Good Friends

Dan Yashinsky shared the following story with many years ago. Not long after the first Gulf War, as matter of fact. A woman he had met in the airport in Tel Aviv had learned the story in Baghdad and had written it down on some very wrinkled loose leaf paper. I volunteered to decipher the tale. And now, after so many years of Baghdad dominating the news and as the US occupation continures, I feel it’s worth remembering that this ancient city has been a centre of culture and learning for many centuries.

Once upon a time, in the city of Baghdad, there lived two friends and their names were Eliezer and Abdalla. They had grown up together since childhood, gone to the same school and they loved each other very much. Their souls were close and their friendship knew no borders.

When they finished their studies, they both decided to go into business. Eliezer opened a carpet store in Baghdad and Abdalla went to Bocara in the south where he opened a shop to sell goods. Now, in those days, long-distance communication was difficult and even the closest friendship was hard-pressed to thrive. The separation was hard on Eliezer and Abdalla and, as the saying goes, "far from the eyes - so, far from the heart." And that is how each of them forgot the other.

Time passed, the years went on and Eliezer's business prospered. He became more and more wealthy until he had much gold and money, buildings and land. Eliezer's name was renowned and, in Baghdad, they called him "Eliezer Effendi." Fate was not so kind to Abdalla, and his situation worsened. In time he lost all his money and before long he had to return to his own city of Baghdad with nothing in his hands.

One day Abdalla's wife told her husband, "listen to me, and God will listen too. You know, God helped your good friend, Eliezer, and gave him all that is good. Go to his place, tell him what you have gone through all these years from the time you separated until today and he will see you and he will be happy. He will help you with good heart."

At first Abdalla was unsure about taking his wife's advice because 'the full belly doesn't know how the hungry belly feels.' Because that is the way of human beings - when you become rich you are far from the poor. But finally, when hunger knocked at his door, Abdalla decided to visit his old friend. Abdalla went to Eliezer's palace and requested permission from the doorman to enter and speak with the owner of the palace. The doorman passed the message to his master and when Eliezer heard that his best friend from childhood had come to visit him he went himself to open the door and give welcome.

From across the courtyard Eliezer could see Abdalla's face and he realized that face was not the face of their youth - Abdalla's clothes were ragged; his skin was bruised and reddened; he looked like a poor man in a desperate situation. Eliezer retreated and told the doorman to send the visitor away and to say that he wasn't in the palace.

But Abdalla had seen his friend from the distance, and he understood the meaning of this answer all too well. He returned home feeling ashamed and he was angry with his wife whom he blamed for suggesting that he go to the palace where he only suffered great humiliation. In his heart he felt the truth of the saying: 'one day honey, one day vinegar, don't ask anything from men.'

This episode weighed heavily on him and he took all his hurt and humiliation and he put it all in his heart. After a few more days Abdalla had still found no work and his family was hungry. He had only a few coins in his pockets and he couldn't decide what to do with this bit of money. Buy food or buy clothes? Abdalla sat, read from a book and prayed day and night asking for God's mercy.

One day a young lady knocked on Abdalla's door and said to him, "Oh righteous man, I am a widow. Since my husband died I have been lonely and abandoned. My husband, may he be remembered and blessed, left nothing except this brilliant stone. But what can I do with it? Eat it? Put it in water and drink the water? Have mercy upon me and buy this stone and you will save my soul from death."

Abdalla looked at the stone and could see that it was a good one, likely worth a great deal of money. He thought that God must have sent this woman to him so that he might make a bit of money. He said to the woman, "all I have is a few coins, not enough to buy the stone."

The young woman looked desperate.

Abdalla said, "I will give you these few coins now and take the stone to the market place to sell. Come back tomorrow and I will give you the profit from this."

The young woman looked relieved and thanked him for his good heart and went her own way. Abdalla sold the stone and waited the next day for the young woman's return. When she failed to appear he went in search of her but could neither find her nor find anyone who had ever heard of her. The next day, another young woman came to Abdalla's house and she had with her all her jewelery. She said, "I have heard that you are an honest man. Have mercy upon me for once I was very rich; but now I do not have enough money even to support my children. My husband sailed to the ocean countries and now many years have passed and I have received no message. Help me and buy my jewelery so I will have something to feed my children."

Abdalla bought the jewelery and explained that the jewels were worth much more than he had to offer but that if the woman would return tomorrow he would give her the profit he could make. The woman thanked Abdalla and went her way.

Abdalla waited the next day in vain to share the profit with the woman for she never showed up. And, as before, he sought her with no success. The next day Abdalla met a good-looking young man who offered to sell him 50 robes for a very good price. Abdalla knew this was an unusually good deal and the young man explained that he had to sell his wares quickly because he had far to travel and little time. Abdalla bought the robes.

These opportunities encouraged Abdalla's spirit, he sold everything and began a thriving business. Fortune looked favourably upon him and he opened more stores and became wealthy. And one day Abdalla's wife said to her husband, "The time has come for you to go to Eliezer, your friend who betrayed you. You must scold him for his behaviour towards you in our days of poverty."

These words entered his heart and Abdalla went to Eliezer's palace and requested entry. This time Eliezer came out himself to receive his childhood friend. He hugged and kissed him, and invited him to enter the palace and be served special food and drink. But Abdalla said to Eliezer, "not for your love have I come to you this time, but to scold you for how you treated me the first time I came to see you. Now I know that you do not love me. You love my money. When I needed your help you avoided me."

Eliezer said: "Forgive me, my good friend, but please do not judge me so fast."

"You are not my friend," said Abdalla with pain and anger. "You are not my true friend and this is the last time I will be in your home. From now I have no intention to see you again, ever!"

Eliezer said "Wait, I want you to meet someone." Eliezer spoke to a servant who went out of the hall and returned with two young women and a young man. "I wish you to meet my children," Eliezer said to Abdalla.

When Abdalla saw them, he fainted and fell on the floor for he recognized them immediately. They were the ones who had come to him to sell the precious stone, the jewelery and the robes. When Abdalla's spirit came back to him, he bowed to his friend and asked for forgiveness. He apologized for his rude words and the favours he didn't return. He asked, "But if you wanted to help me, why did you hide this from me, and why didn't you offer your help on my first visit?"

Eliezer said, "My dear friend and soulmate, Abdalla. The first time you came here I saw your face from a distance and I knew immediately what had happened to you. I said in my heart, 'If I help him openly, he will feel inferior in front of me, and he will surrender to me.' You would always see that money as charity. But that is not true now. You took the money, not as a beggar but to help others and you made a profit from it. These miracles strengthened your spirit to live again with ambition. Believe me, my dear friend," continued Eliezer, "from the first day I saw you until today all my thoughts have been with you. I made all the effort I could to help you. It pained me to see you in your poverty and I rejoice now to see you in your wealth."

Abdalla put his head in his hands with shame. The two friends embraced with love in their hearts for each other.

Political art and Mayworks Workshop with Favianna Rodriguez

On Monday evening i participated in an art workshop given by Favianna Rodriguez as part of Mayworks: Festival of Working People and the Arts which runs until May 3 here in Toronto. It's not often that i'm a participant in a workshop given that i am, so often, the one giving them. It was great to kick back and learn about Favianna's work as a printmaker and digital artist. Amongst other things (about which you can read on her website) she has collborated on a new book royalty-free political graphics: Reproduce and Revolt - which includes work by many artists including Eric Drooker and Rini Templeton - both of whose work i've used a great deal over the years. I was pleased to learn from Favianna that it was she who originally set up the Riniart website. Favianna began the workshop with a slide show of some of her work and a description of some of her design practices. Much of this is in included in a sixteen-page section of Reproduce and Revolt called "Design for Social Change: A Step by Step Guide for Designing Political Graphics" in English and Spanish. Most of the workshop time was devoted to producing posters using artwork that avianna had photocopied on various colours of paper. Above is what i produced. I was really pleased to learn a new form of lettering: Favianna described how you could cut a strip of paper the height of the letters, then cut the strip into the number of letters of your word and, finally, cut each block into its appropriate letter. Pretty cool!

