Arrived in India, Part 2

We've now arrived at our final destination. Five weeks to go, only one before my special lady friend joins me. I have one more week at the Subbody Butoh School and then Sara and I are taking on a 200-hour yoga teacher training. I feel so excited about it all!

My daily life is pretty simple. I get woken up by barking dogs and non-melodic birds (I have yet to find an India ornithologist who can tell me the name of this most annoying bird I hear all the time.) Getting out of bed, I step on the cold ceramic floor while making a conscious effort to remember: must not brush teeth with tap water. I then take a spoonful of this Ashwagandha paste I have discovered - more on this later - and prepare some green tea. Curtains open, I greet the Dhauladar every morning with a short series of Sun Salutations. Taking the time to loosen up and breathe in deeply, this morning ritual has been a real delight. 

Introducing the Dhauladar Mountain Range and one of its many pretty late afternoon dresses.

I evolve in a perimeter of about 40 square meters: apartment, this café where I am right now, and the Butoh school. I do not wander off too much without planning a bit, because it's impossible to get anywhere without calling it a trek. Hence this café, called Illiterati because the concept is that its walls are filled with books (yeah!), has pretty much become my general quarters. I come here every day for a good wifi connection and a cup of tea or a meal.

The only thing that never changes is change itself.

I have plenty of time before school starts, so most of the time I actually go there around 9am to breathe and stretch some more, and meditate a bit. Then it's morning session. This butoh training method, Subbody, is all about calming the mind in order to connect with the subconscious realm in which our body is our mind is our body. Mornings are dedicated to what they call ''conditioning''; it can be massage, spinal consciousness, walking meditation, or anything that will gently connect us with body-consciousness. Needless to say: I love it.

View from the upper studio.

Weeks go by very quickly. We mix self-exploration with group resonance session. I feel that my butoh is slowly expanding; or perhaps is just my mind quieting a bit more. No concepts, no politics, no pressure on myself, I am actually managing to mostly just remain curious.

The butoh we explore in this school is very much inspired by the work of Tatsumi Hijikata. It is hard but I keep what Rhizome Lee (our teacher) had written as the main guiding principle: butoh expands the notion of what a being human is/means. This quote, which comes from Hijikata himself, means that the work of butoh is to think outside the common notion of humanity to incorporate all the realms that make us: single-cell organisms, ancestors, natural elements, surrealist dreams, etc. This is what we dance, or rather, this is what we open ourselves up to be danced by.

I feel that I am starting to understand what butoh is. 

This being said, I know there is still - and probably will always remain - something alluding me... like... I'm not a fully-enlightened-by-cosmic-grace-dancer yet. ;)

On the weekends, I get out of my living perimeter and hike up to McLeod Ganj. The area, known as Little Lhasa, is home to a large population of Tibetans who have migrated to escape from Chinese oppression and to settle around the temple in exile of their political and spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

The streets there offer numerous shops with crafts, jewellery, singing bowls, restaurants, and so on. It's been filling up with an increasing number of tourists in recent years. You won't be surprised if I tell you I've been having mixed feeling about this. But then I'm on a journey to being softer with myself, so instead of feeding the politically critical chatter, I've actually surrendered to my love for beautiful shiny things!  

I've been trying to find out about the name of the artist(s)
behind these gorgeous murals.

In truth, I've noticed that I feel soooo good after spending a bit of time inside a small shop filled with gemstones and statues of Shiva. So, I've actually been thinking about starting a little import business myself! If beauty soothes me this much, it can certainly benefit others too. I've met this man who offered to take me to the people who make what he sells. Unfortunately, I won't have time to accept his invitation this time around. But if this idea keeps sprouting, I'll make sure to go to come back and go to Kashmir to meet these artisans. I could then feel honoured to be part of the chain that helps them make a living by distributing their creations.

Beauty surrounds indeed, but as you might know, India is a land of contrasts. So I'll finish this post with a few thousand words wrapped in a series of pictures. These photos cannot portray the level of uneasiness, not to say anger, or despair, that lurks to get to me at every turn. I could take hundreds of pictures like these. 

It was really hard to cope during my first week or two here. Now I guess I've adapted a bit to give my nervous system a break. Life adapts.

Waste disposal.

These streets are made out of...
motorcycles and trash...basically.

Anyone would like a murder for dinner?

Water : not to be taken for granted

But I shan't leave you with these sad images. I will bridge it all with a last shot which I took because I perceive a lot of beauty in decay. There is so much of it here... so much of Life.

''Things they come, and things they go. And that's one thing you oughta know.''

Je suis allée à la ''Church''...

Ce matin, je suis allée ''prier''.

