Land-ing

I woke up here today, in Montréal.
I have slept in this bed before, I have taken this métro.  I have spoken this language and I've seen these people.  This is not new.

But this time is different.  I am especially excited, 'cause this time I get to stay for a while.
Whenever I've come to visit Montréal, I stayed with friends, and for less than a week.  This time, the town is mine for the taking...

Outside of métro Mont-Royal.
(Montréal is full of graffiti too!)

I am blessed to have an amazing friend who's letting me stay with he, in a top-knotch apartment right on the Plateau Mont-Royal, during two months.  I am blessed with a whole group of old friends; people I grew up with, people I've miraculously managed to remain close with, despite all these years away.

Ten years that is.  An entire decade since I lived here permanently.  For Heaven's sake, I don't even have access to my free healthcare - one of the defining characteristic of the Canadian\Québécoise identity - anymore.
I have missed whatever big tv shows, whatever media hype to have entered the collective psyche since I left.  I have kept up with a lot, but I also have so much to discover.
Therefore, I am still traveling.
In fact, I am making a point to keep the mindset, even as I gradually settle down into a more sedentary existence, for the moment.  It's hard to believe I am becoming sedentary.  As my friend said, ''I'll believe it when I see it... in a few months.''
They are gentle, but the voices in me are pulling in opposing (seemingly opposing) directions.  On one hand, I am hoping to remain free, to explore, to connect, to spontaneously follow the rivers of my soul to where they might lead.   On the other hand, I am craving a flat I can call home.  I want to get art supplies, stuff.  I want to have people over, friends, family, couch surfers!  I would like to make a few steps in the direction of some first career.  I am re-writing my CV, I am re-inserting the system.

However, I am hoping to get back to visit San Francisco at some point.  I have a lot of my stuff still there: musical instruments, books, a few clothes.  Most crucially yet: there are a LOT of people in the Bay Area, who I adore with all of my soul.  And the place itself, the farmers' markets, the Pacific Ocean, the revolution...  I gotta give myself some time before I go back, and I just hope to keep myself free enough to be able to travel for a few weeks.
That's the challenge: to experience both mobility and stability.  Freedom, and security.

Though most of all, I want to remain porous, the way I have been for the last three months.  I want to explore, to connect, to learn from the places and the people that will help me grow.  I want to seek those places and make it happen, the same way I have been.
For that, I need to keep coming to my self.
I want to be my own center, that is, in a soft-flexible-changeable way rather than a strong- crystallized one.  It's well known that family - the past - often has the power to pull one back into ''regression''.  Individualization becomes a very strenuous path when one is confronted with the matrix; and especially when one loves the matrix.
I don't want to hurt anybody, but I want to keep growing towards my higher self.
That's the plan.  It's the Hero's Journey.  The pilgrimage is not over.  I will never be.

View from my bedroom in Québec City

So stay tuned my friends.  I intend to keep this blog inspired and lively.  I intend to bring you with me as I discover the majestic part of the world, the great metropolis of Montréal, the great open spaces of the province of Québec, the infinite new worlds of the psyche!

It's particularly awkward to be writing in English at the moment, since everyone surrounding me is Francopohone.  And we have that same eternal debate, over dinner, about the future of French in Québec.
But from where I stand at the moment, I think I can handle this fact of the phenomenon... of imperialism.  I think I can handle writing in the language that can reach the most of you.
I'll just start another blog in French!
In time...

For now, I'll go have breakfast with my mommy and daddy :)

In Catalan...

radicalmontreal: The Radical Vulvas of Montreal

Je me lance!!!

radicalmontreal: The Radical Vulvas of Montreal: "The Radical Vulvas" originated in 2007 in Halifax, at the Dalhousie University Women's Centre. It is a community response to the Vag...

Se puede hacer lo

It's my last night in Europa and there's a free Cabaret at a wonderful community circus space, called La Nave Espacial.  I discovered the place thanks to David, who I had met and exchanged contacts with back in Berlin.  He's a juggler, and he's Mexican, and I've never met anybody which such original and protuberant piercings and scarifications on their face.  Yes, David looks like a member of the new tribal culture, some kind of "postmodern shamanistic" type.  He's colorful, but quiet.  He's a nomad too, and well... he knows where it's at.