When the People Lead, the Leaders Will Follow

A long time ago i decided that there was something wrong with the way we made, followed, elevated leaders such that i eschewed ever wanting to be such a thing. I learned the language of "leadership" from the work of Movement for a New Society gang as represented by books like Resource Manual for Living Revolution and Leadership for Change: Toward a Feminist Model. And i reflected (principally through reading everything that Alice Miller ever wrote) on my problems with "authority" that threatened to make me a reactionary anti-leader guy. Learning about Paulo Freire's work, i committed myself to the praxis of popular education and i have followed that path ever since. Popular education, i believe, represents a different paradigm of leadership - one that not only flies "below the radar" of most leadership thinking but moves in a different universe entirely. I have come to believe that popular education is closer to the buddhist notions of mindfulness and right action than to the traditions of western individualism which find their ultimate expression in the American notion of individual liberties (which, oddly enough, the US chooses to extend to corporations under the rubric of corporate personhood).

I think the popular education ethic which i am addressing here is nicely summed up by Ronnie Gilbert, member of the Weavers singing group:

I worry when 'activists' are lionized that people will say, Oh, that is such an extraordinary person - look at all she does - she must be some kind of Superwoman. We all want models and examples to inspire us. But it seems to me that the single mother who campaigns for daycare is the activist, the woman who works for battered women, the ex-battered woman who turns her experience into a teaching project for school children, the precinct worker, leafleter, petition circulator, the person who supports with letters and money and/or physical presence the fight for reproductive rights or divestment from South Africa, who opens her doors or her church's to Central American refugees, who takes whatever small but firm bites out of her small or large resources to end religious, racial or political persecution ANYWHERE, and she who gives of some part of herself to prevent nuclear disaster - she is where the action is. (in HERESIES: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics # 20Activists, Organizers, Progressives, Heroines, Visionaries..., 1985 )

Angela Davis' October 10, 2006 talk (at UC Davis) titled How Does Change Happen? includes a wonderfully lucid critique of the over-attention given charismatic leaders and which is often at the expense of the often thankless, slogging work of organizing carried out by people who often remain forever unrecognized in social change work - and, of course, many of these people, if not the vast majority, are women. As Angela Davis says: "Often those who contribute most powerfully to movements for radical social change are erased in the histories that are transmitted from generation to generation." I recommend listening to this entire talk - it is rich in critical reflection that remains urgently relevent. You can fast-forward to 15:40 if you wish specifically to listen to Angela Davis' comments on leadership. And following is the transcript of that stretch of the talk:

Often those who contribute most powerfully to movements for radical social change are erased in the histories that are transmitted from generation to generation. And I’d like to use the civil rights movement as an example. Because it’s historical for me – I was quite young, so I have an experience of it but I have to think about it as history as well. And also because everybody in this country knows who Reverend Martin Luther King is. Everybody knows. Can you think of any person in the United States of America who has not heard the name Martin Luther King? I mean, even in places like Arizona where… you know… they really resisted the observance of the birthday.

And I think this is great. This is a change that happened. But it may not have been entirely the change that we wanted because we aren’t really informed about the conditions under which that particular leadership developed. And we assumed that because there was someone called Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. … he appeared on the scene in Montgomery, he was the Messiah, and this whole movement developed. I mean that’s what I call the “Messiah Complex” in terms of our notions of leadership. And it seems to me that the greatness of Dr. King resided precisely in his capacity to learn his leadership abilities, to acquire his leadership abilities from the people who had organized that movement… to listen to them. As a matter of fact, most people don’t even know that it was a group of black women who organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Most people haven’t heard of the name Jo Ann Robinson even though she wrote a book called The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It. Because that method was the paradigm, right; you’re supposed to think that it is these great, heroic, male leaders who are the motors of history. And how could you possibly measure up to someone like that? And what you don’t realize is that the real work happened long before Dr. King ever thought of associating himself with those struggles.

As a matter of fact, do you know why he ended up being the spokesperson? Because all the black ministers in Montgomery had been involved in all these confusing debates and there were contradictions and you couldn’t ask this one… And so the idea was to choose this young man who had just arrived in town and who hadn’t had an opportunity to get embroiled in all of the debates and who really didn’t know very much anyway; which isn’t to say that young people don’t know very much, they do, they know a great deal. But he was considered to be the easiest choice.

And so, basically, the women selected Dr. King as the spokesperson for the work that they were doing. And this isn’t the history that we learn, is it? And we don’t know about Jo Ann Robinson who taught at Alabama State University and was the chair of the Alabama Women’s Political Association - how she and the members of her organization were trying to start a boycott - they had planned that. And they had tried on several occasions; and then, finally, when Rosa Parks got arrested – and Rosa Parks was an organizer; she wasn’t a tired woman, you know – she wasn’t the individual you always see portrayed, especially in the visual portrayals of her: the one black woman who manages to make it to the ranks of the heroic-historical figures – alone. She was an organizer. She was a trained organizer. And when she was arrested, Jo Ann Robinson got a couple of her students, they stayed up all night long … mimeographing … it was hard work. They stayed up all night long making those leaflets. And that’s how the bus boycott got started.

And I say this because that was really unglamorous work. It’s work that we would not necessarily think about as being that significant. But that was what helped to create that movement. If they hadn’t stayed up all night, if they hadn’t worked that mimeograph machine, if they hadn’t gotten people to go out and distribute all of those leaflets at six o’clock in the morning when people – particularly when people who were domestic servants were getting on the bus – it never would have happened. I’m not saying that the struggle for civil rights wouldn’t have happened; but it wouldn’t have happened in the way that it did. And that’s a very different story. It’s a story about people just like you. It is not a story about heroic individualism. And it’s a story about the erasure of women’s contributions.

And so I could talk about other movements as well. I could talk about the Chicano Movement, the Latino Movements, the American Indian Movement, the Asian-American Movements. And I could talk about the contributions that women made to those movements during my time in the late sixties and the seventies that will be lost if we don’t figure out how to rectify the tendency to tell history in this way that privileges heroic individualism. And keep in mind that I’m going to be using “individualism” for the rest of my talk. Because it’s dangerous; it’s really, really dangerous.

(Thanks to Rob Howarth for telling me about Angela Davis talk!)

Attention and Response-ability

Chanda Mama from Playing For Change on Vimeo.

Well, i've got J'net keeping me honest about writing towards one of the many books i fancy gestate within me, and yet are perpetually deferred in favour of innumerable (if always seemingly worthy) endeavors (or distractions?). And i'm reminding myself of advice i learned from writer Alan Garner (a childhood favourite and author of one of my favourite novels ever: Strandloper) about feeding and harnessing the "magpie mind" - that appetite (or capacity?) of the mind to collect "shiny" objects at the expense of focusing on a (shining?) path. While the collecting has its obsessive and distracting side it also can be used to see new connections, new patterns amongst the ocean of information and knowledge in which we swim.