Le réveil n'avait pas été facile. Ce mal de tête, qui avait débuté juste avant de me mettre au lit, persistait toujours. Notre nuit avait été interrompue par les cris d'une femme qui semblait un peu saoule : '' Hey! Dude! Where the fuck are you from?'' Il devait être minuit lorsqu'elle nous réveilla pour se mettre à gueuler ... à n'en plus finir.

Il nous fallait emballer la tente et tout le campement afin de quitter le site. Ma chérie nous prépara le petit déjeuner, et j'espérais qu'un peu de caféine saurait apaiser mon mal de tête. 
Première bouchée de toast au beurre de peanut : haut le coeur. ''Respire Ève, ne t'emballe pas. Sois positive... '' Et vlan! D'un geste maladroit je me suis renversé mon café dessus! ''Grrrrr'' Comme le disait si bien Alanis: ''And isn't it ironic?'' J'avais attendu ce dimanche matin (euh oui, j'écris à quelques jours de décalage) toute la semaine, et le jour finalement venu, mon corps et mon humeur ne sont pas du tout en état.  Mais qu'à cela ne tienne : je savais que je devais me rendre à la ''Church''. Qu'importe que je sois quinze minutes en retard... J'enfourche mon vélo, je prends conscience de la brise sur mon visage. Moment présent. Premier octobre.

Onze heure et quart donc, je franchie les portes et monte l'escalier menant à la salle de ''prières'' : bienvenue au Moving Center de Nelson!  J'enlève mes bottes et je souris. Sur le banc à côté de moi arrive un barbu rouquin d'une trentaine d'année, accompagné d'une enfant qui n'a pas encore deux ans. Suce au bec, elle grimpe sur son papa et attend qu'il ait retirer ses chaussures. Elle n'est pas du tout intimidée par l'environnement ; ce n'est pas sa première fois.

Je passe mettre des vêtements confortables et j'entre enfin dans le studio. L'endroit n'est pas très grand, mais il y a assez d'espace pour tout le monde. Il y a des femmes et des hommes de tous les âges, de tous les styles, de toutes les formes. La musique remplie déjà la salle. Au devant, un humble autel paré de quelques objets : du bois flotté, une statuette, quelques chandelles, et des cartes de tarot.

La plupart des participant-es sont au sol et s'étirent tranquillement ; d'autres sont déjà debout, certain-es méditent. Plusieurs ont les yeux fermés et prennent contact avec le rythme, avec leur rythme. Le papa roux et sa petite fille dansent à la fois ensemble mais séparément. Il bouge au sol et elle fait sa gymnastique sur son lui.  Je regarde ces enfants, jeunes filles et jeunes garçons de quatre à sept ans, et je me dis que c'est un merveilleux cadeau pour eux de partager cet espace avec leurs parents.

Il n'y a que quelques règles à suivre : 1) on ne parle pas, 2) on ne consomme pas d'alcool ou de drogue, 3) on se respecte, évidemment, 4) on DANSE.

Une heure et demie de pure liberté! Une heure et demie d'écoute et d'exploration. Si je veux faire de grands mouvements, si je veux ramper par terre, si je veux prendre une pause pour m'étirer ou juste respirer, si je veux laisser aller mes hanches ou faire du crumping ou marcher sur les mains, je le fais! Et chacun-e en fait autant! Chacun-e ses besoins et ses impulsions, chacun-e son amplitude et sa façon de vivre la musique.

C'est du bonheur pure! Impossible de réprimer mon sourire et ma joie. Sans mots, je croise des regards qui communiquent la même allégresse. Ça, pour moi, c'est la meilleure communauté de prière qui soit! Authenticité, respect et liberté pour une communion des plus guérissantes. That's why they call it Dance Church! (Et aussi, surtout, parce que c'est le dimanche matin.)

Comme c'est régulièrement le cas, j'observe que mes pensées vont du côté ... du partage.  Je me dois de l'admettre : j'aimerais tant contribuer à partager ce type d'expérience avec de plus en plus de personnes !

J'imagine une sorte de Dance Church à Gaspé. Je vous sais avoir besoin de danser aussi, mes ami-es! Et j'aimerais vous voir danser, parents vivants accompagnés de vos enfants vivants. Je n'ai aucune difficulté à le visualiser. Le paysage sur lequel donne la fenêtre du studio est pratiquement copie conforme: une impressionante montagne de forêt mixte, colorée. C'est simple, tout ce que ça prend c'est un système de son, un mix de musique qui nous emmène doucement sur une courbe rythmique progressive, et de la volonté.