He landed in Barcelona about a week ago and immediately found the Nave.  Meeting on our favorite social network the next day, he invited me to come check the place out.

"Should I bring my juggling clubs?" I asked.

"No. We have everything here."

... Yes they do!!

We're talking about a gigantic industrial hangar kind of space.  In front, a few caravans are parked alongside the curb.  Upon walking into the vast entrance lounge, one might greet a few hippies, some acrobats (with that kind of unmistakable body), or some b-boys.  Children, sexagenarian, locals and wanderers.  All meet here. 

"Como funciona todo?" I asked some circusy folks smoking cigarettes in the /communal kitchen.

"Pues. Puedes ir por allá, esta el gym.  Todo bien, si quieres practicar.''

"Y... es gratis o .. ?"  

"si, todo gratis..."

"Vale!"

No entrance fee!? Free access to all of this?

I notice a chalkboard with a weekly schedule on it: those are all the free classes offered: spray paint, flamenco, breakdancing, body awareness, etc.

Una Nave muy especial!

I go to the gym to find David and... wow: the place is fully equipped!  The full array of circus apparels - trapezes, fabrics, mats, ropes, rings, etc. - the heavenly sight of which spiced up by some good sound system blasting in the breakdancing area.  Jugglers, acrobats, b-boys share the space.  There are even some  weight-lifting machines on the side!

There it is: from babies crawling around to young teenagers, folks in their prime and old activists, whites and blacks, latinos and spanish, etc.   All here practicing their passion, their trade, on a wednesday afternoon.

"La Nave"  also counts a computer lounge, a sewing room, two dance studios, a laundry room, a ping pong table, plus a theater area, and, I assume, some cubbies or rooms for those who live and sleep there.

How can all of this be open to free use?  Well because the place was abandoned and is now "occupied", of course!  The project was made possible by a few leaders - who somehow came up with the equipment -  many of which are originally from Latin America.  The place has been running for about three years now.

How freakin'' inspiring!

''Eso es... cómo... Utopia!'' I suggest to an older Argentinian man I'm chatting with.

''No es utopia,'' he corrects me, '' se puede hacer.''

Please, let there be a place like this in Montreal!

Last night in Europe then.  I haven't seen half of the common attractions of Barcelona but I don't feel like getting myself lost in the meanders of yet another city.  I'm satisfied with what I have experienced: the fantastic modernist designs of Gaudi and his contemporaries, the museum of Catalunya (which by the way I didn't get to visit in its entirety, even though I was there for three hours!), the Barceloneta beach, and the old city.  That alone is enough to feel overwhelmed.  Too much would be hard to digest.  I like to keep it delightful and inspiring.

I really wanted to write about my visit to the Park Güell as well.  That's a park on a hill, where some rich industrialist named Güell had Gaudi and his architect buddies design modernist village of "modest" habitations.  

 

It was 1900 to 1914.  It was the industrial boom, and Güell was inspired by the English Garden City Movement (super interesting wikipedia discovery!).  The area is surreal and superbly gorgeous!  I wish urban design could still find such inspiration instead of giving us those sad, uniform, unicolored, developments.  Aargh, it makes me nauseous just to think of it.

But I digress! I tangent! I parenthesize! Pardon me (and quantum phenomena) for this.  As I was saying...

Last night in Europe.

Free Cabaret.

I have seven Euros left for the rest of my time on this side of the pond.  I must be intelligent.  I must plan.  I decide to find a grocery store in order to buy myself some lunch/dinner as well as something for the airport.  (I'm flying out at 6am, so I'm going to have to sleep at the airport.)  I could have saved so much money had I done more home cooking, but then I wouldn't have had tasted all these local delicacies!

Way up to the Park:
outdoor escalator!

I arrive there and sit outside to eat some bread and cheese.  I don't know anybody and I feel awkward.  I'm not feeling very extraverted.  I think that my Spanish might actually have regressed a bit recently, because I'm tired. So I just sit there for a while, reading my Kerouac and enjoying some sun despite the cold air.  In 24 hours, I'll be in winter land.  

I eventually go inside to find a bunch of people busying themselves in the kitchen.  Turns out they are serving dinners for one Euro tonight!  Ah!  This is just incredible.  I wonder how much of the food have been "recycled" as they say here.  How much of it was dumpstered...  I hang around the space, offering myself to help with whatever needs to be done.  I'm assigned to the setting up of tables and chairs, which I accomplish quickly so that I'm left again to read my novel.