And so it is that my mind has been connecting a variety of pieces about responsibility, reciprocity, music and more. Learning about Playing for Change (see previous post) i am inspired to think about how music does indeed connect us all around the planet, across cultures, across times. I remember discovering WOMAD in 1981-ish - the album and then institution - that Peter Gabriel and others founded and which was a quantum leap in global awareness of non-western music. I had a radio show at McGill University at that time and i used it to teach myself about (and share with others) that world of music that had, until that point, been the purview of anthropologists. And i am forever grateful to Peter Gabriel and his co-founders for helping me to populate my musical life with some of the richness of the world's sounds. (An odd footnote to this is my stint as a music producer when, for the Toronto Committee for the Liberation of South Africa in 1990, i managed a music tour - i was the desk guy and my friend Bruce Burron was the road manager - of a Mozambican group called Eyuphuro. I found enough money - about CDN$10,000 - to cut a dozen tracks here in Toronto which we digitally mastered and then sold to Real World Music, the commercial arm of WOMAD. Later we learned that Billboard Magazine had included the album in it's "top 100 world beat" category. It looks like Real World still sells the album which they called Mama Mozambiki.)

Playing for Change's video productions are wonderful gifts. Which makes me think about what kind of economy they represent insofar as we share the wealth of beauty and joy that is the product of their labours. The gift economy aspect of all this is an intriguing and, i believe, vital thing to understand better. Nor is it separate from the capitalist economy that is, arguably, what underlies the greater part of the internet (as well as most of the infrastructure of global communications). I'm pleased to see that Playing for Change also has a non-profit (charitable) aspect and they feature three initiatives (in Guguletu and Johannesburg, South Africa; Dharamsala, India and Kathmandu, Nepal) to which they donate support. I do hope they prosper. And it's obvious that the musicians who themselves are donating could receive a positive benefit from this that could help them prosper.

But how will internet fame affect them? For fame is a dangerous condition that seems to offer material wealth for a fatal cost which only begins with an elimination of private life and continues through the slow crushing and making miserable of the soul. (Or perhaps we are seeing the dawn of the new kind of economy imagined by Cory Doctorow in his novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom). Street musicians can make a fine living while also relying on relative obscurity to protect their privacy. And i'm sure some thrive in their chosen medium while others, no doubt, barely scrape by. What will happen now to Grandpa Elliot who has been an established street performer for a long time? I would only hope that he remains in control of his fate. Similarly, what of internet sensation Susan Boyle who has instantly won the affection of millions with her disarming forthrightness and stunning singing. I appreciate Dennis Palumbo's point in The Huffington Post:

But I can't help wondering, what would have been the reaction if Susan Boyle couldn't sing?

What would the judges and the audience have thought, and said, had her voice been a creaky rasp, or an out-of-tune shriek? Would she still possess that "inner beauty?" Would we still acknowledge that the derisive treatment she received before performing was callous, insensitive and cruel?

The unspoken message of this whole episode is that, since Susan Boyle has a wonderful talent, we were wrong to judge her based on her looks and demeanor. Meaning what? That if she couldn't sing so well, we were correct to judge her on that basis? That demeaning someone whose looks don't match our impossible, media-reinforced standards of beauty is perfectly okay, unless some mitigating circumstance makes us re-think our opinion?

Again, i hope that Susan Boyle can maintain some control of her fate which, of course, presumes that she had that control to begin with. But who am i to hope anything for someone i am never likely to meet or know, except through the heavily mediated lenses of the internet and mass media? I guess i just hope that her soul doesn't get stomped by the new attention showering down on her. And i avoid reality TV precisely because i find it so hard to bear watching the indignities people suffer (both those they are put through and those they seem willingly to rush into).

I am reading Martin Buber's work and came across this passage on "responsibility" that has been on my mind as i ponder the connections of global music and internet fame - just how do we "respond" to these moments and the people who are living them:

Response
This fragile life between birth and death can nevertheless be a fulfillment - if it is a dialogue. In our life and experience we are addressed; by thought and speech and action, by producing and by influencing we are able to answer. For the most part we do not listen to the address, or we break into it with chatter. But if the word comes to us and the answer proceeds from us then human life exists, though brokenly, in the world. The kindling of the response, which occurs time and again, to the unexpectedly approaching speech, we term responsibility. We practice responsibility for that realm of life allotted and entrusted to us for which we are able to respond, that is, for which we have a relation of deeds which may count - in all our inadequcy - as a proper response.
in The Way of Response - Martin Buber - Selections from His Writings edited by Nahum N. Glatzer (NY: Schocken Books, 1966) p.19.

I believe that every moment of every day is an opportunity to practice this kind of responsibility. Which isn't to imply that i come anywhere near the implied ideal of doing so. And so, back to J'net's task of keeping me on track with writing ... that's something i have to respond to now.

What the World Could be Like (and already is like, when we know where to look)

A big thank-you to Almira for sharing this. I'd not heard of Playing for Change and as beautiful as is this first gorgeous 20C spring day here in Toronto, it is the more beautiful still for learning of this global collaboration. I've been singing a whole lot of lullabies and gospel and folk songs and shape notes hymns lately (it's great to have the audience of such singular devotion that an infant can be) and i've been marveling at how universal the joy and peace of music seems to be. I'm especially fond of two lullabies - one from Samoa and one from Malta - that i have learned only through their sounds. And, though worlds apart, yet these beautiful melodies and lyrics carry love and joy and peace that can bridge the vast distances of geography and culture. What a marvelous idea to use this internet technology to connect people - not just in artistic collaboration, but also for the sake of world peace. What if we used all our clever industrial and digital technologies in this way? (Check out the Playing for Change website for other videos - click on "The Media" link).

There Must Be Some Kind Of Way Out Of Here

There is an excellent forum on socialism on The Nation website that starts with a piece called Rising to the Occasion by Barbara Ehrenreich and Bill Fletcher, Jr. and which includes provocative commentary from Tariq Ali, Mike Davis, Rebecca Solnit and others. There's also additional response from Michael Albert of Znet here. It's good reading. And yet my feeling is one of frustration. For it's the same good thinking that's been around for as long as anyone has cared to look for it. I've never been comfortable calling myself a socialist or an "ist" of any kind for that matter. It is perhaps ironic that my life has been devoted both to social change and an ethic of collective/cooperative struggle and yet i've never been much of a joiner - at least when it comes to being a member of a political party or tendency or whathaveyou. Perhaps it's all that research i did on cults and mass therapies back in the early 80s (or maybe it's just my homage to Groucho Marx who helped me survive my teen years and who once wrote, "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.") At any rate, though i've never worn that label, socialism is yet the source of much of my understanding of economics and social change. And it's the regime of knowledge for which i have the greatest affinity.

So there is little if anything new in this Nation exchange and Michael Albert's dandy list. The ideas they share, the anger and passion, is all familiar to me. And it's good stuff. You should read it. But something has always been missing for me. For a long time i thought it was the participatory aspect to it all. And learning about popular education, developing popular economics curriculum (including some pretty cool techniques like jobology) certainly lead me closer to what i felt was missing. But all the popular economics stuff still seemed to reduce (or perhaps overpower?) things to economic determinism - i.e. what is most fundamentally true about our world is the economic logic upon which all else (politics, governance, social life, even art) is organized. It is only in coming across the emerging field of praxis called "diverse economies" that i feel i have finally found the missing piece. Based on the work of J.K. Gibson-Graham, diverse economies both de-centres and denaturalizes capitalism. It is, in a word, anti-capitalo-centric. Which is a good part of their critique of traditional left (i.e. marxist) analysis of capitalism. Diverse economies provides a means by which we can avoid the inevitability of framing other economic choices as "alternatives" which, though we may not say it, always implies "alternatives to capitalism" - a way we always subtly reproduce a centre/periphery metaphor with capitalism, obviously, as the centre and whatever choice we are advocating as the periphery or margin, as it were. Diverse economies theorizes the terrain of economic choices as one that is diverse and in which capitalism becomes one choice, albeit a dominant one, amongst many. Now, instead of talking about "alternatives" we can talk about different choices. I think that's an improvement. Likewise, even while diverse economies is, for the most part, anti-capitalist it yet allows us to imagine a set of diverse economic relations that could include capitalism. And, perhaps, should.