C'est donc aussi ce mouvement que je souhaite explorer, appellons le ''Conscious Dance''. Est-ce que ça sonne mieux en anglais, ou c'est juste moi? Il en existe toutes sortes de types, la recherche ne fait que commencer.  Mais déjà pour moi il est clair que le butoh en fait partie autant que le 5 rythmes ou ma dernière découverte, le SoulMotion.  J'ai donc l'intention de continuer mon exploration et qui sait, peut-être aurons-nous la chance de partager un plancher sous peu... Je suis peut-être en train de trouver un fil conducteur, une façon de définir cette expérience qui me fait vibrer.

Amen!

Ps.  Je suis sincérement touchée que vous preniez le temps de me lire et de me répondre. J'aimerais vous encourager à m'écrire vos commentaire directement sur le blogue. Ça le fait vivre :)

Being and doing (Doo-be-do, bee-do)

I get back to work in one week.

It's the end of the summer; and what a summer.
From one angle: Swaying between being and doing... What to do? What to make? What to buy? And why not just... slow down and stop!?

Because stopping kinda makes me dizzy. 'Cuz as Hiroko Tamano (Subterrean Arthouse, Berkeley) says: ''When you stop, then you start moving at a thousand miles per hour.''
And Google agrees with teacher Tamano:

''The earth rotates once every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.09053 seconds, called the sidereal period, and its circumference is roughly 40,075 kilometers. Thus, the surface of the earth at the equator moves at a speed of 460 meters per second--or roughly 1,000 miles per hour.''   -Google

“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
― Rumi

Complete liberty! (which is different than absolute freedom, by the way.)  
A whole lot of free time! (At least as long as I have money in the bank.)
As I anticipated, I've felt it somewhat compulsory to ''furnish'' the time-space I live in. I really wanted to do nothing. But I guess the mind did not quite surrender so easily. I guess I can't handle an empty room; there's always writing on the walls. That's what happens when you get a taste of mindfulness: the mind is so full!

I seek balance between doing and being. I take care of small actions that need to be done, like taking out the compost bin or trimming and watering the tomato plants. I dance a lot and I juggle; I so need to move the energy through my body. I haven't learned to contain the impressions the world make on me; I need to find appropriate ways to ex-press them. And when I stop moving my body, it's my thoughts that keep running. Observing the chatter in your mind will make you dizzy. Finding that you're quite powerless when you want to make it stop, that's a lesson in humility. Recognizing that trying to control or fight the stream actually gives the chattering mind even more power, that could lead to revolution.

...

Stopping to face a pregnant void. A distorted time-space of some sort. A plane of immanence. Matrix of potentialities, in which all things get revealed. And many demand to be made into manifestation; to be manifested.

(It's is a beautiful word;

man·i·fes·ta·tionˌ manəfəˈstāSHən,

noun

Event, action, or object that clearly shows or embodies something, especially a theory or an abstract idea.

"the first obvious manifestations of global warming"

• the action or fact of showing an abstract idea. "the manifestation of anxiety over the upcoming exams"

• a symptom or sign of an ailment. "a characteristic manifestation of Lyme disease"

''And I think to myself''... 'Am I manifesting anything'? What am I really doing with the time given me? Or should I ask myself about what I should be doing? What? No! The teachers have told us, 'There are no more shoulds', at least not in this case.
I should be doin' just what I'm doin' right now, conversing with my heart, grounded in cyberspace, spinning a thousand miles, per minute.
Just that. Living a blessed life. Doing what I love.

I'm sorry, I didn't get the credits for these three images. I give all credits to their authors et cetera.

“Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.”
― Rumi

“silence is the language of god,
all else is poor translation.”
― Rumi

solstice on the island...

We're getting closer to the solstice here.

A people of festivals.  A people that used to go to Church every Sunday... ?

I see many movements... There's a huge movement, to create spaces for neighbors to meet one another and talk about common realities.  I see organizers.  Leaders.

I had an idea for a new creative ''manif'' ...
I see hundreds of people dancing... une gigue!  (a jig)

Imagine everyone crossing arms and spinning, meeting one another with a laughter, a face, a look in the eyes... skipping around and switching partners, until we meet everyone and make 'them' dizzy watching us from their glass towers and helicopters!

It would be such a gesture, to dance... Emma Goldman's revolution.

Or Nietzsche's revolution - as far as my exegesis goes - for it is an unleashing of our greater potential as creators.

We don't go to Church anymore.
In the summer time, we sit on our front stoops and our balconies.  In the winter, however, we sit facing the television, still.  And that's definitely another angle of the revolution we must look into! (The concentration of the media is REAL my friends... )

This island has potential.  The summer time brings such an explosion of life!  Balconies are full of tomatoes plants everywhere, strawberries hanging down, basil, onions, roses...