A quote from The Lonesome Traveller:

"À force de penser aux étoiles toutes les nuits, je commence à comprendre: 'ces étoiles sont des mots' et tous ces mondes innombrables de la Voie Lactée sont des mots, et notre monde en est un lui aussi.  Et je m'aperçois d'une chose:quel que soit l'endroit oü je me trouve, dans une petite chambre pleine de mes pensées ou dans cet univers infini d'étoiles et de montagnes, tout est en moi.  Il n'y a aucun besoin de solitude.  Il faut donc aimer la vie pour ce qu'elle est et ne se faire aucune idée préconçue.'' (p.203)

At 7h30 the lounge is full of people waiting to grab a seat in the theater.  It is really cold and I'm hoping things will get a bit warmer once we're all siting side by side.  There are some hundred and fifty people here.  And what a beautiful crowd!  I got a spot on the bleachers, but most people are sitting on pillows on the concrete ground.  Not sure they're warmer.

The actors begin the show while people are still finding their spot and chatting.  They don't have microphones.  On first impression I think: ''wWait! There are still people talking and moving around..'' But then my impression changes; it feels like a public square or a parochial gathering.. it feels amazingly intimate this way!

Little by little the attention focusses on our masters of ceremony.  The first act is a clown woman... She is GOOD!  The little physical habits, the mimics, the candor, her absurd relationship with the objects of her world... she is wonderfully lovable!  Wow... This is the approach I want so bad to take... this innocence... this childlike joy ... this lightness.

I'm inspired.

The second act is an aerial straps duo.  I have never seen anything like this.  The mise en scène is wonderful, the technique is sharp, the moves are original.  The images of two hobos flying and spinning in the air is tender and poetic.

Applauses to warm the artists and ourselves.  I'm experiencing a small revolution:

This is it.  That relationship between audience and artists, this is the real circus.  Our MCs remind us: ''Esta frío, no?''  They are not ignoring this reality we are all experiencing together, they are naming it.  And that's magical.

I think about Cirque du Soleil and how far it is from accomplishing this.  That's spectacle, that's corporate, mass production, it's form above all, it's professional perFORMance.  No room for presence, for spontaneity, for community.

And I'm thinking that it's a shame in fact, because Cirque du Soleil is such a global phenomenon.  There would be such an opportunity for them to let their clowns take on that sacred function: to name the realities we are experiencing together, globally.

I'll have to write an editorial about this one.

More acts, some incredibly original and mind-blowing, others much less.  After half-time (you'll never fully take the athlete out of me!), a few dance numbers.  I shed a few warm tears when I see that group of teenagers take on the stage.  There they are among a crowd of adults, courageous enough to share their passion and skills with us.  Good stage presence, impressive saltos, nice choreography.  The crowd is loving it.  How heart-warming.  

And the last act: woman-man acrobatic duo, with yet another superb story line, unseen moves, and strong technique. I've never seen such muscles on a woman before.  I've never seen a man stand with both feet on a woman's head!  Dang!

Little revolutions surrounding age and gender relations... That's what I'm talking about.

Flying hoboes...

And in my mind a torrent of ideas... I'm so full of them, these big visions so vivid yet so complex.  And if I can't perform all of them, I'm thinking, I could have other people make it happen.

My last couch surfing host studied arts management... that's sort of what he does.

Parc Güell (wish I could provide the soundtrack too).

Catalonia throughout His-story

Processing a visit at the Museu d'Història de Catalunya...

I finally shook myself up after two strange days of energetic and emotional tumult (more on this in another post), to take myself to one of the museums I had intended to visit during my week in Barcelona.
It has been a most unsettled kind of week through which I have learned A LOT.  But I'd like to attempts not to disgress into the personnal sphere quite yet and focus my writing on the experience I just had at the museum.
Of course, it is all related.  We call it Life.

We call it History.  Mainly indeed: his-story.  Words upon words, artifacts and media of all sorts, exhibitions to trace the line of a place.
I wanted to see this particular museum because I don't know anything about Catalonian nationalism and its roots and aspirations.  There is a conception, an assumption, of a connection between Quebec and Catalonia.  It´s true, we are minority languages (and thus cultures) with long standing struggles for recognition and independence.
But I think it's actually much more complicated and nuanced than that.  Nothing can be isolated or singled-out so easily anymore.  We have learned that much.