Doug Henwood, in his contribution to the Nation Forum, makes a point for which i have much sympathy:

I also want to dissent from another prescription: Rebecca Solnit's contention that the revolution is already happening, via "gardens and childcare co-ops and bicycle lanes and farmers' markets and countless ways of doing things differently and better." While many of these things are very nice, they're well short of a transformative vision. The package draws heavily on an ancient American fantasy of self-reliance and back-to-the land escapism. It's no model for running a complex industrial society. Such a system couldn't make computers or locomotives, and it probably couldn't feed 6 billion earthlings either.

While he's a little pessimistic and unkind about other approaches, i share his concern that billions of us are bound up in the system as it is. And even minor disruptions mean the loss of many lives and the worsening of many more. Too often i feel that socialist choices (of theory, pedagogy, organizing and economics) is yet overly reliant on the positivist notion that if only we can get the right information, the perfect information, the perfect program, the perfect approach into people's heads, then that truth will set them free and we'll have made it to the gates of paradise. And, for sure, socialism has, since it's beginnings, had utopian aspirations. And that speaks to my science-fiction/fantasy lifelong love-affair. But of utopias i feel similarly as i do about joining clubs. Whatever future we aresuccessful building will not be one that those of us who bulid it will be able to live in comfortably. We are not unlike the hero of V for Vendetta who necessarily, in a literary sense, must die. There is no place for him in the world that he has midwifed. An so i wonder about the worlds we would bring into existence and if we would be people for whom those worlds would feel like home.

Again, it is diverse economies that gives me hope. For it includes in its praxis the necessity for ethical self-transformation - an elegant foucauldian phrase for the type of personal/social change which is the goal of feminism, anti-racism, anti-colonialism and all the other resistant post-structural praxes that are altering the common sense even as we speak. This is what i am looking for in the contemporary discourses of socialism, popular education, popular economics, social justice. Not simply better participatory processes (which are a must), but a profoundly anti-authoritarian and humble commitment to making theory in the midst of life, exercising strategies and tactics which allow for doubt, learning and the personal and collective reinvention of our selves and our world. This is what diverse economies is theorizing. You can check out the Community Economies website for some excellent reading on more of this.

Spring again, and again and again

I think it's the most magical corner in the neighbourhood. Every spring the crocuses have exploded on this corner in wondrous abundance. My daughter and i were out for a walk this Saturday past (the second day of Spring) and we took a detour to see how the crocuses were doing. Only a few had opened and most were probably waiting for today's glorious sun. Year after year the crocuses return, as do so many other green things. And even while i am mindful of the disastrous species loss that human civilization continues to accelerate (called the Holocene Extinction Event, by some), i am still deeply moved by the annual cycles which persist. I love whichever season i happen to be in - each is attended by unique emotions, unique spiritual states. And now it is the beginning of the flowering of the world. Life leaping from its wintry slumber and i think that humans for hundreds of thousands of years have been witnessing this annual return, this yearly growth and blossoming and we have crafted countless tales of death, dying and return. And here we are once again, in this northern latitude and here are the so so dependable crocuses and snowdrops and the shy green shoots of hyacinths, daffodils and tulips. Happy Spring! May it ever fill our hearts with hope and courage. For the times that lie before us are fraught. And we will need the annually new green and the stories, too.

Eccentric Clown Principles

In my ongoing search for and development of trickster pedagogy, i have just come across Avner the Eccentric's "Eccentric Clown Principles" which i found through Mady Schutzman's site: Jokers Run Wild and which includes some of her writing on Guru Clown (the site is a bit tricky to navigate and i recommend using the site index). However, these principles are relevant to more than clowning. One aspect of trickster pedagogy that i am working on articulating more fully has to do with the ways in which we perform knowledge. And as a performing storyteller and an active facilitator of workshops and classes and sundry meetings, i have come to believe that the performative moment in learning/teaching (as well as any sharing of knowledge we have that we wish to convey) is key. What occupies my passions most, however, is how we can teach/learn this. Teaching the "tricks of the trade" is easy compared to teaching people how to be in the work. And i feel strongly that we can do more than simply advise (sagely? when really we are simply unsure?) that it will come with experience. I guess my hypothesis is that within the traditions of trickster pedagogy is to be found the means by which we can teach/learn the necessary dispositions of performing knowledge that are emancipatory, that resist oppression, that celebrate love and compassion, that acknowledge sorrow and loss, that communicate joy. These Eccentric Clown Principles are profound challenges to how we comport ourselves in the work:

1. Clown’s job is to make the audience feel things, and to get the audience to breathe.
2. Everyone inhales, but many of us need to be reminded to exhale.
3. The imagination and the brain are connected to and affect the body. Any change in the mind has a corresponding change in the body. Any change in the body (i.e. in the breath first) has a corresponding change in the mind.
4. Don’t tell or show the audience what to think, do, or feel.
5. Don’t tell or show your partners what to think, do, or feel. Don’t point.
6. Weight belongs on the underside. Keep a single point in you lower abdomen. Keep your energy flowing.
7. Tension is your enemy. It produces emotional, mental and physical numbness.
8. How you feel about your performance is what counts, not whether it is in reality good or bad.
9. The clown discovers an audience who are sitting in rows and looking at an empty space and waiting for a show. This must be dealt with first, by establishing complicity with the audience.
10. The clown creates a world in the empty space, rather than entering into a world that already exists (sketch).
11. Use mime to create fantasy, not to re-create reality.
12. The clown searches to create a game and to define the rules, which then must be obeyed.
13. Don’t ask or tell the audience how they feel or think. Have an emotional experience and invite the audience to join in your reaction.
14. Be interested, not interesting.
15. Everyone must to breathe all one’s life, even when on stage.
16. The clown enters the stage to do a job, not to get laughs. If there are laughs, it is an interruption that must be dealt with.

(One note of caution on The Jokers Run Wild site: some of the links don't work because they insist on inserting "www.acjournal.org/" before the actual website you want. Simply delete this string from the url.)

This makes me happy

Watching this video filled my heart with such delight that it spilled out in tears. I am very grateful for this piece of sublime art. The emotions that sweep over me as i watch this are legion. I think of the grief and loss, the brutality and inhumanity of the recent attacks on Gaza and the hate and anger that continues to reverberate around the world in defense of Israel's actions and in compassion for the astonishing number of Palestinians killed. I think of Rwanda and the loss that will be borne for so many years and generations to come. I think of El Salvador and the refugees i visited in Honduras in the 80s and the wee girls who clapped and clapped for me when i did nothing more than walk into the slapped-together shack in which they sat crammed together shoulder-to-shoulder, each of them crocheting with an intensity that seems a gift of childhood. I think of the two men, one young and one old, the younger pushing the older in a wheel chair and both of them singing a Georgian folk song, those wonderful polyphonic dissonances bouncing off the walls of the oldest part of Tblisi. I think of the teenagers who were sent to me from around the world so i could tour them through Canadian schools and communities to tell their stories of loss and survival and resistance (and wonder where they are now). I think of the faces of the 500 undergrad students to whom i lecture weekly about environmentalism and i marvel at the extraordinary diversity of beauty of each of those faces, each of them so entirely perfect and each holding such promise - so many lives of joy and sorrow to be lived in this century. I have witnessed war and its terrible consequences. I have placed my body between the innocent and the bullet and i am lucky still to live to tell the stories that i have been privileged and tasked to bear. My heart breaks daily for all the pain of which we are capable of inflicting on each other. And then my eye is caught by a child's smile (of which i am seeing so many these days - may his life be long and filled with wonder); or i gaze upon one of Van Gogh's haystacks from Arles (thank you Carey for that unforgettable gift); or i listen to the last compositions of the recently departed fiddler Oliver Schroer (treat yourself to Hymns and Hers); or i feel the touch of my beloved, friend for 20 years and now partner and wife; or i remember picking blackberries with a friend on a west coast island on a hot late summer afternoon (the pie that night was sublime). And then one of the students in my popular education class sends me this video link and all the wonder of the world bursts from my heart (thank-you, Dave). We humans are capable of such horror and such beauty and, of course, love (about which Anne Carson so playfully meditates in Eros the Bittersweet). We are such sad clowns, Grimaldi and Emmet Kelly and Carol Burnett's frumpy washerwoman (whom my mother loved). And we are also this clown, Matt, who danced badly in so many places around the world. It is sublime nonsense. And it fills my heart with joy. Though the bittersweet is never far behind.