We're coming close to solstice.  Which also means Saint-Jean-Bapstiste.

What is it gonna be?
Another drunken celebration of our gregarious tendencies, or ... an event?  I want to see things move forward... so bad, though I know the resistance is real and widespread.  Here, amongst my people, we are ready to take a chance...

I was thinking.
Québec has a strong history of syndicalism.  I haven't read much about the topic, actually.  I don't know much about the struggles in the sixties; but I do know that today's unions are often considered as power thirsty as their counterparts, bosses and owners.
What if the unions got rid of bosses and owners?
What if workers united together, and between industries, to create a large network?  What if the superfluous disappeared?
Could we make it work?
That's the question !

I have been working at Touski for two months now; and I am witnessing a wonderful experiment in self-management, of team work, of doing business, and making food for the people.
You should see the amount of emails that go around on our mailing list list, each day.  But it works.  We are all concerned.  We are all asked to do a bit of extra work, and take some responsibilities, in order to make the restaurant prosper...

I love it.


 

And after work, I like to take my camera out... 

Noticing that a great number of schools were indeed founded by the religious community.

Roduction Éalisations Ndépendantes de Ontréal

De-Growth and Re-ligare

Most days are made of labour and wonder, boredom and anxieties, delights, communions, and questions.
Most days I pray, not in the form of penitences but in giving thanks, and praise.
Every day, I wake up with the knowledge of one world,
one planet, cast in a spiraling dance,
since hundreds of thousands of years,
and I, descendant of an exploding star
pondering
the feeling, of wind on my skin
this phenomenological presence
in the midst of an ''ecological crisis''

not only am I anthropocentric
I am also ego-centric
for I am trapped within the confines of my body
craving for an umbilical connection with All there is
an embrace
not as a hope that my thirst be quenched
but as a celebration, of the dance
pushing and pulling
sinking and soaring
between Mother Earth and Father Sky
a child, a navel and a star gazer
knowing myself, as the Self,
as one concentric being of possible becomings
amongst infinite networks, of centers also unfolding
amongst patterns, of a Life,
Self-organizing

Today I attended a conference that's taking place on the Concordia campus.  I hadn't planned on going.  It got decided over breakfast and freshly baked banana bread.

My roommate was looking at the program trying to decide which panels and activities to go to.  I had heard about she and A. signing up to volunteer and attend that De-growth conference, all week.  I was curious, but I also thought to myself: ''Well, here's another wonderful thing happening in Montreal and I won't get to be part of it... because it's expensive and overwhelming, for it's attracting all those wonderful people who are involved in the gardening movement... and blablabla... how come I can feel so close to this intellectually and yet not get more involved?  What's keeping me from getting my hands dirty?  blablabla...''

In short, I hadn't planned this day.
But there I was, 9 in the morning, biking down Rue Sherbrooke along with two of my friends.  Sunshine in and out.
How did it happen?  She said there was a film being presented this morning, and she wasn't sure she wanted to go because it was so nice outside.  I asked about the title of the movie, and she answered: ''Journey of... ''
'' ... of the Universe!?'' I interrupted with a big smile.
''Yeah''.
''Oh my God!  That's my professor!', I explained with overflowing enthusiasm.  ''I totally want to see that movie!''
''I bet you could just get in like that,'' she said, ''they don't really monitor.''

And so I walked into Concordia University's auditorium.  And there he was on big screen: Brian Swimme, one of my dear professors from the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Invited for this projection were three imminent panelists: two professors from Yale - creators of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology - and the producers of the film: Marie-Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, whose names I have heard so much about during my time at CIIS, as well as William Rees,
professor of public policy at the University of British Columbia... and the originator of the ''ecological footprint'' idea and co-developper of the method.

Listening to Brian Swimme reiterate his wonder about the unique circumstances that made human consciousness possible in the Universe, hearing talk about that 14 billion years old journey to this new scientific narrative, witnessing his praise of play and wonder being communicated to people gathered right here, in the province of Québec... I personally experienced the bridging of what often comes off as two worlds...
San Francisco meets Montréal!  My mind: hyper stimulated, the way it gets when I attend those ''academic conferences''.
(''In my days'' while I worked both at UMaine and for CIIS Public Programs, I attended a hella those lectures and conferences, and I've been reflecting on that recently as I went through the résumé process.)

But it wasn't only CIIS and Montréal, it was my bachelors at UMaine also, the environmental and political philosophy papers, the thought process...
I was inundated with flashbacks from my trajectory, hearing my own personal worldview and conclusions being investigated.
Part of an important conversation.