This was yet another journey down the ages... (How many museums have I visited in the past three months?) This one starts in the lower paleolithic era.  Fossils from some long gone homo erectus ancestors were unearthed around here.  Four hundred fifty thousand years that is. 450,000 years - most of which were not conceived on a Roman calendar.
So I'm walking around trying to imagine that concept, trying to imagine the most primitive conditions and technologies, the most ancient modes of human lifestyles.  Nomads.  Cave dwellers.  Very small carbon footprint.  Yet so many other short-comings I'm sure.

It's precisely that phenomenon that blows my mind.  I cannot help myself, I look at everything through utopian lenses!  I'm there, studying, reading, pondering images and objects, while some part of my consciousness is always searching for connections, for clues if not examples, of "good" living.
Meanwhile another part of my brains smiles like a buddha, asking gently and humbly: "what is good?  justice?  what is justice?"  The Buddha would have more than evidence from this exhibition: life is suffering.

O such [beautiful] complexity!  Complexity of power structures, of misery and labor, of blood and soil and migrations and multiculturalism, and occupations and wars and political and religious systems, and technological discoveries and developments, and social classes, and power structures.... and power structures.
Another part of my mind is gathering information with what appears to be a attempt to situation myself and find answers to my current quest.  What is my role in society, at this time, in this body, with this conditioned reality?

I'm a young woman, from a middle class family.  One of my grand-fathers worked in a paper mill, the other one on his family farm.  My parents moved to the city as soon as they could; they bought a freshly-built house in a pleasant suburb.  Quebec has [only] been colonized for 400 hundred years.  What did my ancestors do, back in Normandy and Brittany?  What social class did they belong too?  I'm a global citizen, fruit of a cultural globalization movement that began... well... over 450,000 years ago.  I'm educated, out of touch with industrial and agricultural means of production.  I'm a mind, a spirit, a body, a heart.  I'm a philosopher, a spiritual being, a political thinker, an artist.  All these used to be the domain of men.  All these, used to be (and to some extent, they still very much are) valued, and as such they were sponsored by those with money, with ranks, with land.

I want land.  I think I'd be able to learn how to keep it alive.  But I'm a lazy-ass generation Y kid (why!?), living off the historical struggles of peasants and syndicalists, who toiled and fought with their lives for some minimal changes in labor conditions.
And I'm here, in Barcelona, typing on a macbook Air in an Irish Pub, pondering the state of the planet and the next steps to take in order to... in order to what?
To fight for Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality?  It's such a relatively recent concept, though we can obviously trace it back to Jesus Christ, (and most likely, to other people before him.)  But they killed Jesus!  And they still have the power and the weapons and the capacity to blow it all up if they feel like it!  They still have the power to kill anyone they choose, to occupy the land.  Do they know how to make food grow?  I'm not sure.  But they have gunpowder, and satellites.
So what's the point if there's no spiritual realm in which to find redemption?  I'm not talking about another life in the Kingdom of Heaven.  I'm only thinking dignity, in promoting love and wholeness, and dying when the time comes, even if it's at their hands.

History is a strange and wonderful thing.  Wholeness, for instance, takes a whole new meaning in today's world!  Wholeness is a scientific fact!  We can see it on one of the greatest photos ever taken: Earth Rise.

NASA, Apollo 8. December 24, 1968.

The world is one.  No denying.  Physically at least, so economically too.  For eco-logy is eco-nomy is oikos: home.
I wouldn't mind a peaceful home where I can age with some kind of security, within a community, which to me, is Spirit.

Wow.  Who said museums were boring?
;)

Oh.  I remember now... Catalonia.  Well I learned it's a national identity that emerged out of several many a lot of geopolitical dynamics and fluctuations.  But what's new with that?  It's always the case.  In the case of Catalonia, we're talking NorthEastern part of today's Spain, which was inhabited by Iberian people prior to conquests and settlements by Greeks, Carthaginians, and then Romans.  (A pattern very similar to that of most of the Mediterranean coast).  Here the Visigoth kingdom then took over and briefly ruled until the Moorish empire spread its Al-Andalus territory (8th cent.) to include the Iberian Peninsula.  The Franks coming from the North eventually made their presence known, and somehow in 795 Charlemagne created a buffer zone - called Marca Hispanica - between his empire and that of Al-Andalus.
I think this buffer zone thing is very interesting.  I don't know enough of the details and the history, but it looks like that zone included those parts of country where nations would later demand cultural recognition and autonomy.  It's the Pyrennes; and it's the Basques and the Catalans, etc.