Simply Awesome!

(Thanks, Paula, for passing this on!)

New Journal on Social Movements

Interface: A Journal For and About Social Movements is a new on-line journal (everything is accessible) that includes looking at popular education. I like that the editors identify themselves as ranging from activists to academics. Their mission statement includes:

We are activists from different movements and different countries, researchers working with movements, and progressive academics from various countries. We have been involved in many different projects to support and develop the recent knowledge generation processes around contemporary social movements. Through this work we have come to recognise how much we stand to learn from each other – from the specific experiences of movements, from the languages that have been developed within and around different movements, and from different places and times.

The purpose of this journal is to learn from each other's struggles:

• across movements and issues
• across continents and cultures
• across theoretical and disciplinary traditions

(Thanks, Budd, for sharing this)

Worth laughing at again!

I posted about these videos a couple of years ago, but now they've both made it to YouTube as well as having grown substantially. You can check out their original material here: Tetes a claques; and they now also have an English site here. I'm afraid the stuff isn't half as funny in English - especially this Halloween one which is one of my favourites. So if you can enjoy the French it is well worth it. Very good humour medicine. And maybe the English is better than i think (it could simply be my bias having grown up in Quebec and having learned to speak Quebec french more or less).

Storied Clothing

The house is strewn with pins and needles and a rainbow array of strips of fabric. It looks like a crazy wind has blown through leaving this varicolored chaos. Or it's like a wake that you can follow to find J'net hunched over her sewing machine at all hours of the day and night. True, i flee for the couch downstairs when the sewing machine in churning out the workings of J'net's imagination. But it's a small price to pay to support J'net in her vision of clothing that tells some of the stories of her Nuu-chah-nulth culture and aboriginal culture more broadly still. Our house is lined with the staid beauty of diversely-stocked bookshelves, the tantalizing beauty of folded bolts of fabric and rolls of hand-made paper and, spicing it all up, the cheerful chaos of numerous projects-in-process. If you want to see more of J'net's creations you can see some images on her website/blog: Koous Collection.

You Gotta Laugh at What Hurts

More than anything else during all the hullabaloo of the proroguing of parliament last December i was discouraged by the spectacular ignorance of Canadian democracy that was exposed. Nor was this simply ignorance of the Canadian populace. A citizen not otherwise specializing in democratic process can be forgiven for failing to understand the (often arcane) formalities of parliamentary democracy as we've inherited it from our imperial progenitors. But to see politicians and journalists perform their ignorance was profoundly disturbing. I'm used to people being baffled by how "rules of order" work - we are hardly born with natural inclinations to move and second motions, let alone prorogue a parliament. These are processes that must be learned. But i can see that we are doing a really poor job of it. I've also just come through a strike by my union CUPE3903 at York University and, while i am a staunch defender of the democratic right to strike (and if anyone doubted the need to strike, the University's often cavalier belligerence made it pretty clear that nothing less than a strike would move them) my experience of democracy within the union was almost equally discouraging to that of my experience of witnessing the parliamentary fiasco. Nor would i simply say that it's about enforcing any particular set of rules (Bourinot's Rules, the basis for Canadian parliamentary procedure, were first written by a clerk of the Canadian House of Commons in 1884 - and if they favour a certain type of patriarchal leadership, this should hardly be a surprise after over a century of feminist activisma nd scholarship). I would like to see the rules reformed in a process of dialogue that democratic, critical and creative. But until we can bring that about, we got the rules we got. And they're not that hard to follow. Or so i thought. It seems we are equally ignorant about how to apply formal democracy at the national level as we are about applying at more modest organizational levels. The thing about rules in formal democracy is that they should be used both to ensure that the voice of the powerless is heard as well as the voice of dissent. However, most rules are used to regulate power such that the rule by the powerful and privileged is reconstituted pretty much as is. When i think of all that needs to be done this century in terms of climate change, the environment in geneal and continuing to resist and reverse the profound and historic injustices of inequality, i despair a wee bit when i see the comedy that passes for democratic process in our countries. Thus i need to see actual comedy (as with Rick Mercer above of John Stewart's Daily Show below).

The Daily Show - Provinces in Peril - Indecision Oh-Eh?

The Daily Show: Bee - Oliver - Mandvi - Provinces in Peril

A Terrific Reading List about Writing About Science

I just tripped across this Crowd-Sourced Reading List which is worth spending some time with. It's ostensibly about writing ab out science, but there's more to the collection than that, of course. It includes some of my faves like Stephen Jay Gould (i hope when i grow up i can write like him), David Quammen (who Matt & Sally have turned me onto), Oliver Sacks (who's simply too brilliant and kind to be human - he must have been sent here to make us smarter) , and more. All the links are to works that are available on-line. While Carl Zimmer (the blogger who compiled the list) notes some lacks in the list, he fails to note the quickly obvious absence of women writers. One of the comments asks about Rachel Carson and i've looked myself for some link to her published work, but i cannot find anything. However, here's a few pieces that i think are worth including by some of my favourite writers:

• excerpts from Radical Ecology by Carolyn Merchant.
• A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century by Donna Haraway (she's an awesome thinker and amazing writer - with a wicked sense of humour - though her writing does necessitate an awful lot of attention)
• The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others by Donna Haraway
• How to Think About Science - CBC Ideas (this 14-part series of one-hour audio shows are simply awesome - i've loved Ideas since havng listened to it starting in the 80s. This series has really struck me in many ways. The episode on Margaret Locke - see next link - is simply amazing in the way it links thinking about diversity with medical research and knowledge).
• Margaret Locke - CBC Ideas Special Series How To Think About Science episode 3 (listening to this episode i was reminded of taking a course in 1978 with Margaret Locke. It was the most interesting course i took at McGill that year and i wondered what i would be doing now if i had stuck with that domain of study. The funny thing is that it occurred to me that, given Margaret Locke's thought, i would likely still be in the same place i am now as a human rights activist, popular educator and all-around trouble-maker).
  

To Be of Use: Writing as Crafty Work

A Sustainable Writing Lab Workshop with moi ;-)

Wednesday, Feb. 18, 12:30 - 2:00 pm, room HNES 142 at the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University.

Hegemonic common sense trains people to believe that writing somehow exists apart from reading - that these are two separate acts. And yet one cannot exist without the other. Light needs dark, work needs play, meat needs salt (or so says an old folktale), a speaker needs a listener, and writing needs reading. These phenomena are co-creations. So, a writer needs a reader. But as Eduardo Galeano writes in "In Defense of the Word",

One writes out of a need to communicate and to commune with others, to denounce that which gives pain and to share that which gives happiness. One writes against one's solitude and against the solitude of others. One assumes that literature transmits knowledge and affects the behavior and language of those who read, thus helping us to know ourselves better and to save ourselves collectively.