So I guess that the International Conference on Degrowth in the Americas is right along the lines of my work.  I might not know exactly what this work is, I suspect it is going to play out in several aspects, but I cannot deny that I am strongly tied with this community of thinkers and ecologists.

I regularly get down on myself, for I find it difficult to see that even though my understanding points to the necessity of re-learning re-lating with the natural world, of re-incorporating and re-localizing the process of food production, even though I know and praise the importance of urban agriculture, I still haven't planted a seed this year!
I'm surrounded with people who do, though.
I tell myself it'll unfold in due time, when I have landed a bit more in my new reality (Is six months long enough?).  I tell myself that it's good I am surrounding myself with all these community and guerrilla gardeners while I'm attending to whatever needs to happen in my own life at the moment.  I am learning by osmosis, through conversations and observations mostly.  I am cultivating kefir.

I did dig up rocks in my friends' gardens last week, when I went to St-Élie-de-Caxton to spend a Monday afternoon with the ground, massaging the Earth's body, turning mama's soil and giving her oxygen so that seeds can grow.

Little by little... I am grounding into something... and that's something is changing, evolving, at a pace unprecedented.

I have physical theater plays flashing in my head, doctoral theses waiting to get delivered, and dance phrases burning to get drawn in space and time...

I have visions, and Professor Tucker said that's exactly what we need right now: visions to guide us.

I have visions.

Butoh with Yumiko Yoshioka

Friday night sitting at the dinning table.  A new house.  A new life.
I haven't felt like writing much, as some of you might have noticed.  I needed, I wanted, to just be with what I'm going through.  Being, in the midst of the storm.  To see.


The beautiful thing is that these past five days have managed to tie me back to my core... in a way that I had deeply been needing.  I knew it would happen.  I had been waiting for this workshop for a while now: finally: a bit of Butoh. (Or as they write in French: butô.)

Studio 303, Montréal.  Twenty movers I had been excited to meet, for I figured they would share my love of Butoh, or at least, of one aspect of it.
We had the opportunity to spend 20h with world-renown teacher and choreographer, Yumiko Yoshioka, as part of her big tour.  How wonderful it must be to travel the world and teach this art form and this wisdom!

As she said, Butoh is not just a dance.  It's also a way of life.

Yumiko Yoshioka tells us that, for her, ''Butoh is dance of transformation.''  She said, ''It is a passageway, a medium.  It can be also be dance of darkness, of the unconscious.''
And that my friends... is why I am attracted with this art form-process...
It's that encounter with the in-between again, that space of transition... for it's at the very center of every breath, in the heart of the process, that I experience Life to her fullest...


When I dance butoh, I am in relationship with oneness.  I do not always feel at one, but I am searching for it, through consciousness and through my body... from inside AND outside, simultaneously, within both the physical and the imaginal environment, I try to listen and surrender.  I stop thinking and I move.  Naturally.

 Waves.  Waves.  Waves.
I thoroughly enjoyed Yumiko Yoshiota's Butoh.

''The essence of wave, is to transmit.''
Yes.  That's what I want to do.

''The yin and the yang are always within one another.  Life and Form chase each other...''

I'd be lying if I said I completely succeeded in forgetting about my [looking for work] situation... ''What do I want to do?  Where do I want to work?'' ... I've come to realize I've been throwing my energy in a million directions.  Work? Work?  I could do a million things!  I only need someone to give me a chance!



What I really need right now, is to stop and be for a little bit... in a yin kinda place.  There is no need to be all yang and proactive if I haven't given myself the time to listen... to what I really want to be doing.

Sure, I seem to be running out of money.  But I must accept, this is a big transition indeed.  Butoh is reminding me: the beauty is in the process.
(Caution: I've known this for a while and I might be a bit addicted to that state of becoming...)

Yumiko says: ''Pain is often the best teacher.  Love is the best healer.''

This week, I did EXACTLY what I LOVE.

A space I had found in Barcelona...
the last time I took half an hour to dance like this...
slowly...

P.P.S. For those that could be interested: Yumiko will be teaching in Québec city next week (I think I'm going for part of it!!) and then in Toronto...

P.P.S. For my part, I'll be teaching in a community center somewhere north of Montréal...  My first dance class to a group of 3-5 years old!!
:)

Goodbye studio, Hello Community

I love my music.  I love that I am spending this tuesday afternoon dancing in my very own studio... Sun shining through the windows, and a wooden floor to die for.

I should stop saying that I can't dance.  Sure I feel pain in my foot, but I just have to be careful, right?  I can't quite jump or bounce, but hell I can dance!  

In fact, I dance pretty much everyday.  I do it on the streets, waiting for the bus or the métro sometimes... I do it in my head most of the time.