Anyway.  The catalans became stuck between the French (Franks) and Spanish (Aragon) kingdoms at some point.  It was ruled by a bunch of counts who ended up not buying into French nor Spanish feudalism.  They had a different system, a more democratic, decentralized one.  They worked some sort of consensus organization between the different ruling groups (priests, counts, merchants? Don't remember.  But certainly no peasants nor women!)

Then it was the maritime age of commerce, and cities popped up and the plague came through and the peasants rebelled against tyrannical kings and the Americas were conquered and Catholic authorities came in and then brought the Inquisition, and more commerce happened and soon the first phase of industrialization with its capitalism and the formation of new social classes and the ebullient anarchist-syndicalist movement and a civil war and a bloody dictatorship...

And today.  A neoliberal, global economical crisis is affecting Spain quite badly, with about 24% unemployment.  Cell phones, immigrants, political apathy and young adults spraying graffitis...

It has changed so much and it is so much the same.

 

Bus ride with Allah

23:30, I step on the bus and walk to my seat: the very last row, the one that doesn't recline. Oh well.  I almost didn't get a ticket in time, so I guess I can't complain.  Sitting next to me is a young woman.  She's wearing a hijab, and a beautiful smile.

"¿Adonde te vas?" she asks with a sweet voice.

"Hasta Barcelona."

"Pues, que lejos!" she says.  "¿Vives allá?"

"No.  Soy de Canada."

"Oh! No eres Espanola?"

I'm flattered.  

We exchange names and more background information.  I tell her the same story I've carried with me around the old continent:

"No estoy de vacaciones como de transición.  Por que soy de Canadá, pero viví en los Estados Unidos por los diez años pasados.  Y después d'este viaje yo regresso para vivir en Montreal."

She tells me she's from "Al-Jazeer", or something like that, close to Cadiz.  Al-Jazeera? I heard that word before.  I did a bit of research and didn't find an Andalusian city by that name, but the point is that it's in the South of Spain, and obviously has that wonderful arabic influence.

She tells me she's originally from Marrueco (Morroco).  She has seven siblings; six brothers and one sister.  Two live in France, one in Deutschland, two (including herself) in Spain, and two in England.  (Who knows where the other one is!)  She asks if I'm married.  I smile.  I guess at this point it's not so much a cultural difference.  I know a lot of folks my age, who are getting married.  "No."

"Por que?"

"Por que... por que viajo mucho y quiero buscar mi proprio camino ante de casar me."

"Tu no quieres casar con alguien de otro país?  Por que?"

I explain that it's quite the opposite.  I tend to fall for foreigners.  And that creates a bit of a conundrum because I'm left with my family and my native land on one side, and a potential future and family of my own, that would be far away from them.  I find that very problematic.

She does have a husband.  She tells me he's much older than her.  She's thirty-one; her husband is fifty-six!  She says love knows no age, no race, no language.  Fifty-six!?  I gotta admit that I find that hard to imagine for myself... but she's got my respect.  Her presence is so sweet and loving.  I like her.

The bus is making its way North-East in the dark night; we are chatting away.  She asks about Canada.  She depicts her home in Morocco, her home in Spain.  She's in love with life and with the beautiful landscapes she's daily surrounded with.  She says I have a place to stay when I come to Morocco.  (I should have asked her if there's an expiration date on the offer or if I can show up in, let's say, five years?!)

  

She asks what I do for work in Canada.  I remind her that I haven't lived there in a decade, and tell her I worked as a nanny in San Francisco.  "Una kangaroo", as they say here.  She is a cook in a Moroccan restaurant.  Her husband is the chef.  She asks if I like to cook and what I like to eat.  "Comiste carne?"

"Pues.  No puedo decir que soy vegetariana... pero yo quería ser.  Es que, aquí, quiero probar la comida de las diferentes culturas."