The "usefulness" of our writing is always multivalent, directed inwardly and outwardly. To whom do we write? And who do we think we are, we who dare write? Are we worker? Craftsperson? Technician? Clown?

I propose that we all wish "to be of use" as Marge Piercy suggests in her poem named thus. In this session we will explore the constellation of forces that influence/govern our identity as writer and the effect we wish to have (or think we have) on the world. Using a few playful exercises we will generate texts that speak to this dynamic, tricky, necessary, imbricated ('cause i've always just want to use that in a sentence) inter-relation of self and other, writer and reader, performer and audience.

About the Sustainable Writing Lab:
Located in HNES Rm. 250, the Sustainable Writing Lab is a computer and information resource centre for those interested in environmental literature, ecocriticism, and other topics related to writing and the environment, and environmental studies. There are a number of SWL laptops Ph.D. students can access individually, or use for larger group projects.

(just catching up on blogging while my head is afflicted with a cold that has me blowing my nose every 90 seconds - oy! I appreciate this invitation from the SWL to lead a session on writing. I've been a participant of a few sessions and enjoyed every single one. The above-image is from Riniart.org - a wonderful source of copyright-free artwork bequeathed to social movements by Rini Templeton.)

A Book of Spells - Storytelling Concert Tour

This storytelling concert is sure to be a rewarding outing if you can take it in. I've been listening to Jan's telling since i moved to Toronto in the early 90s and i'm never less than impressed. Jan has a knack for bringing to life old tales that yet have remarkable relevance in our modern world. I've always admired how she manages to convey the complex layers of meaning that exist in these tales deftly avoiding reducing a story to this or that means of interpretation (e.g. a psychological rendering). I have seen less of Jennifer's telling, but it has always been on a par with Jan's and they make great storytelling duo!

I believe that one of the gifts of stories is the way in which they structure sets of truths into one coherent narrative despite that some of the truths are contradictory. It is ths diversity of meaning that exists within stories that make them remarkably powerful tools for preserving knowledge (and wisdom) across generations and millenia and cultures. Apropos of my previous posts on trickster pedagogy, the multivalent meaning within stories make them a primary means of practicing trickster pedagogy. Jan and Jennifer convey tales with all this wonderful complexity. They are both great tellers and, in the tradition of storytellers across the centuries, great teachers, as well.

Trickster Pedagogy and Clowns

Trickster pedagogy is also about clowns. And to honour this belated point i am belatedly adding Culture Collective to my list of favoured resources (see the right hand column). I met Jacob ad Elizabeth of Living Folklore many years ago and despite the miles between us their work has inspired me (and my funny bone) ever since. For i do believe that clowning represents an ancient pedagogy (and if "pedagogy" seems an odd word to use when talking about clowns then it's also a silly word, comical even and thus perhaps, circuitously, appropriate). As i have pondered what trickster pedagogy has to offer to popular education and the many struggles for social and environmental justice i have always valued the role of clowning as carrying a profound form of teaching. Exactly what that teaching is, is something that i am exploring. Not that i am interested in dissecting it. But rather journeying into it, exploring the terrain, even getting lost within it. It feels like one of those journeys from which people return with wondrous gifts. I'm not sure if the gifts i will return with will be wondrous to any but me, but i hope that they might be worth sharing with others.

I highly recommend The History of Clowns for Beginners by Joe Lee. (here's an excerpt).

So here are two videos from Culture Collective that i offer as brilliant examples of trickster pedagogy. The first is about a mural project which you'll see also included a journal-writing component (something of which i am very fond). Murals and mural-making have a long history of being involved in popular education (here's an article from muralist/educator Alex Goss about a Mexican project in which he was involved). The second is a description of Living Folklore's beadwork, angry water and post-Katrina New Orleans. Coincidentally, i am surrounded by beads like never before (i.e. on the floor, scattered across various house surfaces, even in bed - as J'net does a lot of beadwork (i'll share some images sometime but meanwhile you can check out J'net's blog and see some of her fashion design work).

Look, Ma, i'm on TV!

Getting Tricky :: Asking Challenging Questions with Trickster Pedagogy from Christopher Wulff on Vimeo.

Last summer i was interviewed about "trickster pedagogy" after having given a wee talk about it to a group of alumni of a leadership program. I'd forgotten all about it when i bumped into Christopher Wulff who had loaded this up to a website some time ago. It's 11 min and 28 seconds long and i elaborate a bit about what i mean by trickster pedagogy as well as talk about 'zines in particular - Chris Wulff also being a big fan of 'zines. Chris also runs an Emerging Leaders website where he's written up a summary of my talk as well as shared some links to some relevant popular education documents that i and the Catalyst Centre have published.

Jewish Women Occupy Israeli Consulate in Toronto

This is Israeli propaganda, and it is a pack of lies. The important thing to remember is that there was a ceasefire brokered by Egypt in July of last year, and that ceasefire succeeded. So, if Israel wanted to protect its citizens—and it had every right to protect its citizens—the way to go about it was not by launching this vicious military offensive, but by observing the ceasefire.

Now, let me give you some figures, which I think are the most crucial figures in understanding this conflict. Before the ceasefire came into effect in July of 2008, the monthly number of rockets fired—Kassam rockets, homemade Kassam rockets, fired from the Gaza Strip on Israeli settlements and towns in southern Israel was 179. In the first four months of the ceasefire, the number dropped dramatically to three rockets a month, almost zero. I would like to repeat these figures for the benefit of your listeners. Pre-ceasefire, 179 rockets were fired on Israel; post-ceasefire, three rockets a month. This is point number one, and it’s crucial.

And my figures are beyond dispute, because they come from the website of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. But after initiating this war, this particular table, neat table, which showed the success of the ceasefire, was withdrawn and replaced with another table of statistics, which is much more obscure and confusing. Israel—the Foreign Ministry withdrew these figures, because it didn’t suit the new story.

The new story said that Hamas broke the ceasefire. This is a lie. Hamas observed the ceasefire as best as it could and enforced it very effectively. The ceasefire was a stunning success for the first four months. It was broken not by Hamas, but by the IDF. It was broken by the IDF on the 4th of November, when it launched a raid into Gaza and killed six Hamas men.

And there is one other point that I would like to make about the ceasefire. Ever since the election of Hamas in January—I’m sorry, ever since Hamas captured power in Gaza in the summer of 2007, Israel had imposed a blockade of the Strip. Israel stopped food, fuel and medical supplies from reaching the Gaza Strip. One of the terms of the ceasefire was that Israel would lift the blockade of Gaza, yet Israel failed to lift the blockade, and that is one issue that is also overlooked or ignored by official Israeli spokesmen. So Israel was doubly guilty of sabotaging the ceasefire, A, by launching a military attack, and B, by maintaining its very cruel siege of the people of Gaza.

Life's Gifts and A Dream of Wild Bees by Olive Schreiner

Life's Gifts

I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dreamt Life stood before her, and held in each hand a gift—in the one Love, in the other Freedom. And she said to the woman, "Choose!"

And the woman waited long: and she said, "Freedom!"

And Life said, "Thou hast well chosen. If thou hadst said, 'Love,' I would have given thee that thou didst ask for; and I would have gone from thee, and returned to thee no more. Now, the day will come when I shall return. In that day I shall bear both gifts in one hand."

I heard the woman laugh in her sleep.