The apartment has been emptied of its furniture.
The funny thing is that everyone seems to worry about the quality of my life. ''You mean, you have nothing?''
''Are you kidding me?! I'm having a blast!''
They know me, so they know it's true...
I took a walk today and noticed that there is at least seven or eight dance and yoga (often combined) studios lined up on Mont-Royal between St-Laurent and Christophe-Colomb!
And I got my very own.  Blessed!

I just returned from a 24h trip in Québec city.  This time around it was different, I mean... in a ''new'' way.  As if I was seeing it with completely different eyes now that I ''live'' in Montréal.  I had never had this impression before.  Of course, that's because I'd never had my own ''chez moi'' here.

Landscape, Via Rail between Québec and Montréal.
And it makes me wonder...

I'm almost there.  ''Chez moi'', I mean.
Though it's true, I'm also in the process of defining it for myself.  Gathering thoughts and visions, setting intentions, trying things on.

I have found a new place to live.  I'll be moving in in the next several days.
The place is everything I've been setting myself up to manifest... but I'm nervous now.
I've been living the dream life: all this space, and this time, to do my own thing and be with myself.  Abundant space and time!
I am now moving in with more or less 13 people.  Adieu spontaneous butoh jam sessions, crawling on the floor like a wild animal and pirouetting like a ballerina.. Adieu clean and gigantic kitchen.  ''Things they come, and things they go...''
At my new place, we get bulk food and cook communally.  We also subscribe to a Community-Supported Agriculture program:

(A CSA consists of a community of individuals who pledge support to a farming operation where the growers and consumers share the risks and benefits of food production. wikipédia)  

 And yes!  Like me they faithfully practice composting as well!  I mean, isn't this pretty much what I've been talking about for months? (The only exception is the lack of a backyard garden, which is so central to the little utopian scheme I've been playing with in my head).  But!!! If I take the lead on it, we could grow our own lettuce in a window like that vidéo I saw on YouTube!
I gotta say.  It's a reasonable price, but the room is rather small...and it has no windows.  It has a skylight but it's quite dirty up there.  I wonder if I could get the landlord to let me go clean it...
I'm anxious.
Another transition baby!  Bring it on!

Queer & Reggae

I've been learning to go out in Montréal.  

In my planner I had written: Reggae Queer! 9pm.  Salon Officiel, 351 Roy. No cover.

It's ten o'clock on a dark Sunday night.  I've been indoor all day, resting my foot and sending job applications.  It's a bit hard to get motivated, but I well know that there is no way I can miss this event...

Reggae + Queer?!  That's HOME!  Yes, those terms are tightly tied to my sense of identity. In fact, it's deeper even than that: those two words evoke images of such freedom...  likes sources connecting to ''the essence... like wells where I get to quench my thirst for pure and simple being-ness.  Reggae + Queer are two homes to my soul.

''Feel like dancing... Dance 'cuz we are free!'' sang Saint-Bob Marley.  

And in queer I do feel free, because it's the epitome of no-boundaries - or I should say: fluid boundaries.

Rue du Roy is not too far, so I decide to take a walk, hoping that a few people might already be at the bar when I get there.  There's something just so absurd about sitting on a stool sipping on a five dollar drink, waiting for a party to begin.

I tend to go warm up the dance floor pretty quickly, since my primary intention for going on is to dance.  With a few friends, it's not too bad to break the ice.  But tonight, I have no friends with me.

I came out alone, which is perfectly okay with me.  For Jah's sake, I've been doing it for five years now.  I don't see why I should change my ways and pass a good gathering just because I have the same accent as everyone else around me. 

Most of the friends I already have in this city aren't going out on Sunday nights anymore.  And they don't go to queer events either...  

I suddenly re-realize, that this is a crucial part of that subtle sense of alienation I've been feeling wary about.

''Looks good in the box...''

Tonight, it feels good to dress up by wearing a button-down shirt and putting on my running shoes. Those are the clothes I like to wear; I feel comfortable, confident, and even beautiful in them.  I'm not thinking about picking up the ladies, though it does highlight a strong yang energy, I guess.  In the end, it's nothing but another costume though, as all clothes are.  Tomorrow, I might want to wear that cute skirt I got before xmas.  But it might be too cold outside for that.

I'm queer; I don't want to deny or forget it.  The danger is there; you hang out with a bunch of hetero-normative folks for a while and you start feeling like them, you want to look as pretty as the other girls around you.  It seems that the other option is to dyke it out so it's clear what you identify as.  Or you might have a job interview and you feel the need to dress the part, to make a good impression, to fit expectations.