She's silent.  I'm wondering where she stands on the issue.  I explain, "para mi, no es necesseramente que no quiero comer animales, pero a mi es una pregunta de la manera que los tratan.  Por que no se como es la industria aqui, pero en America, hay muchas fincas muy grande y industriales donde que les tratan los animales de una manera súper inhumana, sabes?"

Still silent.  "Para mi, es importante tener respecto.  Y si comio carne, yo digo gracias ante."

"Y comes puerco?" she finally utters.

"Eso no."

"Yo no comió puerco tampoco.  Y tu fumas?"

"Pues. As veces, si."

"Bebes?"

"Eso también.  Me gusta tomar, pero no para estar borracha.  Y tu?  Bebes?"

She tells me she has never had a drink, or a smoke... "por causa de la religion."  She says with a big smile and pointing at her headscarf.  "Lo hizo todo, el hijab, el Ramadan, todo."  She has the most radiant and pure look on her face.  She looks proud, but in a calm, humble way.

I'm so interested in this conversation!  I've been wishing to interact with an arabic woman for some time.  I had given up on that wish, actually.  But here it is now.  I have so many questions and I want to be careful... respectful.  I ask if she prays five times a day?  What time is the first call to prayer?  Do she go to the Mosque for all of them?  I tell her that I like the idea of stopping everything you're doing, five times a day, to remember and bow down to something greater than you."

"Y es bueno ejercicio también!" she says half serious.

I had never seen it that way!

She tells me that Islam is a very healthy religion.  Pork is very fatty, and it apparently contains some hormone, which is cancerous to humans.  That's why muslims don't eat it.  She says the holy book is full of recommendations that are targeting health.  She tells me about Ramadan.  The first two days are the hardest: no eating, no drinking, no sex.  But then, one gets used to it and the rest of the month gets easier.  She's been doing it her whole life, since she was eleven.  I learn that women begin to take part in Ramadan when they have their first menstruations.  Boys start around fourteen or so, when their voice begins to chance and they are becoming men.  When a woman has her period, she can eat normally.  Same thing when she's pregnant, or when she's breastfeeding.  Old and sick people also can eat.  It's important to remain healthy.

ablution facility

I guess ablutions can be seen in this light as well.  It's good to wash your hands and face, and feet, five times a day!

Prayer Hall
Blue Mosque, Istanbul

Our connection is very good and I feel that I can ask her the question that's burning me.  I want to know why women sit on the sides during prayer at the Mosque.  She smiles and explains to me... The woman's body has these... curves... (I see!!)  With the set up and proximity of congregants in the prayer hall, and with the multiple getting up and bowing down that is muslim prayer, it would certainly be very distracting to men!!

From what I understand, it's the same thing with the veil.

I've come to think that, in a big way, I've developed this tom-boyish attitude and dress as a way to protect myself from the other sex.  Sometimes I think wearing the hijab would be so liberating.

It's about two in the morning now and my being is filled with a peaceful kind of love and gratitude.  "Eres cansada?" she asks.

"Si. Un poco. Y tu?"

"Si. Descansamos un poco, si?"

These non-reclining seats are uncomfortable, but I think I shouldn't have a problem falling into that altered state of consciousness, between sleep and awareness.  I've gotten used to it.  I kinda like it.  She is trying to find a way to rest her head.  I tell her she can use my shoulder.

And I sit straight up, close my eyes, and thank God for this beautiful encounter.

Alhamdulillah! 

"One Love.
Let's get together and feel alright!"

Clown Estado

I am now three hours from Barcelona, on my last bus trip before returning to Québec.  

I think I've grown better at saying goodbye and letting go.  During the first two months of this journey, I often left whatever place I had come to experience with a sentiment of not-enough-time-!.  I felt that bitter sweet longing, not to be passing through only, but yearning, to go to the depths of a people, a language, a place...

But yesterday, as I walked in the neighborhood of Realejo, and then up to the periphery of the Palace - but did not enter - , I felt something different.  I was well aware of all the things I wouldn't get to experience in Granada.  There is the Alhambra, that famous red palace, known by all locals and visitors as a real moorish architectural jewel.

