shape of a pimple I just had to pop. My friend wasn't too pleased. Who really likes it when a friend obsessively stares at you and suddenly gets up from his seated position on the couch across from you and decides that he has to kiss you and as he is kissing you pops your zit -- the same zit you probably obsessed about in front of the mirror and tried to cover using concealer that made it look cracked and caky instead -- even though you're screaming and pushing him off and your other friends are laughing hysterically? At least I was able to blame it on the speed.

Continue reading.

Wild Laughter

2010-03-08T14:40:00.000-08:00

He dances wildly arms flailing: free. The lights flash and spin as he pirouettes and leaps. He lands with a thud on the floor catching his toe on someone else's shoe. Both tumble creating a new dance: laughter.

Mirrored Perfection

2010-03-08T14:32:00.000-08:00

She stood in front of the mirror fussing with hairspray hoping it would go just a little higher conscious not to look like a hooker. Suburbanites hate hookers.

Perfect hair signaled personal perfection reflected in daily dusting, hourly vacuuming, and unending cycles of laundry. Everything was a reflection of everything else, so nothing was supposed to be out of place. It was suffocating her. It suffocated me.

It became more than either of us could handle. She'd cry downstairs in the unfinished basement behind the tiny bathroom hoping no one would find her. I rebelled with messy drawers that were easily closed and by hoarding discarded wrappers in school lockers and backpacks. It led to four or five years of silence.

Her hair is unkept as she looks in the mirror, so she throws on a hat. The dusting is sporadic; the vacuuming is only weekly; the washing machine is silent. She works downtown among the hookers and drag queens and dykes and druggies providing respite and care for those with HIV/AIDS. She breathes freely.

So do I.

Gashed, Burned, and Loved

2010-03-08T13:55:00.000-08:00

They were rough with deep gashes and hard looking burns from the shrink-wrap machine. They caught on smooth surfaces like sandpaper against pantyhose. I didn't want mine to be like his. I wanted dainty as if they had never seen the sun or manual labor. I was better than his. Or at least I wanted to be.,

Mine aren't dainty, but their not as rough as his. They've done and see a lot; manual labor is low on that list. Their soft smoothness is gone replaced by a chafing dryness. I love them and I would be lost without them; left wandering a landscape void of shape, color, depth, life. They create.

He no longer burns them on the shrink-wrap machine. His 50 plus body and quick temper at authority pushed him out. He's happier. They're happier. They love the motion of the back and forth mopping. The love the familiarity of manual labor. It is etched deep within his hands.

I watch mine scribe across a blank page and I see the lines of black ink and penmanship etch memories and stories. He gave me that gift with each gash, burn, and scar. I am forever indebted to labor and love.

Where Are Queer Men in Fabulis' 2010 Survey of Gay Men's Online Habits?

2010-03-03T13:01:00.000-08:00

I love my community of queers, freaks, youth workers, and artists. I love the non-conformity, questioning of authority, and out of the box thinking of these folks. They are my brethren and comrades. They are the people I am proud to be among.

Today, a friend posted through Facebook the following Fabulis online survey about gay male online habits.

There was a problem at the outset for me. It came on slide 3 with the statement "The results that follow only include responses from the 94.5% of survey participants who described themselves as gay or bisexual men. All other responses were discarded."

I'm not gay or bisexual. I am queer. I am proud to be queer, and I identify this way partly because I don't believe in a binary gender construct and partly because I want to stand in solidarity with people not of the same gender as me. It is a nuanced identity that doesn't fit neatly into boxes.

I knew by seeing the title of the survey that I would probably not find myself among the respondents. I am used to that. I am used to the a large segment of the LGBT community not understanding the nuance of queer. I am used to being somewhat invisible.

There is no other note as to what the orientations of the 5.5% of the discarded respondents were. There is no mention of why those responses were discarded. They just vanished from the data set leaving me to question where do I fall within the gay and bisexual male community.

I posted this comment on the Fabulis blog "What were the sexual orientations of the 5.5% of the discarded respondents?" bradfordshellhammer, someone I assume to be from Fabulis, responded that those rejected were either straight identified or lesbian. I then asked if queer male was an option. There was a moment of confusion, and bradfordshellhammer posted the categories available during the survey. Queer was not an option.

As mentioned above, this questioning and lack of visibility is nothing new for me. It is why the meta-blog that JW Reports is a part of is called Queerly Complex. Life doesn't fall within black or white or binary codes. It is dynamic, intricate, multi-faceted and -dimensional, and messy. It holds many truths.

I don't derive self-worth from these types of reports, surveys, or news. I don't need it to justify my existence. I am happy doing that myself. What I do need from these types of surveys is an understanding that we live in a much more complicated and interconnected world. We need to stop the reductivism of one versus the other. We need to find ways to build broader based coalitions.