I just want to be myself, in all my fluidity and ... repertoire!  That's what I identify as. :)

So I decided I'm gonna have lots of clothes, so I can just pick and choose on any given day or night!  Costumes Costumes...

Sink-side Flirtation:
''I like your haircut.''
''I like your curves.''

Queer reggae wasn't after all particularly queer.  I met some people from Ottawa, some Montrealers, and a Mexican guy.  A beautiful woman was dancing in her wheelchair...
The music was aaawwwwwesssssommmmme!!! :)
It is Sunday night and I am dancing in between, San Francisco (flashbacks of those many Sundays spent at Dub Mission!) and Montreal, man and woman, Franco and Anglo, straight and gay, while the planet we live on keeps spinning on its axis, in the solar system, in the galaxy, in the universe...

Centimeters..

Snow has been falling down alllll day.  I had tentative plans on my agenda for the day: 1) call this dude Vahid and go visit an apartment, 2) go introduce myself at the local office of employment.  But with this gentle white blizzard waving at me from the other side of the window, I decided to stay in instead.  (Plus, Vahid postponed our meeting.)
I browsed through a few more job offers, reworked a few résumé to fit the profiles, worked on those cover letters that are supposed to make them impatient to meet me.
People ask me: '' What kind of job are you looking for ?''  I tell them I am open, as long as it is inspiring.  You see, I'm not interested in working at Tim Hortons'.  I'm not going to spend my days like an automaton, just to make ends meet.  I want to care.  I want to grow.  I want to feel connected.
So these jobs I am applying generally have requirements that are a bit above what my experience is.  But I KNOW, they are not above my competency.
Here I am, in that infamous qualification ''ditch'', trying to show that I can climb and fulfill whatever functions these people need fulfilled, trying not to slip to the bottom and lose faith.
It's been less than I week since I moved here, I suppose.  I am trying to be patient.  The old wise woman inside knows it's only a matter of time until I get to shine my little light and take part in some super duper progressive creative community endeavor.  But for now, it's lonely as hell.
I haven't gone dancing in over what... two months?  My foot won't allow me.  The tendon connecting to my heel has a little tear (happened exactly a week before I left home in San Francisco.  Talk about body-mind!) and it wants me to stay in place and be with my emotions instead of going out and dancing them off.  It's hard.  I want to move, get my heart rate up, sweat and shake and feel free... but I can't.



I'm back on OkCupid.  I figured it'd be a good way to meet other queer people.
I miss home.  I miss the sunshine.  I miss creating with Harvey.
But this is not meant to sound down in the dumps or anything.  It's just that it's been snowing all day.  And I long to share my energy with others.

I have some ''meetings'' lined up for the next few weeks.  I found a group of people who are wanting to start a sustainable-living-community-land-ecovillage-project-thing somewhere.  I'm planning on joining the first meeting next week.  I'm also meeting a professor from the Drama Therapy program next week, just to learn about what the scene is around here.  Tomorrow, I'm going to some introductory meeting for a ''young entrepreneur in social economy'' formation.  And saturday, there's an open house at a dance studio.  Don't know if I can dance quite yet, but please foot, let me try out that physical theater class!  Oh, and hopefully, I'll get some calls for interviews soon...

It's cool not to be working, actually.  It means lots of free time.  Besides, I got a bit of a cushion still.  I can handle it.  It gives me time to explore the city.  (I went to a lecture on Mohawk history yesterday, at the McClure museum near McGill university.)  It's just that it ain't that much fun when thermometers show minus twenty (celsius) outside, and you got a sore heel with all the fear (of a chronic injury) it brings..

TransToulouse

Narrow streets of "La ville Rose"

More Toulousian musings on the themes of gender and identity.  Though it wasn't so much musing as it was just simply… experiencing in a closer, more personal way, yet another angle of the gigantic and wonderful diversity of Life.

I knew J. from San Francisco, having witnessed his part in a Theater for Change performance at CIIS, where he studied Expressive Arts Therapy.  His story (told partly in French)  had touched me deeply that day: a story of awakening to and accepting of her/his difference.  There on stage s/he had revealed part of the personal and political struggle s/he'd gone through in this hetero-normative and dualistic gender world.  Neither woman, not quite a man.  Gay, not quite lesbian.  J. has had to define himself outside of the reference frame provided by modern society.  

When I first contacted J., via email, I asked if he preferred the use of a particular pronoun.  He said he generally goes by he, "but like[s] the feminine plural."