London

--------------------------------------------------------
A Dream of Wild Bees

A mother sat alone at an open window. Through it came the voices of the children as they played under the acacia-trees, and the breath of the hot afternoon air. In and out of the room flew the bees, the wild bees, with their legs yellow with pollen, going to and from the acacia-trees, droning all the while. She sat on a low chair before the table and darned. She took her work from the great basket that stood before her on the table: some lay on her knee and half covered the book that rested there. She watched the needle go in and out; and the dreary hum of the bees and the noise of the children's voices became a confused murmur in her ears, as she worked slowly and more slowly. Then the bees, the long-legged wasp-like fellows who make no honey, flew closer and closer to her head, droning. Then she grew more and more drowsy, and she laid her hand, with the stocking over it, on the edge of the table, and leaned her head upon it. And the voices of the children outside grew more and more dreamy, came now far, now near; then she did not hear them, but she felt under her heart where the ninth child lay. Bent forward and sleeping there, with the bees flying about her head, she had a weird brain-picture; she thought the bees lengthened and lengthened themselves out and became human creatures and moved round and round her. Then one came to her softly, saying, "Let me lay my hand upon thy side where the child sleeps. If I shall touch him he shall be as I."

She asked, "Who are you?"

And he said, "I am Health. Whom I touch will have always the red blood dancing in his veins; he will not know weariness nor pain; life will be a long laugh to him."

"No," said another, "let me touch; for I am Wealth. If I touch him material care shall not feed on him. He shall live on the blood and sinews of his fellow-men, if he will; and what his eye lusts for, his hand will have. He shall not know 'I want.'" And the child lay still like lead.

And another said, "Let me touch him: I am Fame. The man I touch, I lead to a high hill where all men may see him. When he dies he is not forgotten, his name rings down the centuries, each echoes it on to his fellows. Think—not to be forgotten through the ages!"

And the mother lay breathing steadily, but in the brain-picture they pressed closer to her.

"Let me touch the child," said one, "for I am Love. If I touch him he shall not walk through life alone. In the greatest dark, when he puts out his hand he shall find another hand by it. When the world is against him, another shall say, 'You and I.'" And the child trembled.

But another pressed close and said, "Let me touch; for I am Talent. I can do all things—that have been done before. I touch the soldier, the statesman, the thinker, and the politician who succeed; and the writer who is never before his time, and never behind it. If I touch the child he shall not weep for failure."

About the mother's head the bees were flying, touching her with their long tapering limbs; and, in her brain-picture, out of the shadow of the room came one with sallow face, deep-lined, the cheeks drawn into hollows, and a mouth smiling quiveringly. He stretched out his hand. And the mother drew back, and cried, "Who are you?" He answered nothing; and she looked up between his eyelids. And she said, "What can you give the child—health?" And he said, "The man I touch, there wakes up in his blood a burning fever, that shall lick his blood as fire. The fever that I will give him shall be cured when his life is cured."

"You give wealth?"

He shook his head. "The man whom I touch, when he bends to pick up gold, he sees suddenly a light over his head in the sky; while he looks up to see it, the gold slips from between his fingers, or sometimes another passing takes it from them."

"Fame?"

He answered, "likely not. For the man I touch there is a path traced out in the sand by a finger which no man sees. That he must follow. Sometimes it leads almost to the top, and then turns down suddenly into the valley. He must follow it, though none else sees the tracing."

"Love?"

He said, "He shall hunger for it—but he shall not find it. When he stretches out his arms to it, and would lay his heart against a thing he loves, then, far off along the horizon he shall see a light play. He must go towards it. The thing he loves will not journey with him; he must travel alone. When he presses somewhat to his burning heart, crying, 'Mine, mine, my own!' he shall hear a voice—'Renounce! renounce! this is not thine!'"

"He shall succeed?"

He said, "He shall fail. When he runs with others they shall reach the goal before him. For strange voices shall call to him and strange lights shall beckon him, and he must wait and listen. And this shall be the strangest: far off across the burning sands where, to other men, there is only the desert's waste, he shall see a blue sea! On that sea the sun shines always, and the water is blue as burning amethyst, and the foam is white on the shore. A great land rises from it, and he shall see upon the mountain-tops burning gold."

The mother said, "He shall reach it?"

And he smiled curiously.

She said, "It is real?"

And he said, "What IS real?"

And she looked up between his half-closed eyelids, and said, "Touch."

And he leaned forward and laid his hand upon the sleeper, and whispered to it, smiling; and this only she heard—"This shall be thy reward—that the ideal shall be real to thee."

And the child trembled; but the mother slept on heavily and her brain-picture vanished. But deep within her the antenatal thing that lay here had a dream. In those eyes that had never seen the day, in that half-shaped brain was a sensation of light! Light—that it never had seen. Light—that perhaps it never should see. Light—that existed somewhere!

And already it had its reward: the Ideal was real to it.

London

---------------------
[from Dreams by Olive Schreiner and reproduced from Project Gutenburg - in accordance with their licence]

I learned of Olive Schreiner's work over 25 years ago, a time when i was exploring international literature and feminism as well as being an anti-apartheid activist. I read her Story of an African Farm as part of my education about South Africa. But it was discovering her parables in Dreams that made my heart sing. I realized many years later that Schreiner's stories were an important part of my eventual choice to be a storyteller. When i moved to Toronto in 89 i special-ordered (from the long-gone Britnell's Books on Yonge St.) a facsimile edition of Dreams. Alas, it was loaned and lost. So, it is with a child's delight of discovery that, having decided to check Project Gutenburg, i found Olive Schreiner's works. How i love the internet sometimes!

These two tales have always struck me very deeply. They are troubling in the best possible way. The first, Life's Gift's, i was reminded of when Niki sent me her story, Stone, which i blogged last week. The second was remembered on the heels of this memory as i looked at our newborn son Taliesen and wondered about what parents can teach their children, what we can hope for for them. And i'm sure it is normal, or at least common, to want the world for them. But can there be any greater gift than the gift of how to make meaning? I wonder. And is that something we can teach? Or is it something that must be sought and found uniquely by each person? I am unsure. It's certainly true that the metaphor of "the search" for meaning (or "truth") is common. And, while i believe that neither meaning nor truth are things that lie in wait to be discovered, perhaps the metaphor is making a more subtle point than that of highlighting the object of the search and is rather pointing to the nature of the search itself - i.e. a task that each individual decides to embrace or not.

Raven Steals the Light

The season of revels is coming to an end. Tomorrow is Twelfth Night and i had hoped to finish preparing a bankelsang of a raven story based on a story from J'net's culture found in E. Richard Atleo's Tsawalk: A Nuu-chah-nulth Worldview. Well i'm still working on the story, but i offer you this clip from the 1990s TV show Northern Exposure. The winter solstice has, for many cultures, been a time to mark and celebrate the relationship of day and night, the coming and going of the sun. And human imagination has created a beautiful diversity of ways of making meaning of this time. I like the notion of twelve days of christmas (christian doctrine aside). In principle i think there should always be a season of the year to celebrate abundance. I'm also partial to theft stories which carry tricky lessons about life and creativity and more.

I have a real soft spot for Northern Exposure and, as with other literary worlds (such as Armisted Maupin's San Francisco), the characters feel like old friends. I recall this performance of "raven stealing the light" and seeing it again, i am as moved as i was the first time i watched it.

Stone by Niki Pidd

There was this woman who was stressed out. She’d got dragged out in front of the Media and the Vatican and her Dad. Everyone was looking angry and mean and they had big yonnies in their hands and they were gonna chuck ‘em at her. They reckoned she’d had an abortion and was on the pill and was gay. They really wanted to kill her.

She was pretty scared. Her heart kept banging against her ribs and she wanted to run but there was no way they were gonna let her get away. Then this cool guy stepped out of the crowd and grabbed her arm. He smiled at her and she knew he wasn’t gonna hurt her. For a moment she even smiled. He turned around and said to them, “Anyone of you that hasn’t had unprotected sex can chuck the first rock.” Then he pulled out his mobile phone and started writing an sms. The woman could see it and it said, ”Don’t panic.” It took about ten minutes until they were all gone. He gave her a hug and said, “Look after yourself.” Then he hopped on a push bike a rode down the street.

