Meanwhile in Gaza

I just wrote another blog about the politics of Québec.  Less than a week before our provincial elections, I'm humbly trying to contribute to the betterment of a society that I truly consider to have much potential (there are so many resources laying around here!!).  I'm hoping to bring up not one, but several coherent - and inspiring - perspectives, that would account for the complexities of our situation, all the while offering both rational and emotional grounds. (Trying to be integral?)  I am calling for an urgent move that brings us beyond the politics of fear, hate, and war.

I am dreaming of autonomy and intelligent self-management, while... in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian children are being tortured, every single day and unabashedly.  We might be in denial once again, because a nation is being occupied and the world ''community'' (always a good word to ponder) says absolutely nothing.  Well some people are speaking up and denouncing the violent apartheid system that's taking place in Israel.  Palestinian villages have been displaced.  Houses were demolished or taken over, and the people that lived on those lands - up until 1948 - are now waiting inside shrinking territories.
The Wall is built and it keeps eating up Palestinian gardens: Israeli settlements are spilling over.  The army is everywhere: check points and fences sprout like aggressive weeds, and military planes fly intermittently over the heads of these people effectively reminding them: : we got you.

Sorry to bring this onto you. It's just that it needs to be talked about.

Last night my roommates and I watched a documentary, called ''Le rire contre les larmes'' (Laughter against Tears), which followed a French troupe of Clowns Without Borders during their mission in Gaza.
(The following video is a different one... but :D )

My roommate M. was in Palestine last Spring, and she feels very strongly about the Israeli occupation. She told us that there is currently a boycott against Cirque du Soleil to protest against against their going to Tel Aviv. ''You can't put the people of Israel and their government in the same boat, '' I said, trying to defuse her anger.  (I thought of my dear Jewish and Israeli friends, and I didn't like M. pointing her finger at them!) And so a passionate debate ensued, and M. refreshed our memory about the history of the past 60 years and the fact that it is getting worst everyday.  I studied this shit in college and I know it is real: a whole nation, a whole culture is being slowly exterminated.  Genocide. We exchanged points of view to try and lay out the fullest picture, only to settle on the eternal conclusion that it is and will eternally be complex.  Of course, the youth of Israel is also victim of the situation.  Personally, I dare hoping that the mandatory draft is debated, and that few are those who go through it without realizing what is at stake.  Yet it takes superhuman powers to muster the courage and defy one's culture, to stand against the draft and face years of imprisonment. Everyone's fucked. We agreed on that. So M. said, ''I just can't deal with people who go on denying what is happening.'' And I wish I could do something.  I wish I could do something for indigenous people everywhere, in Québec, Brazil, Tibet, Kurdistan, Palestine, etc.  I wish I could learn some good tricks on the diabolo, and muster the courage to join Clowns Without Borders.  I wish I could tell everyone: ''We are with you.  We don't know how to go about it, but with all our hearts we see your humanness, your resilience, and your beauty.''

You can visit Clowns Without Borders' website, by clicking here.  You know this is deep healing work. One way to call for the end Apartheid in Israel is to join the Boycott and Divestment Campaign.  Learn more about this international movement here, or on the BDS website,  here.


As always, I welcome any respectful comment and questions about this post... We all feel passionately about those things that we identify with; let us all learn to notice this phenomenon so as to engage in functional debates in which we may all learn and broaden our horizons and our capacity to love.

re-cyclus

The thing is,
It would seem that I am already provided for.
(Why such inequality in the [material] world?)
The thing is,
I'm already doing what I am meant to do.
It's also called responsibility.
(It's like Robbie said)

Tripping and falling
on concrete
hurts
sometimes
leaving scratches and scrapes
But we keep
walking.

How ironic.  This week the reading assignment is a book about "The Pickles Family Circus", which were the precursors and founders of the sf circus center:  Judy Finelli, Jeff Razz, Wendy Parkman, Bill Irwin, Diane Wasnack (a.k.a. Pino).
Today we are told that the school is in deep financial trouble, so that the board has resolved to change the locks on the building to show the severity of the situation...
And so we are here, clowns without a roof.  And at best it had been a leaky one.  The circus is on the streets.
Isn't it where it belongs?

My weekend.
Saturday morning I went to work with a new friend who's offered me work with this place called Whole Child, a space for kids with developmental disabilities and "behavioral difficulties"to come play and develop social skills.
I was thrown in a play room with three other instructors/therapists, and about five or six boys between the ages of 5 and 9.  For some of them is what more apparent; a shyness, an akwardness, a retraction.  For others, hyperactivity and need for attention.  Lovely children who ask or refuse to play.  And I observe and I try to engage in play with them.
It's a challenge for me as well.
Another group of younger kids, this one with more severe on the spectrum of autism.
And there I am, thinking to myself: "wow.  I can't believe that I am doing this.  My whole life it has been there, this fascination for mental difference, for autism, hyperactivity, etc. I remember that summer at the summer camp, how I had considered going into special education and take that direction.  But I didn't.
Yet here I am.
I'm doing it.

Axé!
Booyah!

And that just saturday morning!
In the afternoon I gathered with the nine or ten strangers that constitute "my" psychodrama training group."
I had a shamanic experience.
We all did.

Today I went with May May to the Edgewood Center, and played clowns with six youngsters of the residential program.  It was marvelous.  Moments of shyness and tadams! Laughs and aliveness.  Improvisation, stream of thought.  Balance and motion.  Laughs... Sunshine.
Axé!

And I don't know if there will be access to the circus center tomorrow morning.  But tonight I'm going dancing anyway.

thoughts

Today I went to visit the Edgewood Center, the mission statement of which runs like this:
"Edgewood helps children and families overcome some of life's toughest challenges like abuse, neglect, mental illness, and family crisis."
In a couple of weeks May May and I are going to start our 6-week community clowning component.  We're gonna go spend an hour with Edgewood kids every Sunday, for about an hour.  They come from the hardest environments.  And as far as I'm concerned as of today; they are still beautiful angels.
On our visit we met the responsible and liaison person for Circus Center.  He was an interesting fellow of course, for his affect and personality were quite unique, somewhat flat though one can tell he had forged a shell to protect himself in doing the work he does.
He showed around the propriety.  The whole place is architecturally quite pleasing, with its pink buildings and its modern cottages - as they are called.  Our host took us around and introduced us to a few kids that were playing outside.  (Today was a rare sunny afternoon in the Sunset District.  The pacific ocean was grandiose, as always.)  I was fascinated by our guide's interactions with the kids.  It's one thing to be vaguely told about the severity and types of emotional, sexual, physical (et cetera) traumas these young humans beings have had to endure.  How should we relate with them?  How can we?  We don't know shit.  We can imagine.  Some of us (functional adults who want "to help") have experienced some form of trauma ourselves,; some of us are wounded healers indeed.
This experience is already "boulversante" (upsetting) and we haven't started yet.
And I think of Phoenix and her path.  I think of the work she has been doing, of he job she's scored in the East Bay.  I think of how consuming it is.
And I understand why somebody would have such zeal in this crusade.  Children are angels.  
It saddens me so much.  I hurts and angers me so much.