And this can be done simply. It doesn't need to taint a potential data pool. If the survey is concerned only with the opinions from gay men, fine. I don't need to be counted among them because I am not one. But I do need an acknowledgement from that community of my existence. This can include acknowledging queer as a category, writing "we are not including queers in this survey because...", teasing out queers from the rest of the data pool and showing differences between gay male identified respondents and queer respondents, being completely clear that one only cares about gay men. Any of these solutions at least acknowledge that there is a community out there that is not gay identified and not straight identified.

I appreciate greatly what Fabulis is trying to build: "a social network that connects gay men with amazing experiences down the block and around the world." I also appreciate their openness to the conversation. In that effort for connection and conversation, it is important to not forget those of us who don't fit neatly into the "gay male" label. For we may be married to (or partnered to or dating or having sex with) someone who does.

Truth Is Not Fact

2010-03-02T08:43:00.000-08:00

This piece is a slight departure from previous The Space Between... writing styles because it highlights the intended purpose of these posts. Hope you enjoy.

***
I'm not sure what to write about today. I know I want to write, and I am happy that I have been writing, but ask me what to write this morning and I'm at a loss. I know I need to generate/mine my life for more The Space Between... topics. There really should be endless material. But the stories of my mind and memory are only loud in spurts. Then, they fade. Finally, they are gone, and I am left only with echoes and reverberations of detail and emotion. I am left by myself looking backwards with everything out of focus unable to discern one event from the next moment from another time altogether. It makes capturing anything near impossible.

I remember my mother crying hysterically in the basement, but I do not recall how she got there or why she was crying. I remember breaking bread at bible school with second graders, but have no memory of when it occurred or what happened before or after. I remember emotions surrounding the fight that ended our six-plus-years relationship, but ask me why we broke up and the only thing I can tell you is "It was time."

These bits and pieces are beautiful and real. They hold more truth than the facts of the events or the details of my life. They are like the colors on a painter's palette: they inform the image that emerges but are not the image itself; they influence and shape direction and choice; they work together to craft story, theme, character, and setting. These moments hold an essence that must be conveyed, and fact will never convey that essence.

The Space Between... stories are never fact. I make absolutely no claim that the details are correct. Hopefully, they unveil a truth: that we as humans are complex, intricate, and connected.

I wasn't sure what to write today. But I think I found it.

The Red Dot(s): Buena Vista's Legendary Pink Dots

2010-03-01T18:21:00.000-08:00

I had to just get out of the apartment and wander today. The dream, my growing collection of red dots, and my wavering sanity complicate my life too much. I want the simplicity of before, when as I walked to work I ignored everything around me. Ignorance was my motto. Now, I walk to work and have to choose to either pass by the mural that started it all of avoid it. Each choice requires thought and comes with consequence. I hate this kind of existence. So I emptied as much as I could out of my mind, opened the door, and let my feet and Echo and the Bunnymen carry me away.

The emptiness didn't last too long. I started thinking about my uncle when I found myself on the top of Potrero Hill. When I was really young, about four, we'd come up here and sit at the top of the hill and stare at downtown. There wasn't much here at the time, and people generally avoided the neighborhood. My uncle loved seeing how the skyline changed. And this was a better view to witness that change than Twin Peaks. I miss those days of quiet observation. There was a certain detachment that could be achieved if you pretended not to care or didn't get emotionally attached to a particular building or patch of grass or tree. If you gave everything the same value, there really wasn't any difference between the new condos going up and the historic home being torn down. One replaced one. Therefore, all is equal.

Manic Panic Blue

2010-02-28T12:28:00.000-08:00

A party was thrown in our honor for actually making it through high school at the Hyatt or Marriot or some other mid-priced hotel in Minneapolis. It included music, giant Subway subs, and a numerologist. It also included a number of us who didn't really care about/for graduating or our high school or too many of our classmates. Graduation made us feel rebellious. Luckily, we planned ours ahead of time.

Two of my girlfriends and I were determined to change on this night of celebration and transition. We went through a large list of possibilities ruling out most. Piercings were painful and potentially unsanitary. Tattoos were a little too permanent let alone needing to find an artist available for graduation parties. Mutilation was untidy and included blood -- yuck. Goth make up would've resulted in a beating. So all three of us decided semi-permanent hair color was the easiest and least potentially lethal thing to try. It required only dye, a sink, and a little time.

We snuck into the ladies' room with a jar of Manic Panic blue. There was nothing unusual about me being in the bathroom. I was already considered a fag without coming out, so none of the other girls said a thing. We opened the jar and began painting our hair. After the allotted twenty minutes of setting in, we rinsed in the hand sink splashing royal bluish water everywhere. Blue ended up on the mirror, faucet, hands, counter tops, stalls, floor, scalps, faces, and toilet seats. Little color actually took to our hair. Seeing our mess and reflections that looked no different than before we entered minus the new blue sheen to our hair, we quickly exited excited by the change that no one else would ever really notice. It was lucky no one noticed because the bathroom was a gigantic disaster and there was no way we were going to clean it up. (Oh high school rebellion and egocentrism.)