(Niki is a good friend who has just returned home to Melbourne after a ten week European trip - a "magical mystery tour", as she says. She was inspired to write this wee piece by, amongst other things, a visit to St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican and the Catholic Church's recent (and ongoing) attacks on humanity. Thanks, Niki!)

Treasure trove of ancient classics

I confess that if there is a spectrum of relationships to books that runs from bibliomania (the only officially recognized mania pertaining to collecting things) to bibliophile to just-don't-give-a-damn-i-watch-TV-anyway, that i am somewhere between the "phile" and the "mania". I do love books. And if i have a passion for collecting them, i am still safely distant from the pathological extreme. Nonetheless, i think i did salivate when i learned of the Clay Sanskrit Library (thanks, Corvin - it's all your fault), which is publishing remarkably affordable and excellent translations (so Corvin assures me and he's a far better judge than i since he reads Sanskrit, the lucky dog) of classical Sanskrit literature. Of course, this also appeals deeply to the storyteller in me. They've already published a complete translation of the Ramayana (in seven volumes). And they're working on the Mahabharata with at least 11 volumes already published. As the longest epic in human history it should take up quite the shelf space when complete. I have read bits and pieces of these epics for over 20 years, including a fair number of translations of the Bhagavad Gita (which is found in the Mahabharata). The Gita is considered one of the greatest literary works of all time and i'm inclined to agree. You can download an excerpt here.

In their introduction to the Mahabharata they write:

In a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, the narrator buys from an enigmatic bookdealer an ancient tome written in an indecipherable Indian script: the Book of Sand, so named because like the sand it has no beginning and no end. Whenever he opens the book, he finds different paragraphs and different illustrations on pages whose shifting numbers make no sense. Soon he becomes obsessed by the book’s fathomless depths, and his evenings are spent consumed in its protean secrets. I suspect that when Borges wrote his story, he had the Maha·bhárata in mind.

I agree with this speculation and this passage reminds me of having read Borges' accounts of books and libraries. His story The Library of Babel lodged firmly in my imagination the minute i read it. It's a delicious description of the universe as a library. And one that i have perhaps become lost within. Who knows. Some years ago this image, blended with that of other libraries about which i'd learned: Neil Gaiman's library in the land of the Dreaming (especially as depicted in the comic The Hunt) - a library that contains every book that anyone has ever dreamed; the description of the Book of Thoth in an ancient Egyptian story (a Book said to be hidden in golden box inside a silver box in a box of ivory and ebony in a sycamore box in a bronze box in an iron box and there's serpents carved into one of the boxes that protect it all rather lethally); the library depicted in Umberto Eco's In The Name of the Rose; and the Library of Alexandria whose history is described in The Vanished Library by Luciano Canfora (about which the reputed destruction by Muslims is challenged here). All this talk of books and libraries lead me to imagine my own version of a "vanished library" which contained books of wonder. I fashioned twenty-four descriptions of books found in this "vanished library" and, as i wrote these descripions i also came across Prospero's Books, Peter Greenaway's amazing interpretation of The Tempest. He, too, described fantastic books. And i imagine these might also be found in the vanished library. Here is one of the descriptions i wrote:

7. The Book of Delight
This book is housed in a puzzle-box made of seven different kinds of wood: zebra wood, rose wood, ebony, spalted maple, apple, teak and oak. Small panels must be moved into the correct position for the box to be opened. Once accomplished the curious (and determined) will find a thick book whose cover seems to run with many dark colours. The colours swirl slowly and resemble clouds moving across an obsidian sky. Patient readers will be rewarded by the marvelous sight of fireworks bursting amidst the swirls of dark colour. The pages of this book alternate between image and text. Each image (photograph, drawing, watercolour, doodle) has been produced by a person during a moment of joy. The text recounts moments of private delight – almost unnoticed by those who experienced them: a three-year old girl is bid goodnight by a storytelling uncle who says, “you’re so lucky,” and the almost sleeping child responds quietly into the darkness, “I feel lucky”; a lonely man walks along a sidewalk on a late-winter day and notices, upon looking up, that the magnolia tree is covered in velvety buds; in a beach cottage room full of family, a grandfather suddenly stands up and dances unselfconsciously with a doll, remembering younger days when his three-step dance “signature” was both well-recognized and desired. The latter half of the book is blank and the last piece of written text invites the reader to place their hand upon a blank page and recall forgotten moments of delight. Once done the reader is free to add to the book’s wealth. It is often reported that the sound of many voices cheering and laughing can be heard in the library as this book is read.

Remembering Heartbreak

In 1984 and 85 i spent a good deal of time in Nicaragua where i learned spanish, volunteered on farms (planting potatoes and talking about Salvadoran guerilla's need for very good watches), taking thousands of photos and cutting coffee, amongst other things. This photo of Umberto, one of the worker-owners of the coffee farm where i worked for a few weeks, is one of many i hope to scan and share in the coming year. Having injured my leg one day, i hung back from the coffee fields and spent the day helping Umberto roast coffee for us cortadoros. Sadly, the coffee was wretched. But it was flaboured uniquely with the very fresh fruit of our labours. I can taste it still. My visits to Nicaragua are now over 20 years in my past and yet they remain vivid in my heart and inspire me still. When the revolution succumbed in 1990 to US aggression, i was deeply saddened and have carried that complicated sadness within me since. The complicated emotions, perhaps not surprisingly, included anger. I had risked my life to make some small contribution to the revolution. And i'll never forget being shot at by contras packing US-supplied M16s. Though terrified while under fire, the emotion that has lasted is profound anger (tinged with indignation - I recall standing, the morning after the first attack, over the site from where the contras had been shooting. The spent M16 shell casings lay all about and i gathered a few up - strange mementos.)

This anger was refreshed as i listened to Harold Pinter's 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech which Democracy Now featured this week on the occasion of Pinter's death this past christmas eve. Pinter spoke of Nicaragua:

The Sandinistas weren’t perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance, and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilized. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. 2,000 schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one-seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.

I share Pinter's analysis. He describes perfectly my own sense of things in that time. (And his mentioning of the eradication of polio reminds me of the day i went deep into the Nicaraguan countryside, everyone heavily armed, to deliver the polio vaccine to villagers living far from the highways. It was a moving day.) This speech sparkles with the kind of truth to which the phrase "speak truth to power" refers. This is the kind of truth that is so disastrously absent from mainstream media. It is the kind of truth i witnessed in the coffee fields and homes of revolutionary Nicaragua. It is the kind of truth that has sustained me over the past quarter century of activism to be a better person and help make a better world.

Pinter also includes in his speech an excerpt from a Pablo Neruda poem that has held profound meaning for me for almost thirty years. In this stanza we see Neruda's genius in knowing that there can be no poetic embellishment that is more meaningful than the heartbreakingly simple decription of the last line:

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

I know i will listen to and reread this speech several times in the coming weeks. I need the reminder of the truths of which Pinter speaks. It cracks my heart open once again. It has always struck me as an irony of the human heart that broken-hearted is the only way one can live - for it is through the cracks that we let in truth and love and through which our compassion can flow.

Below is the one of the two excerpts that Democracy Now featured. The second excerpt is here. And you can watch all of Pinter's speech on YouTube here (though the sound quality is distracting). The two Democracy Now episodes that include Pinter's speech are here: Tuesday, December 30, 2008 and Wednesday, December 31, 2008. The Democracy Now website also includes complete transcripts of their shows and the relevant parts are here (Part 1) and here (Part 2). You can read all of Pinter's speech at the Nobel site here (and it includes downloadable PDFs in Ebglish, French, Swedish and German).