La Alhambra

Vista Santo-Nicholas,
looking out at the Alhambra,
and the snow-covered Sierra

There's the Apujarra region, just on the other side of the Sierra Nevada, where indigenous (now mixed with many ex-pats from England and else where) pueblos allegedly live a most pristine communal life within the mountains.  There's Serromonte too, which is a neighborhood of Granada where people live within the mountain, in caves!  And they play a lot of Flamenco there, and it's the real thing.  It's not something you schedule as part of a touristic tour.  Real Flamenco happens spontaneously, when the spirit moves them.  And what about the reggae scene?  With such a high rate of dreadlocks per capita, Granada must have a nice scene!  

Oh well. 

Calle Silencio

I walked slowly, simply, enjoying the tiny narrow curvy paved streets, the murals of Realejo, the omnipresence of moorish architectural details, and later the sound of water running down the gutters of the Alhambra gardens.  I was relaxed, satisfied.  I didn't need more of anything.

Perhaps it had to do with having those three days of ''Clown, con Danza y Energia'' workshop.  I had come especially for that experience, and even though I could just dwell in that space permanently (it's kind of my goal in life), I mainly just left the course feeling energized and inspired.

I feels good to be reconnected with the work.

My couchsurfing mama and I,
having tubos and tapas after the workshop,
talking of a revolution that's happening.

"Clown no es un personaje, y no es tampoco 'tu mismo'... Para mi, clown es un estado." explained our teacher.

A mi me gusta eso.

How can we deny the wisdom in this?  Clown isn't a character, and it's not quite your own self either; clown is a state of mind.  It's saying "Yes!" despite everything.  (Indeed, it's super Nietzschean to me.) It's opening one's self totally, as in 360 degrees of ears and eyes and skin, connecting with the totality of the environment, ready to make new connections at any moment.  That's how the clown helps life to open up and renew herself.

In the workshop, we did an exercise aimed at exploring how we each tend to react when thrown off-balance.  Disequilibrium is where the clown lives and thrives.

One person would start walking around the room, and a partner's role was to get in the way, pushing and pulling on the first person's body and clothes, thus creating unpredicted and unwanted  disruptions and obstacles.

Everyone had their own set of reactions.  Some resisted more, some were annoyed, some were more fluid and accepting of the new directions brought upon them.

  

Clowns y tapas!

Personally, I discovered that I wanted to trick my partner.  I felt open to her input and eager to discover new directions in space and in my body; but most undeniably, I just wanted to joke around and engage in play.  I wanted to be unpredictable myself, make quick changes in direction,so she wouldn't catch up with me.  And simply, because I could!  

How informative!  And of course saying "yes" and staying light and open is easier to do within the boundaries of this exercise than it is in life.  In this game, I knew who and where my partner was.  I had a sense of direction that was limited by the stage and didn't involve anything more than walking around.  

Still, I guess I discovered that I do live my life in quite a similar way.  Perhaps it's easier to play hide and seek, to come up with my own changes in direction, to walk a bit of an erratic path rather than a straight one, to try to escape rather than commit to a specific goal, for fear of getting thrown off.

But it's not only fear.  It's not necessarily "resisting."  It's also dancing with the essence of existence, which is change.  I dare saying that I think there's some wisdom in that.

One more thing.  The exercise was very informative indeed, but I personally thought that something was missing in the set up.  Some-bodies were so open to external influences; they let themselves be so fluid, that it didn't seem authentic enough to me.  In life - as in clown - there's got to be a minimum (or maybe a lot) of self-will (does this phrase exist?). Otherwise there's just no life, no drama, no tension.  One remains waiting for external forces to push and pull and guide without ever bringing energy of their own.

Would these forces not empty themselves, after a while of giving, without meeting any "resistance"?  Wouldn't libido not exhaust and drain itself?  Wouldn't it get bored?

I tired to raise that point to the class, but in a broken spanish I'm not sure the teacher understood my statement.  I just thought he should mention that "accepting" change/ disequilibrium/ obstacles doesn't mean completely subjecting to it (as some people seemed to be doing in the exercise) but rather, perhaps, that it means being open to see/ hear and integrate new information at any given time, so that one's sense of will and inner guidance remains fluid.

the sound it makes...

Am I making sense?

What do you think?

It's like water...

''Zero Impact'' EcoCafé-Bar Manila...
with an exposition on Québec and its ressources!!

Recommitting myself not to eat meat.

Committing myself to keep drinking with friends :)