J. has decided to begin taking testosterone.  His voice, his smell, his pilosity is changing.  J. is really beautiful.

I contacted him because I thought he might have some good French contacts for HE: a genderstranged clown duo.  I mentioned that we had met briefly once or twice, even though he might not remember.   I said I had the impression we'd get along pretty well, since I am into clowning - I had seen him stilts-walking during the Pride parade!- and drama therapy, and anarchist theory, as well as queer and gender studies - though I'm not half as versed as the real academics are on the subject (Foucault, Butler, etc.). 

He told me he had just moved to Toulouse and didn't know many people yet.  It might be hard to get us a show, but we or I could come visit anyway.

Harvey and I somehow kept our performances of ShameNoShame! in Berlin, but I thought I'd come visit J. in Toulouse.  I asked and s/he said s/he'd be delighted to meet.  And s/he could probably ask his squat-mates if I could stay there for a few days.

Funny how two beings with so many commonalities can live in the same city (SF), without ever meeting.  

Lovely how it can happen so naturally, two years later, on the other side of the Atlantic.  Given: there was the French connection.

"You can call me when you arrive and I'll come meet you", he'd said.

I was a bit nervous.  Was I cool enough to hang with J.?  Was I cool enough to hang at the squat?

When I called he asked, "how are we going to find each other?"

"I've got a big red backpack," I answered.  "And I'll recognize you I'm sure."

"Okay.. well I'm wearing a hat and… pants… kinda like a clown.. hehe."

Place Wilson.  I'm sitting on the bench entertaining conversation with a local man, busy trying to gage whether I should - and how and where to - draw my own opinions and boundaries, as the man passes judgements on a group of homeless young adults hanging around peacefully.  He asks me where I'm staying in Toulouse.  "With a friend," I say.  "He's coming to meet me any minute."

I used the masculine pronoun repeatedly, even though something inside of me wondered how androgynous-ambiguous J. might show up to be, and what reaction this narrow-minded fellow might  have.  I was eager to find out. 

J. and I found each other immediately.  He came to greet me. Kisses on each cheeks.  He shook my interlocutor's hand; I smiled.  I didn't remember seeing J. with facial hair before.

On the way to his house he told me he was in the process of changing his legal name:  "It's very complicated here in France.  I need a note from my doctor, which states that my decision to take testosterone makes my transition irreversible."

This is what I mean when I say that I got to experience the whole thing to a more personal level.  I know a few transgender folks, yet there is something about J. that I just feel so close to.  It's an essence.  It's the woman and the man in him.  It's the complete ease with which I see him as he is, forgetting and remembering the difference according to the moment.  It's the strangeness of my own voice when I refer to myself in the feminine.

Why am I identifying as a woman?

I don't actually feel the dire need to answer the question.  Maybe that's why.

"I came to a point where I realized that the only way I would be able to grow old was if I became a man" explained J.

Can you imagine?

Perhaps many of us cannot.  And I guess that's valid.  Yet, it is so real, and so freakin' beautiful to me.. integrity in complexity… evolutionary… beyond duality… You gotta respect.

But I left my new friend now that I'm on the bus towards Sevilla, Spain.  Last leg of this three month adventure.  

Yes, I am confident saying that I made a new friend.  It was a short time, but J. and I met straight from the heart.  The connection is undoubtedly timeless.  
Once again I met someone who's in a similar place: out of San Francisco and hoping to create a good life in a new place, hoping to share wisdom and care with the world, painfully seeing the many imperfections of this neoliberal system and trying to create something else, something better, more sustainable and ethical, at the periphery. 

But we didn't only talk.  We also danced.  First, he invited me to join his contact improvisation class, on wednesday evening.  And then again on Friday, him and his partner asked if I'd be interested in "helping out" and come to the studio to rehearse a session of "movement exploration." 

Because you see, J.'s girl has a passion ... for Butoh!  
Together they are crafting a workshop she will be offering at a festival in London.

Help out?  ah! ah! ah! Amen!

I met them at the studio, and then J. and I got a private Butoh class…

Connecting in movement, in breathing, in presence and exploration, in vulnerability and in freedom.


Butoh is a dance of in-between.  It's a dance of being with becoming... of being with transition.
How perfect.  How powerful.


---

"Parlas occitan?"
"Una soleta lenga sufis pas jamai!"

I also meant to write about Occitan, or Langue d'Oc, which is a latine language spoken  in eight regions of Southern France, as well as twelve alpine valleys in Italy, and in parts of Spain.  (It is quite close to Catalan.)
It was the language of the troubadours and poets, and it was widely spoken until the 14th century.  But then came the systematic imposition of the French language over the territory; first, when the king of France began to "unify" (read: conquer) the nation, and again with the French Revolution, because diversity of languages came to be seen as a threat to the Republic.
I'm just so fascinated with how languages morph and mix and become extinct...