The rest of the night ended pretty uneventfully. I was told by the numerologist that I would leave Minnesota to travel starting in my early twenties. (Check.) I watched a hypnotist make the jocks and cheerleaders do really embarrassing things -- things that surely would have resulted in a black eye or broken nose had I done them. I did my best karaoke to "Love Shack".

My mother picked me up and actually noticed the bluish tint to my almost black hair. She was mortified. You would have thought I actually did hire that tattoo artist to carve permanent goth make-up to my face. She couldn't wait to scrub it out of my hair.

The next week I found hair bleach and Claire's and fell in love with the color "auburn" and stainless steel studs.

The Red Dot(s): Yellow Squares

2010-02-27T14:05:00.001-08:00

I had another dream last night. This one was about my uncle, and I couldn't escape the asylum. He's not as crazy as I thought, but crazier. I understand why he's there, and if the things keep going the way the are in my life this dream is my future. I won't escape.

I fell asleep on the couch. The darkness of slumber gave way to the forests of dreams. I approached the mental ward on foot emerging from those forests. Surrounding the brick and concrete building was a large, manicured square. The freshly trimmed bushes and potted annuals indicated this was a place of wealth. The absence of feeling screamed insane asylum. I began wondering why I was here when I noticed a large red dot painted on the front door. In the middle of that dot was a one inch by one inch yellow square. Although not exactly like all the other dots, I knew I arrived.

Risk Exposed

2010-02-26T10:42:00.000-08:00

There were moments of extreme clarity amidst the swirling confusion of drugs, booze, and exposed cocks, but the moments weren't enough to actually snap him back into safety. They actually made the swirling and risk even more fun because it meant he was really loaded. He needed to be trashed. A black eye from a fight he broke up earlier ached as a reminder of the risks of his job. He reached out and grabbed the man next to him. All he wanted was to not be protected.

They walked to a back corner away from the prying eyes and heavy panting. Flashes of the flash mob descending on the cafeteria played like slides in his head. Mixed between the fists violently raised, screaming taut faces, and black and white uniforms were stills from skinhead bareback porn filled with bashings and rape fantasies. He pushed his companion against the wall and removed his pants. The man shocked by force hoped for more and pushed back. A young man, tears streaming down his face, in the middle of the mob screamed, and as he ran to his aid a kneed connected with his eye. He fell to his knees and opened his mouth.

There was more tossing and punches and flashes and anonymity. There were riskier risks and blacker blackness. He left crying and sticky.

Eighth Grade Limo

2010-02-24T13:00:00.001-08:00

There were only about 20-something of us that graduated eighth grade together from our Catholic school. Less than half were boys. It was a day of expectation and celebration. I wanted some candy as a reward for making it through, so I walked to the drug store only a few blocks away.

As I walked home, a loud scream reached my ears, and I looked up from my Lick-A-Maid. An extended limousine passed by and hanging out of the windows hurling insults at me were all the other eighth grade boys. They secretly planned their celebration without me.

I ran home without looking behind me tears streaming down my face. My father forced the story out of me. He scoured the neighborhood for the limousine and boys and chewed them out for not even attempting to invite me. Their excuse: we were poor and probably couldn't've afforded it. Really, they all just hated the fag.

I still had to go to graduation that night. The pictures make me look happy, and I was somewhat happy. I was happy to finally be done with them. Only we weren't done. My father forced them to apologize.

Seeing his display of authority, I smiled. And the picture snapped.

Lightning Inside

2010-02-24T12:50:00.001-08:00

Thunderstorms rolled in from all directions causing anticipation and hiding in basements. He wasn't scared. He loved electricity, so he dashed upstairs, out the back door, and into the lightning. He wanted to be struck. It would make him special. And anything to make the physical pain as real as the emotional pain was welcome.

Lightning didn't strike him. Instead, he was forced in doors.

Cream Cheese Puffs

2010-02-24T12:43:00.000-08:00

We went to a Vietnamese/Chinese restaurant that served cream cheese wontons for dinner. He stared at me from a table behind my parents the entire evening. I flirted back. He was in his 50s. I was 15.

Our meals ended at the same time, and we found ourselves at the cashier together. My father paid the bill as I excused myself to the bathroom after batting my lashes at the person the authorities would label a pedophile. He followed slowly behind me.

The bathroom door had a lock, which he swiftly locked behind him. Pants unzipped. Our cocks were hard and in each others' hands. Nerves caused gagging, and I left.

"You were in there quite a while," my dad said.

"I had to go number two."

"I hope you washed your hands."

I hadn't.

I masturbated to the lingering smell of old man cock on my hand until my mother forced me to shower a few days later.